family in modern society essay

Essay on Family in Modern Society

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100 Words Essay on Family in Modern Society

The role of family.

Family is the cornerstone of society, providing love, support, and guidance. In modern society, families take on various forms, reflecting diversity and progress.

Changing Family Structures

Traditional nuclear families are evolving. Now, we see single-parent, blended, and same-sex parent families. These changes reflect societal acceptance and adaptability.

Family and Society

Families shape societal norms and values. They teach us about relationships, responsibility, and empathy. Thus, families play a crucial role in molding future citizens.

Challenges Faced by Families

Modern families face issues like work-life balance, digital distractions, and societal pressures. Overcoming these challenges strengthens family bonds.

Despite changes and challenges, the importance of family in modern society remains undiminished. It continues to be our primary source of love, care, and support.

250 Words Essay on Family in Modern Society

Introduction.

Family, a fundamental social unit, has been the cornerstone of society since time immemorial. In modern society, however, the concept of family has evolved significantly, reflecting socio-economic changes and progressive values.

The Evolution of Family Structure

Historically, the conventional family structure was a patriarchal one, with a clear division of roles. Today, we see a shift towards egalitarian families. The rise of dual-income families, single-parent families, and diverse family structures, such as LGBTQ+ families, signifies this change.

Role of Technology

Technology has redefined familial bonds. Digital platforms enable families separated by geographical boundaries to maintain connections. Yet, concerns regarding technology-induced isolation within families persist.

The Impact of Modern Lifestyles

Modern lifestyles have imposed challenges on families. The increased pace of life, emphasis on individual achievements, and economic pressures often lead to stress and reduced family time. However, this has also fostered a culture of resilience and adaptability among families.

Family in modern society is a dynamic entity, constantly adapting to socio-cultural changes. Despite the challenges posed by modernity, the essence of family as a supportive, loving unit perseveres. As society continues to evolve, so will the concept of family, reflecting the diversity and complexity of human relationships.

500 Words Essay on Family in Modern Society

Family, as a fundamental social institution, has undergone significant changes in modern society. Its role, structure, and functions have evolved in response to the socio-economic and cultural transformations of the 21st century. This essay explores the dynamics of family in modern society, focusing on its changing structure, the challenges it faces, and its enduring significance.

Changing Structure of Family

The traditional nuclear family, once the cornerstone of societal structure, has been replaced by a variety of family forms. Single-parent households, same-sex families, cohabiting couples, and multi-generational households are now commonplace. This shift reflects societal changes such as the acceptance of diverse sexual orientations, the rise in divorce rates, and economic factors that encourage multi-generational living. Despite these changes, the family remains a crucial unit for socialization, providing emotional support and shaping individual identity.

Challenges to the Family Institution

Modern society presents numerous challenges to the family. Globalization and technological advancements have led to increased mobility and communication, disrupting traditional family bonds. The rise of individualism and the shift towards a more career-oriented society have also impacted the time and energy devoted to family life. Additionally, economic pressures, such as the need for dual incomes, have further strained familial relationships.

The Role of Family in Social Stability

Despite these challenges, the family continues to play a vital role in maintaining social stability. It serves as the primary institution for the socialization of children, instilling societal norms, values, and cultural heritage. The family also provides an essential support network, offering emotional, financial, and health-related assistance to its members. Furthermore, it contributes to societal cohesion by forging inter-familial and community relationships.

Adapting to Modern Society

In response to modern societal changes, families have shown remarkable adaptability. Flexible work arrangements, for instance, have allowed parents to balance their professional and familial responsibilities. Technology, while often seen as a disruptor, has also enabled families to stay connected across geographical distances. Moreover, the acceptance of diverse family structures has allowed for the redefinition of family roles, contributing to a more inclusive society.

In conclusion, the family in modern society is a dynamic institution, continually evolving and adapting to societal changes. Despite facing numerous challenges, it remains a fundamental unit of society, providing socialization, support, and stability. As society continues to evolve, so too will the concept of family, reflecting the diverse and complex nature of modern life. Understanding these changes is crucial for shaping social policies that support families in their myriad forms.

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What Is The Importance Of Family In Modern Society?

With advancements in technology, changing cultural norms, new priorities, and advanced forms of communication fueled by the internet, you may wonder how family holds up in modern society. The concept of family is likely to continue to be essential for people from all walks of life, despite changing beliefs and customs. Research often demonstrates the importance of family for numerous areas of well-being . No matter how much life changes and the concept of family evolves, it may continue to benefit human health and wellness by offering a sense of belonging and support. If you’re experiencing family-related challenges, it can be helpful to speak to an objective person, such as a licensed therapist, for insight and guidance.

Its definition may evolve, but family may remain essential

The traditional definition of a "nuclear family" typically entailed one man and one woman who were married and had biological children. However, today’s families can be more inclusive and may look different than family stereotypes. Additionally, research usually labels many different types of families.

Benefits of a healthy family

As modern life can add pressure and stress, a healthy family dynamic can have multiple benefits, regardless of whether it's a biological family, adoptive family, or chosen family.

Helps you meet your basic needs

Many years ago, Abraham Maslow created the Hierarchy of Needs . At the bottom of this hierarchy are usually basic needs, including water, food, rest, and health. A family may provide these necessities, which can serve as building blocks for other needs.

Research also suggests that social connection can be considered a need, as it usually improves physical and mental health. Family may offer social connection in abundance.

Allows you to belong to something

A sense of belonging can come from the family, group, or community we belong to, and it can contribute to our emotional well-being by allowing us to feel connected socially.

Offers a built-in support system

Research shows that the support system families provide can have a profound impact throughout different stages of life. Difficult times are often inevitable, but a family may provide a sense of stability and connection that can make it easier to get through them.

Contributes to health

Children might experience a healthy lifestyle when they live in a healthy family. They may eat healthy meals, enjoy time outdoors, and get prompt medical attention when needed.

Health benefits can exist for parents in families, too. Research has shown that people with children in their families tend to live longer , even after the children have grown up and moved away.

Provides support when someone is ill

Facing medical problems alone can be challenging. A family may help alleviate this difficulty by offering support and assistance as you heal.

Offers community benefits

A strong family structure may reduce the likelihood of delinquency and crime. This can mean that the family unit may substantially impact an individual and their community.

Educates children

One way many parents contribute to society is by educating their children. Parents and caregivers often begin teaching children at a very young age. They may help them learn to walk and teach them new words as they develop their vocabulary and language skills. They also may teach them manners and take advantage of learning opportunities in everyday life.

Many parents also encourage scholarship opportunities, ethical behavior, and social skills that can benefit children throughout adolescence and into adulthood.

All families may struggle sometimes

Even though families can have benefits, they may face challenges at times. When it comes to overcoming the difficulties of family life, you might find support in your friends. You can also seek the help of a professional with training and experience in family dynamics.

Seeking help

Talking to a therapist may help you explore your feelings about family and learn to express those feelings openly. You may also learn to understand the family influences that shaped your personality.

Benefits of online therapy

Online therapy can be an easy and convenient way to receive insight and guidance from a licensed therapist. It can be helpful to vent to an objective person during therapy sessions, and you can attend these sessions from any location with an internet connection. With an online therapy platform, you can even seek out a therapist who specializes in helping their clients navigate family-related concerns.

Effectiveness of online therapy

Although more research may be needed regarding the efficacy of individual online therapy for addressing family-related challenges, a growing body of evidence generally supports the idea that online therapy can be just as effective as face-to-face therapy.

What is the importance of family in our life?

Family can often serve as a cornerstone of our emotional support system, playing a role in each individual's emotional health. This foundational element often sets the stage for future relationships and helps build self-esteem.

What is the importance of family to a person?

Family can provide unconditional love and emotional support, which are key factors in building an individual's self-esteem. These early relationships set the groundwork for personal relationships and adult life.

What are 10 important aspects of family in your life?

Emotional support: Family offers a safety net for emotional well-being.
Unconditional love: The love from family is often lifelong and uncompromising.
Moral and ethical guidance: Family serves as our first role model, teaching us social skills and crucial role values.
Financial support: Financial stability often starts with family support.
Educational support: Family’s involvement can positively impact academic performance.
Healthy families: A supportive family environment can contribute to healthy relationships.
Family traditions and history: Knowing your family history adds a sense of belonging.
Role models: Family provides the first role models in a child’s life.
Open communication: Communication within the family contributes to emotional health and strong personal relationships.
Sense of belonging: Family gatherings, such as family meals, add to the sense of community.

Why are family relationships among the most important we will ever have?

Family relationships can lay the foundation for how we manage future relationships. The skills learned in the family context are applied to personal relationships in adult life, playing an important role in our overall emotional well-being.

What is the most important value in your relationship as a family?

Important values, like unconditional love and open communication, can form the bedrock on which the emotional health of each individual in the family is built. These values often lead to a unified family, increasing senses of security, stability and support.

What is important in life, family or love?

Family often provides the first experience of unconditional love, and this foundational emotional support sets the tone for what we seek in other personal relationships throughout adult life.

Is having a family the most important thing?

Having a family often offers emotional support and unconditional love, serving as an individual’s foundational support system and playing a crucial role in emotional health. However, many aspects of life are important, and family is not necessarily more important than other relationships in your life.

Why is family more important than happiness?

Family often serves as a significant source of happiness, fulfilling our needs for emotional support and unconditional love.

What is the importance of family unity?

Family unity offers a conducive environment for emotional health and well-being. This unity is often fostered through open communication during family meals, contributing to each individual's ability to maintain relationships.

What brings unity to the family?

Common values and open communication are key factors that bring family unity. Family meals and traditions also play a part, serving as regular platforms for them to express emotional support and unconditional love.

What Is Family Support? Understanding Services Available To You Medically reviewed by Laura Angers Maddox , NCC, LPC
Is Sibling Rivalry Normal? How Conflict Between Siblings Works Medically reviewed by Elizabeth Erban , LMFT, IMH-E
Relationships and Relations

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15.2 Sociological Perspectives on the Family

Learning objective.

Summarize understandings of the family as presented by functional, conflict, and social interactionist theories.

Sociological views on today’s families generally fall into the functional, conflict, and social interactionist approaches introduced earlier in this book. Let’s review these views, which are summarized in Table 15.1 “Theory Snapshot” .

Table 15.1 Theory Snapshot

Social Functions of the Family

Recall that the functional perspective emphasizes that social institutions perform several important functions to help preserve social stability and otherwise keep a society working. A functional understanding of the family thus stresses the ways in which the family as a social institution helps make society possible. As such, the family performs several important functions.

First, the family is the primary unit for socializing children . As previous chapters indicated, no society is possible without adequate socialization of its young. In most societies, the family is the major unit in which socialization happens. Parents, siblings, and, if the family is extended rather than nuclear, other relatives all help socialize children from the time they are born.

One of the most important functions of the family is the socialization of children. In most societies the family is the major unit through which socialization occurs.

Colleen Kelly – Kids Playing Monopoly Chicago – CC BY 2.0.

Second, the family is ideally a major source of practical and emotional support for its members. It provides them food, clothing, shelter, and other essentials, and it also provides them love, comfort, help in times of emotional distress, and other types of intangible support that we all need.

Third, the family helps regulate sexual activity and sexual reproduction . All societies have norms governing with whom and how often a person should have sex. The family is the major unit for teaching these norms and the major unit through which sexual reproduction occurs. One reason for this is to ensure that infants have adequate emotional and practical care when they are born. The incest taboo that most societies have, which prohibits sex between certain relatives, helps minimize conflict within the family if sex occurred among its members and to establish social ties among different families and thus among society as a whole.

Fourth, the family provides its members with a social identity . Children are born into their parents’ social class, race and ethnicity, religion, and so forth. As we have seen in earlier chapters, social identity is important for our life chances. Some children have advantages throughout life because of the social identity they acquire from their parents, while others face many obstacles because the social class or race/ethnicity into which they are born is at the bottom of the social hierarchy.

Beyond discussing the family’s functions, the functional perspective on the family maintains that sudden or far-reaching changes in conventional family structure and processes threaten the family’s stability and thus that of society. For example, most sociology and marriage-and-family textbooks during the 1950s maintained that the male breadwinner–female homemaker nuclear family was the best arrangement for children, as it provided for a family’s economic and child-rearing needs. Any shift in this arrangement, they warned, would harm children and by extension the family as a social institution and even society itself. Textbooks no longer contain this warning, but many conservative observers continue to worry about the impact on children of working mothers and one-parent families. We return to their concerns shortly.

The Family and Conflict

Conflict theorists agree that the family serves the important functions just listed, but they also point to problems within the family that the functional perspective minimizes or overlooks altogether.

First, the family as a social institution contributes to social inequality in several ways. The social identity it gives to its children does affect their life chances, but it also reinforces a society’s system of stratification. Because families pass along their wealth to their children, and because families differ greatly in the amount of wealth they have, the family helps reinforce existing inequality. As it developed through the centuries, and especially during industrialization, the family also became more and more of a patriarchal unit (see earlier discussion), helping to ensure men’s status at the top of the social hierarchy.

Second, the family can also be a source of conflict for its own members. Although the functional perspective assumes the family provides its members emotional comfort and support, many families do just the opposite and are far from the harmonious, happy groups depicted in the 1950s television shows. Instead, and as the news story that began this chapter tragically illustrated, they argue, shout, and use emotional cruelty and physical violence. We return to family violence later in this chapter.

Families and Social Interaction

Social interactionist perspectives on the family examine how family members and intimate couples interact on a daily basis and arrive at shared understandings of their situations. Studies grounded in social interactionism give us a keen understanding of how and why families operate the way they do.

Some studies, for example, focus on how husbands and wives communicate and the degree to which they communicate successfully (Tannen, 2001). A classic study by Mirra Komarovsky (1964) found that wives in blue-collar marriages liked to talk with their husbands about problems they were having, while husbands tended to be quiet when problems occurred. Such gender differences seem less common in middle-class families, where men are better educated and more emotionally expressive than their working-class counterparts. Another classic study by Lillian Rubin (1976) found that wives in middle-class families say that ideal husbands are ones who communicate well and share their feelings, while wives in working-class families are more apt to say that ideal husbands are ones who do not drink too much and who go to work every day.

Other studies explore the role played by romantic love in courtship and marriage. Romantic love , the feeling of deep emotional and sexual passion for someone, is the basis for many American marriages and dating relationships, but it is actually uncommon in many parts of the contemporary world today and in many of the societies anthropologists and historians have studied. In these societies, marriages are arranged by parents and other kin for economic reasons or to build alliances, and young people are simply expected to marry whoever is chosen for them. This is the situation today in parts of India, Pakistan, and other developing nations and was the norm for much of the Western world until the late 18th and early 19th centuries (Lystra, 1989).

Key Takeaways

The family ideally serves several functions for society. It socializes children, provides practical and emotional support for its members, regulates sexual reproduction, and provides its members with a social identity.
Reflecting conflict theory’s emphases, the family may also produce several problems. In particular, it may contribute for several reasons to social inequality, and it may subject its members to violence, arguments, and other forms of conflict.
Social interactionist understandings of the family emphasize how family members interact on a daily basis. In this regard, several studies find that husbands and wives communicate differently in certain ways that sometimes impede effective communication.

For Your Review

As you think how best to understand the family, do you favor the views and assumptions of functional theory, conflict theory, or social interactionist theory? Explain your answer.
Do you think the family continues to serve the function of regulating sexual behavior and sexual reproduction? Why or why not?

Komarovsky, M. (1964). Blue-collar marriage . New York, NY: Random House.

Lystra, K. (1989). Searching the heart: Women, men, and romantic love in nineteenth-century America . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Rubin, L. B. (1976). Worlds of pain: Life in the working-class family . New York, NY: Basic Books.

Tannen, D. (2001). You just don’t understand: Women and men in conversation . New York, NY: Quill.

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11.3: Sociological Perspectives on the Family

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Learning Objectives

Summarize understandings of the family as presented by functional, conflict, and social interactionist theories.

Table 11.1 Theory Snapshot

Social Functions of the Family

Figure 11.3

One of the most important functions of the family is the socialization of children. In most societies the family is the major unit through which socialization occurs.

Third, the family helps regulate sexual activity and sexual reproduction . All societies have norms governing with whom and how often a person should have sex. The family is the major unit for teaching these norms and the major unit through which sexual reproduction occurs. One reason for this is to ensure that infants have adequate emotional and practical care when they are born. The incest taboo that most societies have, which prohibits sex between certain relatives, helps to minimize conflict within the family if sex occurred among its members and to establish social ties among different families and thus among society as a whole.

Fourth, the family provides its members with a social identity . Children are born into their parents’ social class, race and ethnicity, religion, and so forth. As we have seen in earlier chapters, social identity is important for our life chances. Some children have advantages throughout life because of the social identity they acquire from their parents, while others face many obstacles because the social class or race and ethnicity into which they are born is at the bottom of the social hierarchy.

The Family and Conflict

Families and Social Interaction

Some studies, for example, focus on how husbands and wives communicate and the degree to which they communicate successfully (Tannen, 2001).Tannen, D. (2001). You just don’t understand: Women and men in conversation . New York, NY: Quill. A classic study by Mirra Komarovsky (1964)Komarovsky, M. (1964). Blue-collar marriage . New York, NY: Random House. found that wives in blue-collar marriages liked to talk with their husbands about problems they were having, while husbands tended to be quiet when problems occurred. Such gender differences seem less common in middle-class families, where men are better educated and more emotionally expressive than their working-class counterparts. Another classic study by Lillian Rubin (1976)Rubin, L. B. (1976). Worlds of pain: Life in the working-class family . New York, NY: Basic Books. found that wives in middle-class families say that ideal husbands are ones who communicate well and share their feelings, while wives in working-class families are more apt to say that ideal husbands are ones who do not drink too much and who go to work every day.

The family ideally serves several functions for society. It socializes children, provides practical and emotional support for its members, regulates sexual reproduction, and provides its members with a social identity.
Reflecting conflict theory’s emphases, the family may also produce several problems. In particular, it may contribute for several reasons to social inequality, and it may subject its members to violence, arguments, and other forms of conflict.
Social interactionist understandings of the family emphasize how family members interact on a daily basis. In this regard, several studies find that husbands and wives communicate differently in certain ways that sometimes impede effective communication.

For Your Review

As you think how best to understand the family, do you favor the views and assumptions of functional theory, conflict theory, or social interactionist theory? Explain your answer.
Do you think the family continues to serve the function of regulating sexual behavior and sexual reproduction? Why or why not?

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Article contents

Family, culture, and communication.

V. Santiago Arias V. Santiago Arias College of Media and Communication, Texas Tech University
and Narissra Maria Punyanunt-Carter Narissra Maria Punyanunt-Carter College of Media and Communication, Texas Tech University
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.504
Published online: 22 August 2017

Through the years, the concept of family has been studied by family therapists, psychology scholars, and sociologists with a diverse theoretical framework, such as family communication patterns (FCP) theory, dyadic power theory, conflict, and family systems theory. Among these theories, there are two main commonalities throughout its findings: the interparental relationship is the core interaction in the familial system because the quality of their communication or coparenting significantly affects the enactment of the caregiver role while managing conflicts, which are not the exception in the familial setting. Coparenting is understood in its broader sense to avoid an extensive discussion of all type of families in our society. Second, while including the main goal of parenting, which is the socialization of values, this process intrinsically suggests cultural assimilation as the main cultural approach rather than intergroup theory, because intercultural marriages need to decide which values are considered the best to be socialized. In order to do so, examples from the Thai culture and Hispanic and Latino cultures served to show cultural assimilation as an important mediator of coparenting communication patterns, which subsequently affect other subsystems that influence individuals’ identity and self-esteem development in the long run. Finally, future directions suggest that the need for incorporating a nonhegemonic one-way definition of cultural assimilation allows immigration status to be brought into the discussion of family communication issues in the context of one of the most diverse countries in the world.

parental communication
dyadic power
family communication systems
cultural assimilation

Introduction

Family is the fundamental structure of every society because, among other functions, this social institution provides individuals, from birth until adulthood, membership and sense of belonging, economic support, nurturance, education, and socialization (Canary & Canary, 2013 ). As a consequence, the strut of its social role consists of operating as a system in a manner that would benefit all members of a family while achieving what is considered best, where decisions tend to be coherent, at least according to the norms and roles assumed by family members within the system (Galvin, Bylund, & Brommel, 2004 ). Notwithstanding, the concept of family can be interpreted differently by individual perceptions to an array of cultural backgrounds, and cultures vary in their values, behaviors, and ideas.

The difficulty of conceptualizing this social institution suggests that family is a culture-bound phenomenon (Bales & Parsons, 2014 ). In essence, culture represents how people view themselves as part of a unique social collective and the ensuing communication interactions (Olaniran & Roach, 1994 ); subsequently, culture provides norms for behavior having a tremendous impact on those family members’ roles and power dynamics mirrored in its communication interactions (Johnson, Radesky, & Zuckerman, 2013 ). Thus, culture serves as one of the main macroframeworks for individuals to interpret and enact those prescriptions, such as inheritance; descent rules (e.g., bilateral, as in the United States, or patrilineal); marriage customs, such as ideal monogamy and divorce; and beliefs about sexuality, gender, and patterns of household formation, such as structure of authority and power (Weisner, 2014 ). For these reasons, “every family is both a unique microcosm and a product of a larger cultural context” (Johnson et al., 2013 , p. 632), and the analysis of family communication must include culture in order to elucidate effective communication strategies to solve familial conflicts.

In addition, to analyze familial communication patterns, it is important to address the most influential interaction with regard to power dynamics that determine the overall quality of family functioning. In this sense, within the range of family theories, parenting function is the core relationship in terms of power dynamics. Parenting refers to all efforts and decisions made by parents individually to guide their children’s behavior. This is a pivotal function, but the quality of communication among people who perform parenting is fundamental because their internal communication patterns will either support or undermine each caregiver’s parenting attempts, individually having a substantial influence on all members’ psychological and physical well-being (Schrodt & Shimkowski, 2013 ). Subsequently, parenting goes along with communication because to execute all parenting efforts, there must be a mutual agreement among at least two individuals to conjointly take care of the child’s fostering (Van Egeren & Hawkins, 2004 ). Consequently, coparenting serves as a crucial predictor of the overall family atmosphere and interactions, and it deserves special attention while analyzing family communication issues.

Through the years, family has been studied by family therapists, psychology scholars, and sociologists, but interaction behaviors define the interpersonal relationship, roles, and power within the family as a system (Rogers, 2006 ). Consequently, family scholarship relies on a wide range of theories developed within the communication field and in areas of the social sciences (Galvin, Braithwaite, & Bylund, 2015 ) because analysis of communication patterns in the familial context offers more ecological validity that individuals’ self-report measures. As many types of interactions may happen within a family, there are many relevant venues (i.e., theories) for scholarly analysis on this subject, which will be discussed later in this article in the “ Family: Theoretical Perspectives ” section. To avoid the risk of cultural relativeness while defining family, this article characterizes family as “a long-term group of two or more people related through biological, legal, or equivalent ties and who enact those ties through ongoing interactions providing instrumental and/or emotional support” (Canary & Canary, 2013 , p. 5).

Therefore, the purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the most relevant theories in family communication to identify frustrations and limitations with internal communication. Second, as a case in point, the United States welcomes more than 50 million noncitizens as temporary visitors and admits approximately 1 million immigrants to live as lawful residents yearly (Fullerton, 2014 ), this demographic pattern means that nearly one-third of the population (102 million) comes from different cultural backgrounds, and therefore, the present review will incorporate culture as an important mediator for coparenting, so that future research can be performed to find specific techniques and training practices that are more suitable for cross-cultural contexts.

Family: Theoretical Perspectives

Even though the concept of family can be interpreted individually and differently in different cultures, there are also some commonalities, along with communication processes, specific roles within families, and acceptable habits of interactions with specific family members disregarding cultural differences. This section will provide a brief overview of the conceptualization of family through the family communication patterns (FCP) theory, dyadic power theory, conflict, and family systems theory, with a special focus on the interparental relationship.

Family Communication Patterns Theory

One of the most relevant approaches to address the myriad of communication issues within families is the family communication patterns (FCP) theory. Originally developed by McLeod and Chaffee ( 1973 ), this theory aims to understand families’ tendencies to create stable and predictable communication patterns in terms of both relational cognition and interpersonal behavior (Braithwaite & Baxter, 2005 ). Specifically, this theory focuses on the unique and amalgamated associations derived from interparental communication and its impact on parenting quality to determine FCPs and the remaining interactions (Young & Schrodt, 2016 ).

To illustrate FCP’s focus on parental communication, Schrodt, Witt, and Shimkowski ( 2014 ) conducted a meta-analysis of 74 studies (N = 14,255) to examine the associations between the demand/withdraw family communication patterns of interaction, and the subsequent individual, relational, and communicative outcomes. The cumulative evidence suggests that wife demand/husband withdraw and husband demand/wife withdraw show similar moderate correlations with communicative and psychological well-being outcomes, and even higher when both patterns are taken together (at the relational level). This is important because one of the main tenets of FCP is that familial relationships are drawn on the pursuit of coorientation among members. Coorientation refers to the cognitive process of two or more individuals focusing on and assessing the same object in the same material and social context, which leads to a number of cognitions as the number of people involved, which results in different levels of agreement, accuracy, and congruence (for a review, see Fitzpatrick & Koerner, 2005 ); for example, in dyads that are aware of their shared focus, two different cognitions of the same issue will result.

Hereafter, the way in which these cognitions are socialized through power dynamics determined socially and culturally by roles constitutes specific interdependent communication patterns among family members. For example, Koerner and Fitzpatrick ( 2006 ) provide a taxonomy of family types on the basis of coorientation and its impact on communication pattern in terms of the degree of conformity in those conversational tendencies. To wit, consensual families mostly agree for the sake of the hierarchy within a given family and to explore new points of view; pluralistic families allow members to participate equally in conversations and there is no pressure to control or make children’s decisions; protective families maintain the hierarchy by making decisions for the sake of achieving common family goals; and laissez-faire families, which are low in conversation and conformity orientation, allow family members to not get deeply involved in the family.

The analysis of family communication patterns is quintessential for family communication scholarly work because it influences forming an individual’s self concept in the long run. As a case in point, Young and Schrodt ( 2016 ) surveyed 181 young adults from intact families, where conditional and interaction effects between communication patterns and conformity orientation were observed as the main predictors of future romantic partners. Moreover, this study concluded that FCPs and interparental confirmation are substantial indicators of self-to-partner confirmation, after controlling for reciprocity of confirmation within the romantic relationship. As a consequence, FCP influences children’s and young adults’ perceptions of romantic behavior (e.g., Fowler, Pearson, & Beck, 2010 ); the quality of communication behavior, such as the degree of acceptation of verbal aggression in romantic dyads (e.g., Aloia & Solomon, 2013 ); gender roles; and conflict styles (e.g., Taylor & Segrin, 2010 ), and parental modeling (e.g., Young & Schrodt, 2016 ).

This suggests three important observations. First, family is a very complex interpersonal context, in which communication processes, specific roles within families, and acceptable habits of interactions with specific family members interact as subsystems (see Galvin et al., 2004 ; Schrodt & Shimkowski, 2013 ). Second, among those subsystems, the core interaction is the individuals who hold parenting roles (i.e., intact and post divorced families); the couple (disregarding particular sexual orientations), and, parenting roles have a reciprocal relationship over time (Le, McDaniel, Leavitt, & Feinberg, 2016 ). Communication between parenting partners is crucial for the development of their entire family; for example, Schrodt and Shimkowski ( 2013 ) conducted a survey with 493 young adult children from intact (N = 364) and divorced families (N = 129) about perceptions of interparental conflict that involves triangulation (the impression of being in the “middle” and feeling forced to display loyalty to one of the parents). Results suggest that supportive coparental communication positively predicts relational satisfaction with mothers and fathers, as well as mental health; on the other hand, antagonist and hostile coparental communication predicted negative marital satisfaction.

Consequently, “partners’ communication with one another will have a positive effect on their overall view of their marriage, . . . and directly result[ing in] their views of marital satisfaction” (Knapp & Daly, 2002 , p. 643). Le et al. ( 2016 ) conducted a longitudinal study to evaluate the reciprocal relationship between marital interaction and coparenting from the perspective of both parents in terms of support or undermining across the transition to parenthood from a dyadic perspective; 164 cohabiting heterosexual couples expecting their first child were analyzed from pregnancy until 36 months after birth. Both parents’ interdependence was examined in terms of three variables: gender difference analysis, stability over time in marriage and coparenting, and reciprocal associations between relationship quality and coparenting support or undermining. The findings suggest a long-term reciprocal association between relationship quality and coparenting support or undermining in heterosexual families; the quality of marriage relationship during prenatal stage is highly influential in coparenting after birth for both men and women; but, coparenting is connected to romantic relationship quality only for women.

Moreover, the positive association between coparenting and the parents’ relationship relates to the spillover hypothesis, which posits that the positive or negative factors in the parental subsystem are significantly associated with higher or lower marital satisfaction in the spousal subsystem, respectively. Ergo, overall parenting performance is substantially affected by the quality of marital communication patterns.

Dyadic Power

In addition, after analyzing the impact of marital interaction quality in families on marital satisfaction and future parental modeling, it is worth noting that marital satisfaction and coparenting are importantly mediated by power dynamics within the couple (Halstead, De Santis, & Williams, 2016 ), and even mediates marital commitment (e.g., Lennon, Stewart, & Ledermann, 2013 ). If the quality of interpersonal relationship between those individuals who hold parenting roles determines coparenting quality as well, then the reason for this association lies on the fact that virtually all intimate relationships are substantially characterized by power dynamics; when partners perceive more rewards than costs in the relationship, they will be more satisfied and significantly more committed to the relationship (Lennon et al., 2013 ). As a result, the inclusion of power dynamics in the analysis of family issues becomes quintessential.

For the theory of dyadic power, power in its basic sense includes dominance, control, and influence over others, as well as a means to meet survival needs. When power is integrated into dyadic intimate relationships, it generates asymmetries in terms of interdependence between partners due to the quality of alternatives provided by individual characteristics such as socioeconomic status and cultural characteristics such as gender roles. This virtually gives more power to men than women. Power refers to “the feeling derived from the ability to dominate, or control, the behavior, affect, and cognitions of another person[;] in consequence, this concept within the interparental relationship is enacted when one partner who controls resources and limiting the behavioral options of the other partner” (Lennon et al., 2013 , p. 97). Ergo, this theory examines power in terms of interdependence between members of the relationship: the partner who is more dependent on the other has less power in the relationship, which, of course, directly impact parenting decisions.

As a case in point, Worley and Samp ( 2016 ) examined the balance of decision-making power in the relationship, complaint avoidance, and complaint-related appraisals in 175 heterosexual couples. Findings suggest that decision-making power has a curvilinear association, in which individuals engaged in the least complaint avoidance when they were relatively equal to their partners in terms of power. In other words, perceptions of one another’s power potentially encourage communication efficacy in the interparental couple.

The analysis of power in intimate relationships, and, to be specific, between parents is crucial because it not only relates to marital satisfaction and commitment, but it also it affects parents’ dyadic coping for children. In fact, Zemp, Bodenmann, Backes, Sutter-Stickel, and Revenson ( 2016 ) investigated parents’ dyadic coping as a predictor of children’s internalizing symptoms, externalizing symptoms, and prosocial behavior in three independent studies. When there is a positive relationship among all three factors, the results indicated that the strongest correlation was the first one. Again, the quality of the marital and parental relationships has the strongest influence on children’s coping skills and future well-being.

From the overview of the two previous theories on family, it is worth addressing two important aspects. First, parenting requires an intensive great deal of hands-on physical care, attention to safety (Mooney-Doyle, Deatrick, & Horowitz, 2014 ), and interpretation of cues, and this is why parenting, from conception to when children enter adulthood, is a tremendous social, cultural, and legally prescribed role directed toward caregiving and endlessly attending to individuals’ social, physical, psychological, emotional, and cognitive development (Johnson et al., 2013 ). And while parents are making decisions about what they consider is best for all family members, power dynamics play a crucial role in marital satisfaction, commitment, parental modeling, and overall interparental communication efficacy in the case of postdivorce families. Therefore, the likelihood of conflict is latent within familial interactions while making decisions; indeed, situations in which family members agree on norms as a consensus is rare (Ritchie & Fitzpatrick, 1990 ).

In addition to the interparental and marital power dynamics that delineates family communication patterns, the familial interaction is distinctive from other types of social relationships in the unequaled role of emotions and communication of affection while family members interact and make decisions for the sake of all members. For example, Ritchie and Fitzpatrick ( 1990 ) provided evidence that fathers tended to perceive that all other family members agree with his decisions or ideas. Even when mothers confronted and disagreed with the fathers about the fathers’ decisions or ideas, the men were more likely to believe that their children agreed with him. When the children were interviewed without their parents, however, the majority of children agreed with the mothers rather than the fathers (Ritchie & Fitzpatrick, 1990 ). Subsequently, conflict is highly present in families; however, in general, the presence of conflict is not problematic per se. Rather, it is the ability to manage and recover from it and that could be problematic (Floyd, 2014 ).

One of the reasons for the role of emotions in interpersonal conflicts is explained by the Emotion-in-Relationships Model (ERM). This model states that feelings of bliss, satisfaction, and relaxation often go unnoticed due to the nature of the emotions, whereas “hot” emotions, such as anger and contempt, come to the forefront when directed at a member of an interpersonal relationship (Fletcher & Clark, 2002 ). This type of psychophysical response usually happens perhaps due to the different biophysical reactive response of the body compared to its reaction to positive ones (Floyd, 2014 ). There are two dimensions that define conflict. Conflict leads to the elicitation of emotions, but sometimes the opposite occurs: emotions lead to conflict. The misunderstanding or misinterpretation of emotions among members of a family can be a source of conflict, as well as a number of other issues, including personality differences, past history, substance abuse, mental or physical health problems, monetary issues, children, intimate partner violence, domestic rape, or maybe just general frustration due to recent events (Sabourin, Infante, & Rudd, 1990 ). In order to have a common understanding of this concept for the familial context in particular, conflict refers to as “any incompatibility that can be expressed by people related through biological, legal, or equivalent ties” (Canary & Canary, 2013 , p. 6). Thus, the concept of conflict goes hand in hand with coparenting.

There is a myriad of everyday family activities in which parents need to decide the best way to do them: sometimes they are minor, such as eating, watching TV, or sleeping schedules; others are more complicated, such as schooling. Certainly, while socializing and making these decisions, parents may agree or not, and these everyday situations may lead to conflict. Whether or not parents live together, it has been shown that “the extent to which children experience their parents as partners or opponents in parenting is related to children’s adjustment and well-being” (Gable & Sharp, 2016 , p. 1), because the ontology of parenting is materialized through socialization of values about every aspect and duty among all family members, especially children, to perpetuate a given society.

As the findings provided in this article show, the study of family communication issues is pivotal because the way in which those issues are solved within families will be copied by children as their values. Values are abstract ideas that delineate behavior toward the evaluation of people and events and vary in terms of importance across individuals, but also among cultures. In other words, their future parenting (i.e., parenting modeling) of children will replicate those same strategies for conflict solving for good or bad, depending on whether parents were supportive between each other. Thus, socialization defines the size and scope of coparenting.

The familial socialization of values encompasses the distinction between parents’ personal execution of those social appraisals and the values that parents want their children to adopt, and both are different things; nonetheless, familial socialization does not take place in only one direction, from parents to children. Benish-Weisman, Levy, and Knafo ( 2013 ) investigated the differentiation process—or, in other words, the distinction between parents’ own personal values and their socialization values and the contribution of children’s values to their parents’ socialization values. In this study, in which 603 Israeli adolescents and their parents participated, the findings suggest that parents differentiate between their personal values and their socialization values, and adolescents’ values have a specific contribution to their parents’ socialization values. As a result, socialization is not a unidirectional process affected by parents alone, it is an outcome of the reciprocal interaction between parents and their adolescent children, and the given importance of a given value is mediated by parents and their culture individually (Johnson et al., 2013 ). However, taking power dynamics into account does not mean that adolescents share the same level of decision-making power in the family; thus, socialization take place in both directions, but mostly from parents to children. Finally, it is worth noticing that the socialization of values in coparenting falls under the cultural umbrella. The next section pays a special attention to the role of culture in family communication.

The Role of Culture in Parenting Socialization of Values

There are many individual perceived realities and behaviors in the familial setting that may lead to conflict among members, but all of them achieve a common interpretation through culture; indeed, “all family conflict processes by broad cultural factors” (Canary & Canary, 2013 , p. 46). Subsequently, the goal of this section is to provide an overview of the perceived realities and behaviors that exist in family relationships with different cultural backgrounds. How should one approach the array of cultural values influencing parental communication patterns?

An interesting way of immersing on the role of culture in family communication patterns and its further socialization of values is explored by Schwartz ( 1992 ). The author developed a value system composed of 10 values operationalized as motivational goals for modern society: (a) self-direction (independence of thought and action); (b) stimulation (excitement, challenge, and novelty); (c) hedonism (pleasure or sensuous gratification); (d) achievement (personal success according to social standards); (e) power (social status, dominance over people and resources); (f) conformity (restraint of actions that may harm others or violate social expectations); (g) tradition (respect and commitment to cultural or religious customs and ideas); (h) benevolence (preserving and enhancing the welfare of people to whom one is close); (i) universalism (understanding, tolerance, and concern for the welfare of all people and nature); and (j) security (safety and stability of society, relationships, and self).

Later, Schwartz and Rubel ( 2005 ) applied this value structure, finding it to be commonly shared among over 65 countries. Nevertheless, these values are enacted in different ways by societies and genders about the extent to which men attribute more relevance to values of power, stimulation, hedonism, achievement, and self-direction, and the opposite was found for benevolence and universalism and less consistently for security. Also, it was found that all sex differences were culturally moderated, suggesting that cultural background needs to be considered in the analysis of coparental communication when socializing those values.

Even though Schwartz’s work was more focused on individuals and societies, it is a powerful model for the analysis of the role of culture on family communication and parenting scholarships. Indeed, Schwartz et al. ( 2013 ) conducted a longitudinal study with a sample of 266 Hispanic adolescents (14 years old) and their parents that looked at measures of acculturation, family functioning, and adolescent conduct problems, substance use, and sexual behavior at five time points. Results suggest that higher levels of acculturation in adolescents were linked to poorer family functioning; however, overall assimilation negatively predicted adolescent cigarette smoking, sexual activity, and unprotected sex. The authors emphasize the role of culture, and acculturation patterns in particular, in understanding the mediating role of family functioning and culture.

Ergo, it is crucial to address the ways in which culture affects family functioning. On top of this idea, Johnson et al. ( 2013 ) observed that Western cultures such as in the United States and European countries are oriented toward autonomy, favoring individual achievement, self-reliance, and self-assertiveness. Thus, coparenting in more autonomous countries will socialize to children the idea that achievement in life is an outcome of independence, resulting in coparenting communication behaviors that favor verbal praise and feedback over physical contact. As opposed to autonomy-oriented cultures, other societies, such as Asian, African, and Latin American countries, emphasize interdependence over autonomy; thus, parenting in these cultures promotes collective achievement, sharing, and collaboration as the core values.

These cultural orientations can be observed in parents’ definitions of school readiness and educational success; for Western parents, examples include skills such as counting, recognizing letters, or independently completing tasks such as coloring pictures, whereas for more interdependent cultures, the development of obedience, respect for authority, and appropriate social skills are the skills that parents are expecting their children to develop to evaluate school readiness. As a matter of fact, Callaghan et al. ( 2011 ) conducted a series of eight studies to evaluate the impact of culture on the social-cognitive skills of one- to three-year-old children in three diverse cultural settings such as Canada, Peru, and India. The results showed that children’s acquisition of specific cognitive skills is moderated by specific learning experiences in a specific context: while Canadian children were understanding the performance of both pretense and pictorial symbols skillfully between 2.5 and 3.0 years of age, on average, Peruvian and Indian children mastered those skills more than a year later. Notwithstanding, this finding does not suggest any kind of cultural superiority; language barriers and limitations derived from translation itself may influence meanings, affecting the results (Sotomayor-Peterson, De Baca, Figueredo, & Smith-Castro, 2013 ). Therefore, in line with the findings of Schutz ( 1970 ), Geertz ( 1973 ), Grusec ( 2002 ), Sotomayor-Peterson et al. ( 2013 ), and Johnson et al. ( 2013 ), cultural values provide important leverage for understanding family functioning in terms of parental decision-making and conflict, which also has a substantial impact on children’s cognitive development.

Subsequently, cultural sensitivity to the analysis of the familial system in this country needs to be specially included because cultural differences are part of the array of familial conflicts that may arise, and children experience real consequences from the quality of these interactions. Therefore, parenting, which is already arduous in itself, and overall family functioning significantly become troublesome when parents with different cultural backgrounds aim to socialize values and perform parenting tasks. The following section provides an account of these cross-cultural families.

Intercultural Families: Adding Cultural Differences to Interparental Communication

For a country such as the United States, with 102 million people from many different cultural backgrounds, the presence of cross-cultural families is on the rise, as is the likelihood of intermarriage between immigrants and natives. With this cultural diversity, the two most prominent groups are Hispanics and Asians, particular cases of which will be discussed next. Besides the fact that parenting itself is a very complex and difficult task, certainly the biggest conflict consists of making decisions about the best way to raise children in terms of their values with regard to which ethnic identity better enacts the values that parents believe their children should embrace. As a result, interracial couples might confront many conflicts and challenges due to cultural differences affecting marital satisfaction and coparenting.

Assimilation , the degree to which a person from a different cultural background has adapted to the culture of the hostage society, is an important phenomenon in intermarriage. Assimilationists observe that children from families in which one of the parents is from the majority group and the other one from the minority do not automatically follow the parent from the majority group (Cohen, 1988 ). Indeed, they follow their mothers more, whichever group she belongs to, because of mothers are more prevalent among people with higher socioeconomic status (Gordon, 1964 ; Portes, 1984 ; Schwartz et al., 2013 ).

In an interracial marriage, the structural and interpersonal barriers inhibiting the interaction between two parents will be reduced significantly if parents develop a noncompeting way to communicate and solve conflicts, which means that both of them might give up part of their culture or ethnic identity to reach consensus. Otherwise, the ethnic identity of children who come from interracial marriages will become more and more obscure (Saenz, Hwang, Aguirre, & Anderson, 1995 ). Surely, parents’ noncompeting cultural communication patterns are fundamental for children’s development of ethnic identity. Biracial children develop feelings of being outsiders, and then parenting becomes crucial to developing their strong self-esteem (Ward, 2006 ). Indeed, Gordon ( 1964 ) found that children from cross-racial or cross-ethnic marriages are at risk of developing psychological problems. In another example, Jognson and Nagoshi ( 1986 ) studied children who come from mixed marriages in Hawaii and found that the problems of cultural identification, conflicting demands in the family, and of being marginal in either culture still exist (Mann & Waldron, 1977 ). It is hard for those mixed-racial children to completely develop the ethnic identity of either the majority group or the minority group.

The question of how children could maintain their minority ethnic identity is essential to the development of ethnic identity as a whole. For children from interracial marriage, the challenge to maintain their minority ethnic identity will be greater than for the majority ethnic identity (Waters, 1990 ; Schwartz et al., 2013 ) because the minority-group spouse is more likely to have greater ethnic consciousness than the majority-group spouse (Ellman, 1987 ). Usually, the majority group is more influential than the minority group on a child’s ethnic identity, but if the minority parent’s ethnicity does not significantly decline, the child’s ethnic identity could still reflect some characteristics of the minority parent. If parents want their children to maintain the minority group’s identity, letting the children learn the language of the minority group might be a good way to achieve this. By learning the language, children form a better understanding of that culture and perhaps are more likely to accept the ethnic identity that the language represents (Xin & Sandel, 2015 ).

In addition to language socialization as a way to contribute to children’s identity in biracial families, Jane and Bochner ( 2009 ) indicated that family rituals and stories could be important in performing and transforming identity. Families create and re-create their identities through various kinds of narrative, in which family stories and rituals are significant. Festivals and rituals are different from culture to culture, and each culture has its own. Therefore, exposing children to the language, rituals, and festivals of another culture also could be helpful to form their ethnic identity, in order to counter problems of self-esteem derived from the feeling of being an outsider.

To conclude this section, the parenting dilemma in intercultural marriages consists of deciding which culture they want their children to be exposed to and what kind of heritage they want to pass to children. The following section will provide two examples of intercultural marriages in the context of American society without implying that there are no other insightful cultures that deserve analysis, but the focus on Asian-American and Hispanics families reflects the available literature (Canary & Canary, 2013 ) and its demographic representativeness in this particular context. In addition, in order to acknowledge that minorities within this larger cultural background deserve more attention due to overemphasis on larger cultures in scholarship, such as Chinese or Japanese cultures, the Thai family will provide insights into understanding the role of culture in parenting and its impact on the remaining familial interaction, putting all theories already discussed in context. Moreover, the Hispanic family will also be taken in account because of its internal pan-ethnicity variety.

An Example of Intercultural Parenting: The Thai Family

The Thai family, also known as Krob Krua, may consist of parents, children, paternal and maternal grandparents, aunts, uncles, grandchildren, in-laws, and any others who share the same home. Thai marriages usually are traditional, in which the male is the authority figure and breadwinner and the wife is in charge of domestic items and the homemaker. It has been noted that Thai mothers tend to be the major caregivers and caretakers in the family rather than fathers (Tulananda, Young, & Roopnarine, 1994 ). On the other hand, it has been shown that Thai mothers also tend to spoil their children with such things as food and comfort; Tulananda et al. ( 1994 ) studied the differences between American and Thai fathers’ involvement with their preschool children and found that American fathers reported being significantly more involved with their children than Thai fathers. Specifically, the fathers differed in the amount of socialization and childcare; Thai fathers reported that they obtained more external support from other family members than American fathers; also, Thai fathers were more likely to obtain support for assisting with daughters than sons.

Furthermore, with regard to the family context, Tulananda and Roopnarine ( 2001 ) noted that over the years, some attention has been focused on the cultural differences among parent-child behaviors and interactions; hereafter, the authors believed that it is important to look at cultural parent-child interactions because that can help others understand children’s capacity to socialize and deal with life’s challenges. As a matter of fact, the authors also noted that Thai families tend to raise their children in accordance with Buddhist beliefs. It is customary for young Thai married couples to live with either the wife’s parents (uxorilocal) or the husband’s parents (virilocal) before living on their own (Tulananda & Roopnarine, 2001 ). The process of developing ethnicity could be complicated. Many factors might influence the process, such as which parent is from the minority culture and the cultural community, as explained in the previous section of this article.

This suggests that there is a difference in the way that Thai and American fathers communicate with their daughters. As a case in point, Punyanunt-Carter ( 2016 ) examined the relationship maintenance behaviors within father-daughter relationships in Thailand and the United States. Participants included 134 American father-daughter dyads and 154 Thai father-daughter dyads. The findings suggest that when quality of communication was included in this relationship, both types of families benefit from this family communication pattern, resulting in better conflict management and advice relationship maintenance behaviors. However, differences were found: American fathers are more likely than American daughters to employ relationship maintenance behaviors; in addition, American fathers are more likely than Thai fathers to use relationship maintenance strategies.

As a consequence, knowing the process of ethnic identity development could provide parents with different ways to form children’s ethnic identity. More specifically, McCann, Ota, Giles, and Caraker ( 2003 ), and Canary and Canary ( 2013 ) noted that Southeast Asian cultures have been overlooked in communication studies research; these countries differ in their religious, political, and philosophical thoughts, with a variety of collectivistic views and religious ideals (e.g., Buddhism, Taoism, Islam), whereas the United States is mainly Christian and consists of individualistic values.

The Case of Hispanic/Latino Families in the United States

There is a need for including Hispanic/Latino families in the United States because of the demographic representativeness and trends of the ethnicity: in 2016 , Hispanics represent nearly 17% of the total U.S. population, becoming the largest minority group. There are more than 53 million Hispanics and Latinos in the United States; in addition, over 93% of young Hispanics and Latinos under the age of 18 hold U.S. citizenship, and more than 73,000 of these people turn 18 every month (Barreto & Segura, 2014 ). Furthermore, the current Hispanic and Latino population is spread evenly between foreign-born and U.S.-born individuals, but the foreign-born population is now growing faster than the number of Hispanic children born in the country (Arias & Hellmueller, 2016 ). This demographic trend is projected to reach one-third of the U.S. total population by 2060 ; therefore, with the growth of other minority populations in the country, the phenomenon of multiracial marriage and biracial children is increasing as well.

Therefore, family communication scholarship has an increasing necessity to include cultural particularities in the analysis of the familial system; in addition to the cultural aspects already explained in this article, this section addresses the influence of familism in Hispanic and Latino familial interactions, as well as how immigration status moderates the internal interactions, reflected in levels of acculturation, that affect these families negatively.

With the higher marriage and birth rates among Hispanics and Latinos living in the United States compared to non-Latino Whites and African American populations, the Hispanic familial system is perhaps the most stereotyped as being familistic (Glick & Van Hook, 2008 ). This family trait consists of the fact that Hispanics place a very high value on marriage and childbearing, on the basis of a profound commitment to give support to members of the extended family as well. This can be evinced in the prevalence of extended-kind shared households in Hispanic and Latino families, and Hispanic children are more likely to live in extended-family households than non-Latino Whites or blacks (Glick & Van Hook, 2008 ). Living in extended-family households, most likely with grandparents, may have positive influences on Hispanic and Latino children, such as greater attention and interaction with loving through consistent caregiving; grandparents may help by engaging with children in academic-oriented activities, which then affects positively cognitive educational outcomes.

However, familism is not the panacea for all familial issues for several reasons. First, living in an extended-family household requires living arrangements that consider adults’ needs more than children’s. Second, the configuration of Hispanic and Latino households is moderated by any immigration issues with all members of the extended family, and this may cause problems for children (Menjívar, 2000 ). The immigration status of each individual member may produce a constant state of flux, whereas circumstances change to adjust to economic opportunities, which in turn are limited by immigration laws, and it gets even worse when one of the parents isn’t even present in the children’s home, but rather live in their home country (Van Hook & Glick, 2006 ). Although Hispanic and Latino children are more likely to live with married parents and extended relatives, familism is highly affected by the immigration status of each member.

On the other hand, there has been research to address the paramount role of communication disregarding the mediating factor of cultural diversity. For example, Sotomayor-Peterson et al. ( 2013 ) performed a cross-cultural comparison of the association between coparenting or shared parental effort and family climate among families from Mexico, the United States, and Costa Rica. The overall findings suggest what was explained earlier in this article: more shared parenting predicts better marital interaction and family climate overall.

In addition, parenting quality has been found to have a positive relationship with children’s developmental outcomes. In fact, Sotomayor-Peterson, Figueredo, Christensen, and Taylor ( 2012 ) conducted a study with 61 low-income Mexican American couples, with at least one child between three and four years of age, recruited from a home-based Head Start program. The main goal of this study was to observe the extent that shared parenting incorporates cultural values and income predicts family climate. The findings suggest that the role of cultural values such as familism, in which family solidarity and avoidance of confrontation are paramount, delineate shared parenting by Mexican American couples.

Cultural adaptation also has a substantial impact on marital satisfaction and children’s cognitive stimulation. Indeed, Sotomayor-Peterson, Wilhelm, and Card ( 2011 ) investigated the relationship between marital relationship quality and subsequent cognitive stimulation practices toward their infants in terms of the actor and partner effects of White and Hispanic parents. The results indicate an interesting relationship between the level of acculturation and marital relationship quality and a positive cognitive stimulation of infants; specifically, marital happiness is associated with increased cognitive stimulation by White and high-acculturated Hispanic fathers. Nevertheless, a major limitation of Hispanic acculturation literature has been seen, reflecting a reliance on cross-sectional studies where acculturation was scholarly operationalized more as an individual difference variable than as a longitudinal adaptation over time (Schwartz et al., 2013 ).

Culture and Family Communication: the “so what?” Question

This article has presented an entangled overview of family communication patterns, dyadic power, family systems, and conflict theories to establish that coparenting quality plays a paramount role. The main commonality among those theories pays special attention to interparental interaction quality, regardless of the type of family (i.e., intact, postdivorce, same-sex, etc.) and cultural background. After reviewing these theories, it was observed that the interparental relationship is the core interaction in the familial context because it affects children from their earlier cognitive development to subsequent parental modeling in terms of gender roles. Thus, in keeping with Canary and Canary ( 2013 ), no matter what approach may be taken to the analysis of family communication issues, the hypothesis that a positive emotional climate within the family is fostered only when couples practice a sufficient level of shared parenting and quality of communication is supported.

Nevertheless, this argument does not suggest that the role of culture in the familial interactions should be undersold. While including the main goal of parenting, which is the socialization of values, in the second section of this article, the text also provides specific values of different countries that are enacted and socialized differently across cultural contexts to address the role of acculturation in the familial atmosphere, the quality of interactions, and individual outcomes. As a case in point, Johnson et al. ( 2013 ) provided an interesting way of seeing how cultures differ in their ways of enacting parenting, clarifying that the role of culture in parenting is not a superficial or relativistic element.

In addition, by acknowledging the perhaps excessive attention to larger Asian cultural backgrounds (such as Chinese or Japanese cultures) by other scholars (i.e., Canary & Canary, 2013 ), an insightful analysis of the Thai American family within the father-daughter relationship was provided to exemplify, through the work of Punyanunt-Carter ( 2016 ), how specific family communication patterns, such as maintenance relationship communication behaviors, affect the quality of familial relationships. Moreover, a second, special focus was put on Hispanic families because of the demographic trends of the United States, and it was found that familism constitutes a distinctive aspect of these families.

In other words, the third section of this article provided these two examples of intercultural families to observe specific ways that culture mediates the familial system. Because one of the main goals of the present article was to demonstrate the mediating role of culture as an important consideration for family communication issues in the United States, the assimilationist approach was taken into account; thus, the two intercultural family examples discussed here correspond to an assimilationist nature rather than using an intergroup approach.

This decision was made without intending to diminish the value of other cultures or ethnic groups in the country, but an extensive revision of all types of intercultural families is beyond the scope of this article. Second, the assimilationist approach forces one to consider cultures that are in the process of adapting to a new hosting culture, and the Thai and Hispanic families in the United States comply with this theoretical requisite. For example, Whites recognize African Americans as being as American as Whites (i.e., Dovidio, Gluszek, John, Ditlmann, & Lagunes, 2010 ), whereas they associate Hispanics and Latinos with illegal immigration in the United States (Stewart et al., 2011 ), which has been enhanced by the U.S. media repeatedly since 1994 (Valentino et al., 2013 ), and it is still happening (Dixon, 2015 ). In this scenario, “ask yourself what would happen to your own personality if you heard it said over and over again that you were lazy, a simple child of nature, expected to steal, and had inferior blood? . . . One’s reputation, whether false or true, cannot be hammered, hammered, hammered, into one’s head without doing something to one’s character” (Allport, 1979 , p. 142, cited in Arias & Hellmueller, 2016 ).

As a consequence, on this cultural canvas, it should not be surprising that Lichter, Carmalt, and Qian ( 2011 ) found that second-generation Hispanics are increasingly likely to marry foreign-born Hispanics and less likely to marry third-generation or later coethnics or Whites. In addition, this study suggests that third-generation Hispanics and later were more likely than in the past to marry non-Hispanic Whites; thus, the authors concluded that there has been a new retreat from intermarriage among the largest immigrant groups in the United States—Hispanics and Asians—in the last 20 years.

If we subscribe to the idea that cultural assimilation goes in only one direction—from the hegemonic culture to the minority culture—then the results of Lichter, Carmalt, and Qian ( 2011 ) should not be of scholarly concern; however, if we believe that cultural assimilation happens in both directions and intercultural families can benefit both the host and immigrant cultures (for a review, see Schwartz et al., 2013 ), then this is important to address in a country that just elected a president, Donald Trump, who featured statements racially lambasting and segregating minorities, denigrating women, and criticizing immigration as some of the main tenets of his campaign. Therefore, we hope that it is clear why special attention was given to the Thai and Hispanic families in this article, considering the impact of culture on the familial system, marital satisfaction, parental communication, and children’s well-being. Even though individuals with Hispanic ancentry were in the United States even before it became a nation, Hispanic and Latino families are still trying to convince Americans of their right to be accepted in American culture and society.

With regard to the “So what?” question, assimilation is important to consider while analyzing the role of culture in family communication patterns, power dynamics, conflict, or the functioning of the overall family system in the context of the United States. This is because this country is among the most popular in the world in terms of immigration requests, and its demographics show that one out of three citizens comes from an ethnic background other than the hegemonic White culture. In sum, cultural awareness has become pivotal in the analysis of family communication issues in the United States. Furthermore, the present overview of family, communication, and culture ends up supporting the idea of positive associations being derived from the pivotal role of marriage relationship quality, such that coparenting and communication practices vary substantially within intercultural marriages moderated by gender roles.

Culture is a pivotal moderator of these associations, but this analysis needs to be tethered to societal structural level, in which cultural differences, family members’ immigration status, media content, and level of acculturation must be included in family research. This is because in intercultural marriages, in addition to the tremendous parenting role, they have to deal with cultural assimilation and discrimination, and this becomes important if we care about children’s cognitive development and the overall well-being of those who are not considered White. As this article shows, the quality of familial interactions has direct consequences on children’s developmental outcomes (for a review, see Callaghan et al., 2011 ).

Therefore, the structure and functioning of family has an important impact on public health at both physiological and psychological levels (Gage, Everett, & Bullock, 2006 ). At the physiological level, the familial interaction instigates expression and reception of strong feelings affecting tremendously on individuals’ physical health because it activates neuroendocrine responses that aid stress regulation, acting as a stress buffer and accelerating physiological recovery from elevated stress (Floyd & Afifi, 2012 ; Floyd, 2014 ). Robles, Shaffer, Malarkey, and Kiecolt-Glaser ( 2006 ) found that a combination of supportive communication, humor, and problem-solving behavior in husbands predicts their wives’ cortisol and adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH)—both physiological factors are considered as stress markers (see 2006 ). On the other hand, the psychology of individuals, the quality of family relationships has major repercussions on cognitive development, as reflected in educational attainment (Sohr-Preston et al., 2013 ), and highly mediated by cultural assimilation (Schwartz et al., 2013 ), which affects individuals through parenting modeling and socialization of values (Mooney-Doyle, Deatrick, & Horowitz, 2014 ).

The Postmodern Perspective on the Family

More individual freedom and choice means more family and life course diversity.

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Last Updated on September 25, 2023 by Karl Thompson

Postmodernists argue that recent social changes such as increasing social fragmentation, greater diversity and technological changes have made family more a matter of personal choice and as a result families have become more unstable and more diverse.

In postmodern society there is no longer one typical type of family such as the nuclear family, rather there is huge diversity of family types and it is no longer possible to make general theories about the role of the family in society like Functionalists and Marxists have done in the past.

Postmodernity, Social Change and the Family

During the later part of modernity (around 1850-1950) society was clearly structured along social class lines with clear gender norms and the nuclear family formed part of (what at least appeared to be) a stable social structure.

Since the 1950s we have seen a shift to a postmodern society which is more global, fragmented (fractured), culturally diverse, consumerist, media saturated, uncertain and in which individuals have more freedom of choice.

The changes associated with postmodernity since the 1950s have changed the nature of the family: now that people have more choices, families are less stable and more diverse.

How has postmodernity changed the family?

The rise of consumer culture and individual choice : people have come to expect choice over what goods they buy, and the same applies to relationships: people choose when or whether to go get into a relationship, whether to get married, and when or whether they break up.
Technological changes and media saturation – ties into the above in the form of online dating and hookup sites – which set up a new norm of relationships being like shopping: if you can’t find someone ‘just right’ then either don’t bother or find someone that will do for now and ditch them when someone who does tick all your boxes comes along! This might explain the rise of serial monogamy .
Changes to work : there are no more jobs for life in the factory and this has led to a decline in the male breadwinner role. People have to spend longer training for careers, and change jobs more often during their working lives. Work is more pressured today, and there is less time for relationships which means more single people and more relationship breakdowns.
Changing gender norms: gender identity is more of a choice today which means we have more LGBTQ chosen families and also more gender equality within families, which leads to more diversity
The decline of religion – there is less social pressure to get married and stay married, meaning higher rates of divorce, potentially more reconstituted families.
Globalisation – more immigration means more ethnically mixed marriage, more relationships across borders, even more diversity.
Rapid social change, risk and uncertainty : instability in society affects relationships: if one partner loses a job or has to move for a new job, it might trigger a breakup, also awareness of high rates of divorce and the challenges of relationships might put people off getting involved in the first place.

To summarise: the shift to postmodern society has meant more individual choice which means more family and household diversity in society naturally means more types of family, for example:

More people staying single.
More short-term serial monogamy type relationships.
More cohabitation rather than marriage.
more people regarding their friends and other fictive kin as part of their families (see the Personal Life Perspective for more details).
more ethnic diversity within families.
changing gender norms mean an increase in more LGBTQ chosen families.
Higher rates of divorce and more single parent households and stepfamilies.

Furthermore there is no longer one dominant family type (such as the nuclear family). This means it is no longer possible to make generalisations about the role of the (nuclear) family society in the same way that modernist theories such as Functionalism did.

The rest of this post now considers two specific post-modern thinkers about the family – Judith Stacey and Tamara Hareven.

Stacey (1998) “The Divorce-Extended Family”

Judith Stacey argues that women have more freedom than ever before to shape their family arrangement to meet their needs and free themselves from patriarchal oppression. Through case studies conducted in Silicon Valley, California she found that women rather than men are the driving force behind changes in the family.

She discovered that many women rejected the traditional housewife role and had chosen extremely varied life paths (some choosing to return to education, becoming career women, divorcing and remarrying). Stacey identified a new type of family “the divorce-extended family” – members are connected by divorce rather than marriage, for example ex in-laws, or former husband’s new partners.

Hareven (1978) “Life Course Analysis”

Tamara Hareven advocates the approach of life course analysis , that is that sociologists should be concerned with focusing on individual family members and the choices that they make throughout life regarding family arrangements.

This approach recognises that there is flexibility and variation in people’s lives, for example the choices and decisions they make and when they make them. For example, when they decide to raise children, choosing sexuality or moving into sheltered accommodation in old age.

Supporting evidence for the postmodern perspective on the family

Increasing family diversity.

The 2022 Children’s Commissioner’s Family Review certainly supports the postmodern view that families are becoming more diverse over time. The review reports that family structure has gradually changed over the last 20 years:

There are fewer married couples.
There are more couples cohabiting.
There are fewer ‘traditional’ nuclear family units today.
44% of children born at the start of the century, were not in a nuclear family for their full childhood, compared to 21% of children born in 1970.
Over 80,000 children are in care, and many more in less formal arrangements, including kinship care.

Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over is a recent documentary series exploring the diversity of family life in the UK. Most of the families are not nuclear families, but even those that are have non-standard lives, so even within the nuclear family set up, there is diversity!

Marginalised Families is a website where people in diverse family structures can share their stories. It is designed to give more voice to non-nuclear families and provides some interesting case studies in family diversity.

More people are choosing to stay single than ever (5), but they are not isolated or lonely. In fact single people are more social than people in nuclear families and tend to have a broader conception of the family: in which they include friends, neighbours and ex-partners, thus challenging traditional definitions of the family.

(5) The Conversation (2017) More people than ever before are single and that’s a good thing . See also Bella de Paulo for the benefits of being single r

Low levels of belief in marriage

According to a 2022 YouGov Survey – does marriage matter 63% of UK adults think marriage is an outdated institution, although this is up from 68% in 2019.

Only 22% of the UK population thinks it matters that people are married before they have children: YouGov survey (2023) does marriage and children matter ?

Criticisms of Postmodern Views on the Family

Late-Modernists such as Anthony Giddens suggest that even though people have more freedom, there is still a structure which shapes people’s decisions about the family.

Postmodernists over emphasise the amount of choice people have when it comes to relationships. However in truth, most people want to be in a stable long term relationship, but the social pressures of late modern life make this impossible for many to sustain. Thus people don’t ‘choose’ to get divorced or stay single as such, life just sort of pushes them into these ‘decisions’.

Contemporary Feminists disagree with Postmodernism, pointing out that in most cases traditional gender roles which disadvantage women remain the norm.

Signposting and Related Posts

This post has been written primarily for students studying the families and households option in their first year of A-level sociology.

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The Modern American Family

key trends in marriage and family life.

The American family has undergone significant change in recent decades. There is no longer one predominant family form, and Americans are experiencing family life in increasingly diverse ways.

In 1970, 67% of Americans ages 25 to 49 were living with their spouse and one or more children younger than 18.

Over the past five decades, that share has dropped to 37%.

With the drop in the share of adults living with a spouse and children, there has been an increase in other types of family living arrangements, like unmarried adults raising children.

A recent survey finds that the U.S. public is more accepting of some family types than others . And, broadly speaking, Americans are more pessimistic than optimistic about the future of the institution of marriage and the family.

What’s behind the change in family structure?

There are several factors that have contributed to these changes. Americans are marrying later in life, and a rising share have never been married.

% of U.S. adults ages 18 and older who are married or have never been married

Source: Pew Research Center analysis of 1970-2000 decennial census and 2010-2021 American Community Survey (IPUMS).

While the overall share of married adults has declined, certain types of marriages have become more common over time. Since the 1970s, a growing share of Americans are in interracial or interethnic marriages.

% of U.S. married adults ages 18 and older who are intermarried

Note: Intermarried refers to marriages between a Hispanic and a non-Hispanic spouse, or marriages between non-Hispanic spouses who come from different racial groups. Source: Pew Research Center analysis of 1970-2000 decennial census and 2010-2021 American Community Survey (IPUMS).

In 2015, same-sex marriages became legal nationally, and since then there has also been an increase in the proportion of Americans in same-sex marriages. In 2021, there were over 700,000 same-sex married couples in the United States , accounting for approximately 1% of all married couples.

% of U.S. married adults ages 18 and older in a same-sex marriage

Source: Pew Research Center analysis of 2015-2021 American Community Survey (IPUMS).

Changes in fertility patterns have also had a significant impact on family dynamics. Compared with their counterparts in the 1970s, women today have fewer children.

The relationship between marriage and parenthood has also shifted, as more women are having children without being married .

Taken together, these changes help explain why married couples raising children together is no longer the norm.

Let’s take a closer look at the changes in family life over the past decades to understand how the American family has evolved and what it looks like today:

Differences by education, race and ethnicity

What form a family takes is increasingly shaped by educational attainment and varies significantly across racial and ethnic groups.

Today, individuals with a bachelor’s degree are much more likely to be married than those with less education – a change from the 1970s, when adults with a high school diploma were as likely as college graduates to be married. There are also growing racial and ethnic disparities since that time, with Asian and White adults increasingly more likely to be married than those who are Black or Hispanic.

Explore the data to see how these differences play out in American families. To start, click on a tab to display data on the share of Americans who are married; the number of children women have, on average; or the share of children living with two married parents. Then, choose a filter to show differences by education or by race and ethnicity.

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Development and Characteristics of the Modern Family

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Gerard O’Donnell

Part of the book series: Macmillan Master Series ((MACMMA))

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Defining ‘a family’ is not so simple as most people might immediately assume; there are many forms of family. In British society a basic family usually consists of a man and woman who have a steady relationship with each other and who also have children; children are essential to the idea of ‘family’, but they need not necessarily be ‘consanguine’ — that is, related by blood to the adults with whom they live — although they usually are. A simple group of this kind is called a ‘nuclear’ family. Nearly all ‘nuclear’ families are related to one or more other nuclear families through parent-child relationships; mother will often have parents and brothers and sisters living and so will father. This family is called the ‘extended family’ and can include all known relations.

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O’Donnell, G. (1988). Development and Characteristics of the Modern Family. In: Mastering Sociology. Macmillan Master Series. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10247-1_3

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Jonathon wardman, a-level sociology: the role of the family in modern societies.

This short essay (around 850 words) was written in November 2001 as part of my AS-Level sociology course at Halifax New College (part of Calderdale College ). It discusses how the family is seen in functionalist writings. It’s released here under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence .

To what extent do Functionalist writings accurately reflect the role of the family in modern societies?

Functionalist writings go into much depth in regard to the state and roles of the family in modern, post industrial revolution, society. How accurately the interpretation and observations that are made by the Functionalist view represent the state of the family is, however, a contentious point.

Functionalists see the family as the key place where primary socialisation of the young, next generation of society, takes place. The functionalist view of the family is that the family is the corner stone of the whole of society; indeed, the writings of key functionalists, such as Murdock and Parsons describe the family as having four basic functions – sexual, reproductive, economic and educational.

All of these functions can be seen in the model modern family – it is, in effect, somewhat of an idealistic view of the way in which family within society behaves. This is one way in which the functionalist perspective is challenged. When looking at modern society and the role family has within it, the functionalist perspective fails to identify that, in some cases, this family model does not exist. Both Murdock and Parsons observations of the family have failed to identify with any other form or institution that may be in place to emulate, and that can take the role of, the family. Indeed, as Morgan notes in his criticism of Murdock’s view on the family, Murdock does not answer ‘ to what extent these basic functions are inevitably linked with the institution of the nuclear family’ (Morgan, 1975). By doing this, both Murdock and Parsons fail to depict the form that alternatives to the family may take, and thus cannot reflect the modern role of the family in society today accurately.

Another criticism of the functionalist representation of the family is that it does not take into account the effect that different social classes and religious views have on the form of the modern family. Clearly, modern society has a multi-religious, multi-class organisation, and this affects the way in which different families are organised. If the functionalist view does not take this into account when attempting to reflect modern society, and for this reason may be said to not accurately represent the state of the modern society.

The view that the family benefits both its members and society as a whole in modern times, as functionalists present, has come under strong attack itself. Some cases show that, far from being a positive institution to society, family can in fact be a cause of friction and unrest that leads to contamination of wider society. R.D. Laing notes how the family is a ‘ nexus ’, and that ‘ the highest concern of the nexus is reciprocal concern. Each partner is concerned about what the other thinks, feels, does ’ (Laing, 1962). It is for this reason that, Laing argues, the family is a source of social unease. This view is in direct opposition to the functionalistic view that the family has only positive attributes.

The Functionalistic perspective also stands at a direct opposition to some other sociological perspectives, and this may have an affect on how accurate the functionalist view of the family is seen. The Marxist perspective, for example, takes the family as a negative institution as a whole, and believes that, although the observations of some functionalistic writings are correct in terms of how the family is structured, it is not a wholly negative institution for society. This is, however, because of the direct opposition to the basis of the functionalist paradigm on a greater scale. Marxist writers believe that the family is a breeding ground for the reproduction of a capitalist ideology, and that this, for society, is negative.

Although the contrast of other sociological paradigms does not prove nor disprove the validity of the functionalist reflection of the family within modern society, it does give people an idea, when trying to decide how accurate the functionalist perspective is, of other stances that may be as, or a more, accurate description of modern family and its relationship to the rest of society. Therefore it is an important aspect of looking into the accuracy of any different perspective, to also hold it in comparison with other recognised views.

Although on the surface the functionalist view of the family appears to be an accurate description of modern family arrangement, it can be faulted at many points. However, this is not to say that the perspective is totally worthless of being granted some identity within the whole of the sociological family situation. The functionalist perspective gives a good insight into the way in which a family is organised in, and, supposedly supports, a capitalist society – the main framework of post industrial revolution western society.

All sociological views have flaws that mean they cannot be fully accurate in description of any situation, and everyone has their own objective view of each of the sociological paradigms, so it is not possible to say, definitively, if one or another accurately depicts a situation or not. It must be left to an informed individual to make up his or her own mind on the subject.

this essay is good but then its explaing exactly what is a modern family and its roles in the societies

This article is quite interesting. I agree with some opinions. I agree families benefit the minority in power. What about people who decide not to have a family and in this way break the rules of society? In my opinion is much more important an individual who has a broad knowledge than illiterate families. Why everybody wants the same? get married, have children, get a house, get a car , get a dog, human beings are selfish . there shouldn’t be more thinkers than masses in the world?

Ummm a good essay as just has been said above it is explaining what is a modern family

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Essay on Importance of Family for Students and Children

500 words essay on importance of family.

In today’s world when everything is losing its meaning, we need to realize the importance of family more than ever. While the world is becoming more modern and advanced, the meaning of family and what stands for remains the same.

A family is a group of people who are related by blood or heritage. These people are linked not only by blood but also by compassion, love, and support. A person’s character and personality are shaped by his or her family. There are various forms of families in today’s society. It is further subdivided into a tight and extended family (nuclear family, single parent, step-family, grandparent, cousins, etc.)

Family – A synonym for trust, comfort, love, care, happiness and belonging. Family is the relationship that we share from the moment we are born into this world. People that take care of us and help us grow are what we call family, and they become lifelines for us to live. Family members have an important role in deciding an individual’s success or failure in life since they provide a support system and source of encouragement.

It does not matter what kind of family one belongs to. It is all equal as long as there are caring and acceptance. You may be from a joint family, same-sex partner family, nuclear family, it is all the same. The relationships we have with our members make our family strong. We all have unique relations with each family member. In addition to other things, a family is the strongest unit in one’s life.

Things That Strengthens The Family

A family is made strong through a number of factors. The most important one is of course love. You instantly think of unconditional love when you think of family. It is the first source of love you receive in your life It teaches you the meaning of love which you carry on forever in your heart.

Secondly, we see that loyalty strengthens a family. When you have a family, you are devoted to them. You stick by them through the hard times and celebrate in their happy times. A family always supports and backs each other. They stand up for each other in front of a third party trying to harm them proving their loyalty.

Most importantly, the things one learns from their family brings them closer. For instance, we learn how to deal with the world through our family first. They are our first school and this teaching strengthens the bond. It gives us reason to stand by each other as we share the same values.

No matter what the situation arises, your family will never leave you alone. They will always stand alongside you to overcome the hardships in life. If anyone is dealing with any kind of trouble, even a small talk about it to the family will make ones’ mind lighter and will give them a sense of hope, an inner sense of strength to fight those problems.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Importance of Family

One cannot emphasize enough on the importance of family. They play a great role in our lives and make us better human beings. The one lucky enough to have a family often do not realize the value of a family.

However, those who do not have families know their worth. A family is our source of strength. It teaches us what relationships mean. They help us create meaningful relationships in the outside world. The love we inherit from our families, we pass on to our independent relationships.

Moreover, families teach us better communication . When we spend time with our families and love each other and communicate openly, we create a better future for ourselves. When we stay connected with our families, we learn to connect better with the world.

Similarly, families teach us patience. It gets tough sometimes to be patient with our family members. Yet we remain so out of love and respect. Thus, it teaches us patience to deal better with the world. Families boost our confidence and make us feel loved. They are the pillars of our strength who never fall instead keep us strong so we become better people.

We learn the values of love, respect, faith, hope, caring, cultures, ethics, traditions, and everything else that concerns us through our families. Being raised in a loving household provides a solid foundation for anyone.

People develop a value system inside their family structure in addition to life lessons. They learn what their family considers to be proper and wrong, as well as what the community considers to be significant.

Families are the epicentres of tradition. Many families keep on traditions by sharing stories from the past over the years. This allows you to reconnect with family relatives who are no longer alive. A child raised in this type of household feels as if they are a part of something bigger than themselves. They’ll be proud to be a part of a community that has had ups and downs. Communities thrive when families are strong. This, in turn, contributes to a robust society.

Q.1 What strengthens a family?

A.1 A family’s strength is made up of many factors. It is made of love that teaches us to love others unconditionally. Loyalty strengthens a family which makes the members be loyal to other people as well. Most importantly, acceptance and understanding strengthen a family.

Q.2 Why is family important?

A.2 Families are very important components of society and people’s lives. They teach us a lot about life and relationships. They love us and treat us valuably. They boost our self-confidence and make us feel valued. In addition, they teach us patience to deal with others in a graceful and accepting manner.

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Various Issues in Modern Family Essay

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Introduction

Sexual relationships, delayed marriages, reproductive patterns, generational discrepancies, works cited.

The family today is faced by major challenges owing to factors emerging every now and then ranging from globalization, increased social integration across the world as well as technological advancement. These and other factors have brought about a multitude of new changes that has brought challenges, completely altering family values.

What are the major issues facing the family today?

The age of initial sexual encounter is getting lower; this has led to unupsurge of teenage pregnancies and abortions in the short term and terminal illnesses in the long term. Religion teaches morals and sex is a taboo, this resulted to a negative attitude toward matters relating to sex, like sex education and information on contraceptives, very little sex education is acquired even to adulthood. With the proliferation of explicit information due to advanced technology on a wide range of sexual matters, young people are left to pick choices for themselves. Pundits attribute increase of same sex relationships due to influence channeled through electronic and print media.

One big phenomenon is an increased delay in marriages occasioned by educational and career pursuits; this has resulted to an increase in single person’s households, a large portion of adults are still living with parents, while others are cohabiting. In Europe 65% of males aged between 25-29 years are still living with their parents while it was at 44% for women. (Cliquet 1) There are also instances of living apart arrangement where intimate relationships are maintained in completely different households. Nupitiality is on the decline, weddings are fewer, and so are the remarriages. Remarriages occur between those who have divorced.

Today’s most married couples especially in Europe are opting for less number of children despite high fertility rates subdued by contraception. The is increased use of contraceptives has lead to lower birth rates, as well as delayed first birth. In some southern Europe countries, one out of two first births occurs outside wedlock, while in the US a third of all births in 2001 were out of wedlock. (Council of Europe 1). This has led to a decrease in young population.

Instances of divorce have also escalated reducing birth rates, in Western Europe, 30% of couples will end up in a divorce (Council of Europe 2002 1). However the figures are higher if we were to consider data on separations, and cohabiting. This has led to an increase to single mothers house holds, and if coupled with single mothers by choice or accident, figures are higher. The instances of single by choice are on the increase especially amongst better educated, working older women. (Miller 1). 75% of men get into a new relationship after divorce while 80% of women do the same. This also happens when death occurs, though the number of those who remarry is lower especially amongst older people.

Due to decreased fertility occasioned by increased access to contraception, there has been a steady decrease in the population below 25 years, and a marked increase in population of 65 years and above. This is due to easy access to healthier life marking an increase in longevity. This has brought about a family dilemma as the old have to be catered for, this is a challenge to loosely knit family units which lack capacity to effectively provide. Increased female participation in paid labor is also driving the woman away from the homemaker role, leaving the aged helpless, there is a strain in such a setup, calling for forces outside family to assist. The strain is less for families with extended close ties.

How do we address these issues?

With all the above dynamics, there are some instances that need extra efforts to in order to avert or alleviate some of resultant conditions. There is need for increased surveillance and parental guidance for teenagers, since they are the most vulnerable to technological influence. Sex education is required at an early age to help the youth make informed decisions. There should be proper structures to cater for the elderly outside the family network so as to provide for quality care, as well as ease the burden for the kin.

Divorce is one feature that is predominant in today’s family; there is need for marital counseling, to prevent it. Since it is not avoidable, children and couples affected should also get counseling to alleviate suffering occasioned by divorce. Children born outside the wed lock or from divorced families might end up themselves going through the same process of divorce as the parents and hence there is need of active participation of the available parent to make up for the absent one, so as to give the child a normal feel.

Violence in the family is also a major issue that needs urgent attention and this calls for counseling of the perpetrators as well as the victims. Substance and alcohol abuse are some of the causing factors of domestic violence, this may come in form of sexual, physical or psychological abuse. Governments all over the world have programs that foster for such affected children. Despite liberalism in family setup, the community at large has an obligation to participate in activities a kin to fighting issues affecting the family since everyone is in a family and is prone to these issues.

Cliquet, Richard. ‘Major trends affecting families in the new millennium’ . Journal of Family Issues. 2001. Web.

Council of Europe. ‘Recent Demographic Developments in Europe 2001’ Strasbourg. 2002. Web.

Miller, Nancy. ‘Single Parents by Choice. A Growing Trend in Family Life’. New York: Plenum Press. 1992. Web.

The Influence of Contraceptive Counseling on Adolescent Women's Use of Contraception
Teens and Representatives of Minorities: Accessing Contraception
Cohabitation vs. Marriage
What Sprawl Is and How It Affects Public Health
Teen Pregnancy: Abortion Rates Rise
Survey and Sampling as the Research Methods
Juvenile Sex Offences: Causes and Treatment
Dynamics of Intimate Relationships
Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

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What is Family in Modern America

Category: Sociology
Topic: American Family

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Essay on Family in Modern Society

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What Is The Importance Of Family In Modern Society?

Its definition may evolve, but family may remain essential

Benefits of a healthy family

Helps you meet your basic needs

Allows you to belong to something

Offers a built-in support system

Contributes to health

Provides support when someone is ill

Offers community benefits

Educates children

All families may struggle sometimes

Seeking help

Benefits of online therapy

Effectiveness of online therapy

What is the importance of family in our life?

What is the importance of family to a person?

What are 10 important aspects of family in your life?

Why are family relationships among the most important we will ever have?

What is the most important value in your relationship as a family?

What is important in life, family or love?

Is having a family the most important thing?

Why is family more important than happiness?

What is the importance of family unity?

What brings unity to the family?

15.2 Sociological Perspectives on the Family

Social Functions of the Family

The Family and Conflict

Families and Social Interaction

Key Takeaways

For Your Review

Margin Size

11.3: Sociological Perspectives on the Family

Learning Objectives

Social Functions of the Family

The Family and Conflict

Families and Social Interaction

For Your Review

Article contents

Introduction

Family: Theoretical Perspectives

Family Communication Patterns Theory

Dyadic Power

The Role of Culture in Parenting Socialization of Values

Intercultural Families: Adding Cultural Differences to Interparental Communication

An Example of Intercultural Parenting: The Thai Family

The Case of Hispanic/Latino Families in the United States

Culture and Family Communication: the “so what?” Question

Further Reading

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