Research Paper: Big vs. Small Sized Families "Americans, on average, believe that 2.5 children are ideal. Nearly 6 in 10 Americans believe smaller -- two children or fewer -- are ideal. (Carroll). Family size has been a hot topic for decades because everyone has a different opinion on their "perfect" family. Is a family of three or four better off than that of five or six plus? Having two or fewer children is the ideal family size based on social and economic aspects. Families with one or two children have a stronger relationship with each other and have greater success in academics and the work field. Gallup, which has been asking about ideal family size since 1936, says that until 1967, more Americans preferred a larger family, with three or more children. Two took hold in the 1970s and has remained the top choice, with 52% of 1,007 adults in 2007 (the most recent year surveyed) saying two is best. Back then, it was common to for families to have more than 5 children. I was born in 1960 and had three …show more content…
Children in large families are always forced to share. Children in smaller families believe that they are the center of attention because their parents have only one or two kids to support. Only children are often anti-social because they haven’t always been exposed to other children. Children who are not exposed to other children will become loners. Children in smaller families perform well socially and academically. Parents have the means to put their children in better schools and extracurricular activities to ensure that their child is social. Their personality is the biggest factor of how a child is, not because they don’t have another child in the home to interact with. Just because a child does not have a sibling, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have friends and family members to interact with. A child’s personality is what makes them social or not, not the siblings or lack of that they
there is also an increase in friends placed in the voluntary kin category. The article states that people who are single or live alone think of themselves as a family. Yet studies shown that these single families tend to keep more in touch with the relatives. A statement that Dr. Coontz makes is that We’re seeing a class divide not only between the haves and the have-nots, but between the I do’s and the I do nots,”. The article also states that the way demographer noticed differences in today’s family from previous one was through the birth rates, today’s rate is about half of what it used to be in 1960. After the era of the baby boom in 1964, the rate was 36 percent, and last year the number dropped to 23.5 percent predicting a 21 percent of child births by 2050. This because less women are become mothers – yet those who are only have one or two children compared the 3 children per family in the 1970s. Another reason the articles bring up about child care is the expenses, a child can easily cost a family as little as 241,080 to about a million dollars. However, the article agrees with chapter when it states that women with a bachelor or higher wait longer to get married and have children (about 90 percent)
This primary source raises an important question nowadays we now have access to Birth Control and women still have many children because they get government help but is it really necessary to have more than four children?
“In the 1950’s, 86 percent of children lived in two-parent families, and 60 percent of children were born into homes with a male breadwinner and a female homemaker” (Conley 451). In contrast, “in 1986, fewer than 10 percent of U.S. families consisted of a male breadwinner, a female housewife, and their children, a figure that has since fallen to 6 percent” (Conley 455). Modern families come in all shapes and sizes. They no longer follow the strict nuclear family layout. There are many reasons why the nuclear family is no longer the most common family type. Some of these reasons include increased divorces, increased acceptance of different sexual orientations, increased amount of couples choosing not to get married/common-law marriages, increased amount of people choosing not to have children (rise of birth control methods), increased amount of families with both parents working/needing to work, etc. Personally, I do not believe the decrease in the nuclear family model is a bad thing. By definition a family is just a group of people who are related or married/in a relationship and it can still be a healthy and well-functioning unit no matter the size or combination of people it is made up
Gennetian, Lisa A . “One or Two Parents? Half or Step Siblings? The Effect of Family Structure on Young Children 's Achievement”. Journal of Population Economics , Vol. 18, No. 3 (Sep., 2005), pp. 415-436. Published by: Springer . Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20007969. Web. November 10, 2014
The ideal American family has become diminished. In the 21st century only 46% of children in the United States live in that ideal American family. Meanwhile you have 15% of children living with a parent that has been remarried at least once. It may seem like 15% is a small number, but in actuality it is 8, 76, 00 divorces a year that is occurring.
We were raised as a nuclear family. This wasn’t typical in my culture. Due to the belief of not using contraceptives because of religious reasons, families tend to have more than two children. It is our belief that we are blessed with as many children as our Lord will allow us to have. The oldest child is looked upon to help the parents with the little children. As soon as they’re old enough,
In society today there tends to exist a nostalgia for the utopian family life of the past.
In one’s childhood it is apparent that the immediate family members have a significant impact on the way a child grows up. The environment a child is raised in can and will affect him or her in many ways. Developing siblings learn from one another through everyday play and family activities. The interactions within a family provide many opportunities to acquire social, emotional, and behavioral skills (Conger, Stocker, McGuire, 2009).
For every child born there is a different set of characteristics set for them. First borns tend to be the leaders of the family. They are the ones that turn out to be newscasters or presidents (Neal,1). They are well organized, scholarly, and usually perfectionists (leman,27). Also, parents tend to favor the first born over the others because of their achievements and hardworking attitude (Vowels,1). The first and second child will become complete opposites (Vowles,1) A second child is the trouble maker of the family. They feel less important than the rest of the children (Neal,1). They have strong relationships with their friends because they feel they cannot share things with their family members and are not valued in the family (kelger,). Second children help avoid conflict and keep the family members out of fights (Leman,28). They are expected to live up to the oldest which to have self esteem issues and makes it hard for them to open up to anyone (Kluger). This child has the most varied char...
There are also many personal choices that have affected the new family structures. There are many same-sex couples that are deciding to adopt children, or raise children they bring from a previous relationship or marriage, and women are deciding to raise kids alone because of their desire to remain free of the entanglements of marriage, or a relationship. These different family types can be successful; however, they will have many more struggles, and many more battles to fight in order to raise strong, secure, well-adjusted children that are prepared to change the world. There are also races and classes of men and women that are not well educated and live at or below the poverty line that remain single while raising their children or who cohabitate with their significant other. For the future to remain bright for everyone, children need to be raised by two parents that love them, and love each other; it is the best
Family is an agent of socialization through nurture in early childhood by teaching children skills, values, and beliefs (Macionis, 2017). They are also an agent of socialization through race and class (Macionis, 2017). Race because of where we come from and how we view ourselves (Macionis, 2017). Class because of the type of family that we born into, either of high or low class and how it affects our growing process (Macionis, 2017).
The unit of a family is the most prominent essential for all of us. As social human beings, we seek social support in order to thrive, and that is where family comes into play. A family is where you receive love, support, encouragement, and many other social benefits. The total number of households in the United States increased from 63 million in 1970 to 113 million in 2008 (Weeks, 2012). The family has influenced multitudes of people in many ways. The traditional family in the United States consists two-married individuals providing care and stability for their biological offspring also know as the nuclear family. However, the term of a true family has ultimately changed over the last 50 years especially for African Americans.
However, good reasons exist for pushing the developmental perspective to encompass such families. For example, they are systems with the same system properties as two parent families, and they mush accomplish most of the same developmental tasks as two parent families. In fact the principal difference between single parent and two parent families is that the former lack the personnel resources to fill the normatively expected positions in the family. This lack of personnel resources places a heavy burden on the remaining family members, who much compensate with increased effort to accomplish family tasks such as physical maintenance and social
The study of Family Integration and Children’s Self-Esteem that I examined was conducted by Yabiku, Axinn, and Thornton (1999). The term “family integration” is used to describe the extent to which individual lives are characterized by a high degree of family organization. This article examines the theory of family integration and the way in which the family social organization affects individuals.
children get a bigger family to hold on to. Others think the opposite. But it is