The Changing Face of the American Family

American families have had a massive changed during the past years. Changes in their lifestyle, status behaviors, beliefs, perceptions are some of the changes that American families had. Nowadays, you can find different types of families with other norms, values, ideas, in comparison with the ones from the past. Families are more open-minded and informal than before. The transformation that American families have gone is so huge that someone from the past would be impressed about how everything has changed. The contribution that women have make today and how they have fight for their rights, divorces or not even getting married, in the present time it is not a problem having kids at an early ages, are some of the main variations that the American society have decided to face. Many Americans feel that the change is good, but remember that they are also many “old” people who think that their culture has been ruined.

As it was mentioned before, one of the biggest changes that the American families have had is women´s lifestyle. Working in the house doing house chores and taking care of their families was the only obligation women had around 35 years ago. In the present, you may see that situation in some places, now the majority of the families are otherwise. The American families have adapted to receive incomes from both parts, mom and dad, women contribute equally as men to the house needs.

Another change or aspect that American live now is that couples are not getting married. We all know that marriage is very important for any human being, but nowadays it is not as essential as before. Families now are made of a teenage mom, a young dad (not married) and one or two kids, you can asked them and they will say not to nothing related to marriage. Families do not urge anymore to get married. That’s another of the dramatic modifications that Americans live: Cohabitation. Cohabitation is when two people form a family without getting married, when families are smaller (2 or 3 people) and when they only care about factors such as financial matter or time. On the other hand, divorces are also common in this new lifestyle, the rate of single-parent families has grown.

Accepting, permitting and tolerating homosexual relationships is another of the diverse changes that the American families have established. Lesbian and gay couples are not something ignorable. Accepting homosexuality is not a taboo anymore, a lot a people have the bravery to admit they are homosexual. They are no longer afraid of breaking the traditional expectations or scared of being judged, now they are living their lives freely. There are a large number of homosexual people, and they even have families but they are not evaluated or taken into consideration as if they were families.

Changes among the American families are unusual in the perception that we had about life and the way it should be lived. History shows that the concept of family has changed during the time, it is in constant transformation. Families in modern times, have suffered as no other group of individuals, broad, deep and faster transformations of society and culture will degrade the meaning of everything. A lot of families live in a situation of being faithful to their values, other ones do not know about what it is to have a real, concrete and happy family. In addition, through diverse forms, there is a constant attack to families without realizing the large list of serious effects that they cause in society, in everyday life and the deterioration of the quality of life in general. Remember that this situation comes from a long time ago, when divorce was strongly promoted and subsequently the wave of feminists, making even more hard familiar life. Family, considered as the basic unit of society, nowadays under a sequence of constant changes, changes that have always existed, but now they are presented in a faster and more practical way.