Family changes

What's Different Now

Family Changes
By Kathleen Barnard

Families have changed since the generation of the nuclear family. The idea of the traditional four and a half member family, which included a father, mother, son, daughter, and dog is slowly dwindling away. Some reasons for the huge change are new stages of life and responses to medicine, technology, and nutrition. Since all of these have come around people are living much longer. People are also making more money, and since you have the extra money to spend on medicine and other essentials, they give you the chance to expand your survival. One example of this would be pre-mature babies. We have so much technology to ensure their survival, even when infants’ lungs have not fully developed to breathe on their own. Years ago if a pre-mature birth occurred, the baby almost had a lower chance of survival and was almost guaranteed to die. Another example if the new stages in life would be that as the mortality rate goes down, the divorce rate goes up. The reason being is now you have a longer life so you spending more time with your spouse. Now your more likely to have problems because you marriage length increases.

Surprisingly to some, now we have stronger ties with our children. Sociologists have observed that middle class adults look at children differently now than in previous generations. We have different expectations of them. We try to let them enjoy childhood and experience adolescence to the fullest — shielded from the burdens of the adult world. Another stage that is more recent is we are almost all expected to become grandparents. You’re older, you live longer. Who’s going to take care of you? Most likely your kids or maybe even your grandchildren will bear the responsibility. People are also ill prepared for death now — it doesn’t happen as often (unexpectedly) due to longer life expectancy. All the new medicine is making death not such a harsh reality.

One of the main and most interesting new stages of life is how we look at children. Years ago, as soon as children were old enough they were put to work. There was unfair widespread child labor in the United States. Children were sometimes born to help work and keep businesses going. Well, times have changed we look at childhood as special now. We think of children as innocent and we should shield them from adulthood. Most middle class children are now carefree and have no responsibility aside from school and enrichment activities. Their ambition is to have fun and enjoy leisure time like play games and go on vacation. As a child you should have the least amount of responsibility, our culture seems to imply.

Adolescence is also a fairly new concept,. It’s a time where you experience puberty, education, and you may even rebel. You start to create your own opinion. Young Adulthood is a new idea as well. It’s considered to be a transition period, you may go to college and be on your own, but you still have no real responsibility. Then you reach adulthood and have real responsibilities like a job and a family. Now that we are living longer, men have a mid life crisis, which is a new phase as well. Men may buy a nice new sports car to make them feel young. Women may have plastic surgery. Lastly, we also look at our elderly differently. Our society overlooks the elderly and many think of them as a financial burden. Even the media portrays them negatively. I think these things needs to change. The elderly should be appreciated and they should share their wisdom with our youth.

All these new ideas have changed the idea of the family. All of these concepts re-assure how our society works. New stages of life are developing, so people form a family differently.

mwalsh @ April 15, 2008