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A family is made up of two or more people who are related by marriage or birth. Most families are made up of a father, a mother and the children. Married couples make up the largest part of U.S. households. This comes to 55.5 million. The second most household is 31 million and consist of people living alone. 2. What is a nuclear family? A nuclear family consists of a married father and mother, and the children. A nuclear family can be biological or adopted. A nuclear family may also include a household with one parent (mother or father) and children. In a nuclear family, also called nuclear household, there could be one or more children related to the parent(s) by birth or by adoption. 3. Describe family trends in the historical context? …show more content…
There were very few big cities. During the first and second world wars the communities are typical in the forms of household with a structure of the nuclear family. This is constituted of parents and children as well as childless couple. The nuclear homes served the economic purpose of members working together on farm and in family businesses. The gown-up children live near their parents thus creating communities of close multigenerational kinships. After second world war, there significant changes to kingships, relationships in communities, and the responsibilities of governments. There was shift to two-parent and one-parent family households. By the dmd-1960s family sizes began to become smaller, which marks and end to the postwar baby boom
Thus these elite necessities prompted high rates of fertility - couples during and after the world war two wedded at an ever more youthful age with the posterity therefore more various - creating the desire for, without a doubt, more commodious housing. Greater homes and greater families suggested a greater workload for spouses and mothers and requested a more noticeable obligation to the private space. Extending auto proprietorship both made the suburb possible and ensured its isolating effect upon housewives: public transport was seen immaterial, disregarding the way that most families had one vehicle which was utilized by work-away
“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
Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road displays different concepts of nuclear and non-nuclear families throughout the novel. In The Road the reader is introduced to different types of individuals and non-nuclear families and how they succeed in a post-apocalyptic world. Nuclear families are what many consider to be a traditional family, consisting of a mother, father, and children while non-nuclear families are families that are considered untraditional. However, when a traditional family is introduced the reader sees the failures of nuclear families rather than their success while non-nuclear families appear to be more likely to succeed in the sense of survival. Incidents
Family is a very fluid word, it can serve a different meaning to everyone. In this case however, I will be discussing biological family systems. There are many demographic types of households, such as husband- wife, single parent, and living alone. In Lumberton, my home town, there are approximately 2700 husband- wife homes, approximately 2500 single parent homes, and 380 living alone homes. Of the single parent homes, 441 were male led single parent homes, which means the father had custody of the children.
Family, a group consisting of parents and children living together in a household. Although family is a concretely defined term, the idea of family varies from person to person. But, what makes a family? For those who are surrounded by loving blood relatives, for those who have never known the one to grant them life, for those who have left their blood behind for a more loving and nurturing environment, what can commonly define a family? Family is something defined by the individual. Family includes those who you have come to love, whether platonically or romantically, those you have suffered with, those you have come to respect, and most importantly those you have cared for and in turn have cared for you. To one that could mean people who
A family might include anyone related by blood or by adoption such as: step parents, grandparents acting as parents, and even brothers and sisters sharing the same household. However, worldwide “the family is regarded as the most ba...
American families today are smaller than in years past. Most parents or families consist only of one or two children and it rare to see larger families unless the family is blended or there are religious beliefs about raising a large family. There are a few factors influencing this and neither a small or large family is the wrong thing, it is a personal choice. However, one factor that can influence family size is economics. It is very expensive to raise a large family while ensuring they will be provided with the necessary provisions to thrive. The invention of birth control plays a part in smaller families as parents can now choose to not become pregnant until they want children. In years past this was not an option. Another reason for smaller families is people are waiting until they feel personal aspirations are met. Waiting until after higher education or good employment often delays child rearing and in turn for the femal...
My family that lives with me for the most part of the year is my two parents, mom and dad, and two siblings, one brother and one sister. One-third of the year my dad’s mom lives with us. She goes to Arizona from September to April. While my grandma does not live with us, I would say that we are close to your typical “nuclear” family. A nuclear family is usually two parents and their children, so we fit that when my grandma does not live with us. However, when my grandma does live with us, I would say we stray away from the “nuclear” family because grandparents do not typically live with you.
The extended family predominated pre-industrially because of the need for a large family to help tend the land or look after those who were unable to do so. Infant mortality was high so you had to produce more children to be sure of having enough help. The family were a unit of production producing only the goods needed to survive and trading the remainder. Following the Industrial Revolution in the late 19th century, it was replaced by the nuclear family which was a unit of consumption as family members became wage earners and families needed to become more geographically mobile and move to where they could find work.
‘The family unit is one of the most important institutions, which is found in some form in nearly all known societies’ (Ken Browne, ‘An introduction to sociology’ 2011, p. 85). In this essay, few topics are covered. They include perception of the family, different types of family and various sociological concepts of the family in relation to the significant changes in structure of this part of society that have taken place in the UK since the 1950s. First of all, there is a need to explain the difference between household and family and give the definition of the family from the sociological point of view. According to Braun (2011), a household is either one person or a group of people who live at the same address and share living dispositions.
The family structures of a childless and sole parent family structure consist of specific aspects and factors which define these two structures. Regarding childless family structures, according to www.edu.pe.ca it’s defined as “a group of people from all kinds of backgrounds and all walks of life who, for whatever reason, have never had children”.
So what makes a family then? If you asked anyone they would probably give you a basic surface level answer of two parents and their kids. This answer is pretty close the definition found in an Oxford dictionary of “a group consisting of two parents and their children
What is family? When people think of family they think of parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, etc. Family are the people that we grow up around and they have a big impact on how we see certain things in life. The Merriam-Webster Online dictionary says family is a group of people who are related to each other. However, the definition might shift as people go from being children to adolescence then to adults.
Following Murdock’s idea of the nuclear family, further family types were devised. According to Office for National Statistics (2013) the most common family type is married couple with or without children, making up 12.3 million families out of 18.2 million families in total, in the UK. The family is arguably one of the most important aspects of society and has an essential part in satisfying the emotional and physical requirements of an individual, which is compulsory for attaining economic and social growth. The other most common family types include, lone parent families, cohabiting couple families, same sex cohabiting families, extended families and blended families. It has been argued that a family does not to be a nuclear one to function effectively. As long as a family provides a support system for the adults and children within it, then it will be a positive family structure. However, it should be noted that the rise in break downs of the nuclear family, and the decrease of extended families, has significantly increased anxiety and worry in young children, and a considerable growth in the number of teenagers and adults suffering from depression.
For over centuries, the term family has been specifically used to mean a group of people that consist of two parents and their children. The word is originally from the Latin word Familia, which means household or family. Although this word is known all over the world, it can have a different context to each person. In the United States alone, family can be referred to two adults and their children, a single-parent household, extended relatives, and a structure of more than two parents. Despite how the family structure may look like within a household, it plays a major role in life, either directly or indirectly.