Topic; Non-traditional families are becoming the new normal in the United States. Discuss and compare the traditional family and non-traditional families.
Family pattern has changed greatly due to industrialization and urbanization since the nineteenth century. Another factor which has been involved in those changes is the growing intervention of the state, by legislative action, in the domestic affairs of the family. As a result of these trends, the modern “nuclear” family has been substituted for the traditional extended family. The increase of values such as individualism and egalitarianism has influenced the patterns of modern family. Although traditional and modern families share similarities in terms of constitutional concept and milieu of love and care, they have several differences in term of family size and gender roles.
Traditional and modern families share a lot of similarities. As the traditional family was, modern family is still an institutional component of western societies. In other words, both are a “unit structure” or “basic organism” of which society is composed. As an institution, traditional and modern families similarly have to complete functions such as procreation and socialization of children. For example, even though the modern family has decreased in size, it is still the common environment where children are born; receive a moral education, where their tendencies are disciplined and where their aspirations are encouraged. Therefore, to reassure the pessimist sociologist of the early twentieth century, family evolution has not lead to deinstitutionalization. Another similarity between traditional and modern families is that both are a favorable milieu for love and care. As it was in the traditional family there is in the modern family a formidable tie between husband and wife, which springs from an elective affinity and symbolizes