1. In the past 50 years, The American family structure has gone though some drastic changes. Family structure includes the combination of individuals that make up a family. There are both structural and cultural factors that have influenced the structure of the American family. Specifically, there has been a decrease in family size over the past 50 years. Structural factors are institutions that influence our lives, including family, education, religion, and policies. Cultural factors are beliefs, norms, and traditions, which guide our decisions. One of the biggest structural factors that changed the U.S. family structure over the last 50 years is the decline in the sizes of families due to medical advances. From 1800-1900, the average amount of children born was cut in half (Cohen, 44). This large decline was due to health care and technological advances, which has been able to increase the reliability and efficacy of birth control and prevent pregnancy (Cohen, 44). Although not widely available at first, the most common form of birth control, “the pill” first became available in the 1960’s. Nowadays, approximately 76 million women use the pill worldwide (Cohen, 45). The use of the pill …show more content…
This theory focuses on stability rather than, change. There are many disadvantages of this theory. This theory fails to analyze inequalities, and is very broad. This theory has also been criticized for enforcing a male-dominated society. Structural functionalists thought that breadwinner-homemaker families “provided the basis for stability and cooperation”, which lead to successful families (Cohen, 17). In transnational families and other families, the function of family members is shaped by their gender, which can lead to unrealistic expectations. When fathers, or mothers are absent for a period of a child’s life, it drastically impacts the dynamic of a
In chronicling how the family structure has changed in America, it is important to understanding how family was actually defined. When referencing Leave it to Beaver (further referred to as LITB) times, family took on a substantive definition, or the idea that family was equivalent to relative, or related by blood or law. While this definition of family served the time period, it failed to evolve with society. For that reason, sociologists set out to determine a “more inclusive functionalist definition,” that focuses on what families do. “A functionalist definition of families focuses on how families provide for the physical, social, and emotional needs of individuals and of society as a whole” (Witt). With that, the functionalist perspective identifies six primary functions, which include reproduction, socialization, protection, regulation of sexual behavior, affection and companionship, and...
When legally introduced to society in 1960, the Pill stirred up a long period of controversy. The availability of the Pill had great impact on women’s health, social life, laws, religion, family, relationships, morality and sexuality. Initially conceived to be highly effective and safe, the Pill left many women with side effects – few which led to several fatalities. Before the Pill was created, many women postponed sex due to the social norm and fear of becoming pregnant before marriage. Families grew large and it was typical for a woman to have multiple children caused by the lack of birth control. Due to regulations, such as the Comstock laws, many people supported the prohibition of the Pill and other family planning practices. However, many women believed in the right to control their own body when it came to procreation. Despite the controversies, the Pill left lasting impacts, such as by opening society to the sexual revolution and...
During the whole of the 21st century, the subject of birth control has become a trending topic throughout various news reports. The debate on whether or not birth control should be required and distributed by all health plans has caused much controversy throughout the population. However, there was a time in our history when contraceptives, much less birth control, was available for the public. It was through the perseverance and determination of Margaret Sanger to make birth control legal for all women that it is accessible worldwide today. She was the leader of the birth control movement, which was conceived during the Progressive era of United States history.
Watkins, E. (2012). How the pill became a lifestyle drug: the pharmaceutical industry and birth
“The pill” made the sexual revolution of the 1960’s possible; although controversial it certainly changed the consequences and morals of sexual activities. In the 19th century having sex with a woman meant marriage and kids in the future that all changed when birth control came out. Birth control lowered the amount of unwanted pregnancies and marriages.
For much of the 19th and early 20th centuries women had a hard time getting their hands on effective birth control. The Comstock Act in the United States restricted anyone from using contraceptives or spreading information about it, but those laws did not stop women from trying to prevent pregnancy. Women’s lack of education and effective advertising played an important role in birth control’s highly successful market. This essay will reveal the changes that occurred to the birth control market of the 1930s and how it impacted female consumers of birth control products.
As a societal unit, the family institution has become more individualized and is negatively impacting societies future. From the 1930’s to now the family has disintegrated into more and more of a single person unit. A family in the 1930’s was envisioned to be a male-breadwinning father, a doting-homemaker wife, and several children. Yet understand while the Great Depression was rolling the family structure did not change. The husband went out and looked for work, while the wife stayed home and kept the children out of trouble.
With the clash of the cultures increasingly challenging our way of living, we must fight even harder to keep our families practicing good morality and traditional values. The census of the 20s shows us that more and more Americans are making the move to the big city and for reasons I don’t quite understand. There are many that embrace the new modern world, but my family members are plain old country folk that enjoy rural living, living on farms or in small towns. And marriage should be considered sacred and children should be considered a blessing from God, not a burden or imposition. In the essay entitled “Birth Control,” by Ella K. Dearborn, written for the Birth Control Review in March 1928, Dearborn opposed certain women having children
The American family can be defined in as many ways as there are families. For a single person, he or she may define his or her family as his or her pet. Others may define family as his or her friends, but for most people, family is traditionally defined as including his or her biological parents, siblings and immediate blood relations. The traditional American family, despite being depicted in television shows, such as Leave It To Beaver or buzzwords for marked political agendas, is a falsehood that truly never existed for the vast majority of Americans. The birth of the women’s liberation movement of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s is often held responsible for the breakdown of the “traditional” family consisting of the working father, stay-at-home
For thousands of years, people have used various birth control methods to limit the number of children in their families. Birth control encompasses a wide range of devices along with rational and irrational methods that have been used in an attempt to prevent pregnancy. It has been and remains controversial. Today, birth control is an essential part of life. In fact, 99% American women of childbearing age report using some form of contraception at one time or another (NIBH). In his book, The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution, author Jonathan Eig writes "For as long as men and women have been making babies, they 've been trying not to” (Gibson). He reports that early contraceptive options offered
By the 1980s, Marxism, the economics forces define the political and cultural realities in society, mixed with feminism claimed “that gender is not class but a driving force of history.” This created the notion that “when women are subordinate men benefit” and that women had a disadvantage to men in the workforce (Conley 2013). Marxist feminist would called this gender conflict. The nuclear family has gender roles which are “set of behavioral norms assumed to accompany one’s status as a male or female.Gender roles is more general term,but Parson’s sex roles is more of an ambiguous term. Sex roles theory states that men are work oriented, while women are domestic oriented to form the ideal nuclear family. “Sex roles created by society was formed for structuralism functionalism, which is the theoretical tradition claiming that every society has certain structures that exist in order to fulfill some set of necessary functions(2013). Even though functionalist supported this theory in the 1960s, it was flawed. Sex role theory only provided one way of how a family could function. Essentialist would describe Parson’s theory as the social phenomena of the nuclear family based on the biological factor of sex. R.W. Connell described the condition in which men are dominant and privileged and that it is invisible, which is Hegemonic masculinity. Even though hegemonic masculinity is what some theorist impose, it clarifies
The American family model traditionally included the mother and father with two kids, a boy and girl. In this 1950’s family model the husband is seen as the breadwinner while the mother is the homemaker. This model is exemplified in the Battleship advertisement where the father is resting from a hard day’s by work playing a board game with his son. At the same time the mother is doing the days dishes with some help drying from her daughter. Today however, these rigid stereotypical roles are no longer applicable to the members of the modern family. With increases in divorce rates and teen pregnancy combined with the shift in economic roles of the majority of families, the traditional nuclear family is a minority (Wetzel, 1990). The JCPenny
In the past 60 years there have been a significant amount of changes that have occurred within the American families. Throughout the years times have changed in both the workforce, and simply in the home. The ways things are done in the home have drastically changed from how they used to be.
1946 saw the birth of the Baby Boom era with more than 3.8 million babies born in that year alone.The baby boom lasted until 1964, when we saw a drastic decrease in births. This sudden and very beneficial decline could in part be attributed to the availability of birth control. Birth control, otherwise known as “contraceptives,” are very useful to many women (62%). While birth control is seen by many as a great advantage, those who disagree with it still view contraceptives as taboo or a violation of a sacred right. Contraceptives, not only help in healthy family planning, but also have many beneficial side effects for women’s health, there for the government should keep funding Birth Control as well as places that help women receive contraceptives
A criticism is that it focuses on the nuclear family to the exclusion of other family types that can be just as successful. Feminists Dobash & Dobash (????) and Bryson (1992) criticise functionalism for ignoring negative aspects of the nuclear family and the ‘dark side’ - domestic violence, child abuse and mental illness occurring as a consequence of unequal power relationships within the home and how the ‘housewife’ role wa...