Changes in Family and Marriage Structure

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Marriages and Families “Changes” Imagine that, if in the 1920’s someone would have predicted that by the year 2000 one out of two marriages will end in divorce. The number of single parents will triple and lots of them will never marry. Stay at home moms will become almost obsolete and, gay people will want to get married and adopt children. Oh my, could you imagine the look on their faces? Families are defiantly different now than they were then, but the world is also different. Does this mean than families are deteriorating or are they stronger than ever? Maybe they are just changing and are still as strong as they once were. So many changes have taken place within the family. Some of them are higher divorce rates, more working mothers, more homosexual families, and a huge increase in children born out of wedlock. Many argue that most of the family’s problems come from the mother working outside of the house. The fact is that working mothers is nothing new. Mothers have always done something to help out, even if it was sewing, baking, or working on the land. In today’s world it’s very hard to make ends meet with only one income. Children benefit in some ways from their mom working. In this materialistic culture children want to have all the nice things and what’s hot. Working mothers spend on average just as much quality time with their children as non working mothers. Divorce, single parents, and unmarried parents have always existed. It is no doubt that the rates of them have increased dramatically. Is this a bad sign? This doesn’t mean that families are weak. It only means that people’s morals have changed. Families are not perfect, but they are strong. We also have more freedoms than we did in the 1920s. Women can now leave their husbands when things are unbearable. Women didn’t have as many choices then. Just because families seemed good then don’t mean that they were. It’s not something we should try to live up to. After all we are talking about a time when slaves were legal and treated badly. On the opposite side men don’t get to really be full time fathers after divorce. Divorce defiantly affects children. It is also better for children if they don’t have to live in a household of anger and unhappiness. Of

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