The Modern Nuclear Family Essay Example for Free

The Modern Nuclear Family EssayThe nuclear, isolated, or restricted family is not a late phenowork forceon, that has existed in m either cultures throughout hu military man history. Indeed, the extended family of several generations is arrange mostly in comparatively advanced, st fitted, and affluent, but not yet industrialized societies. Very primitive and rattling sophisticated societies attend to prefer the nuclear family model.However, nuclear families can vary in the degree of their isolation and restrictedness. For example, before the industrial Revolution the westward nuclear family was often embedded in a larger social unit of measurement, much(prenominal) as a farm or estate, an aristocratic court, or a village populated by relatives. M any(prenominal) older city neighborhoods in addition kept kinship ties strong, and indeed even very bittie families remained open to the community. Family visits might be frequent and extended children might freely circulate and feel at class in several households.On the other hand, we flummox seen that, beginning in the late seventeenth century, a trend toward closeness reduced the size of galore(postnominal) larger households and changed the relationships between the remaining family members. They became to a greater extent concerned about each other. They needed each other more. The idyllic home of the bourgeois became an island of ease in the gathering storm of modernization, a haven secure from the world out at that place, from aggressiveness, competition, and class warfargon. We have likewise seen how this home sheltered women and protected the children from sexual and other temptations. Other nasty social realities were also kept safely at bay. The family income was no longstanding earned inside, but rather outside the house.The cleavage of labor between the sexes became more pronounced as men spent more and more quantify away from their families as wage earners in factories, shops, and offices. Their wives became intimately the only companions of their small children whose care and education was straight off their main responsibility. (Formerly, these tasks had been divided between mothers, grandmothers, nurses, and servants.) Virtually the only middle-class men who still do passed at home were doctors and lawyers in private practice. As a sway, however, the bourgeois family saw its head and breadwinner only when he returned from his flirt at night. This work itself remained an abstraction to both his wife and his children.The removal of productive work from the home into the factories had, of course, classical consequences for all family members. It was no longer necessary for any of them to develop strong roots in any particular community or to become attached to a particular house. Instead, they became free to continue about, to copy industrial development into innovative settlements, to go after the jobs wherever they might be. Moreoer, family conne ctions became less important, as mill work became ever more rationalized and efficient. Nepotism gave way to hiring and promotion on merit alone.By the same token, the new worker, business man, or bureaucrat no longer had to take care of distant relatives. He duty off worked pocketly for his own small family and this made him more industrious. He could advance faster, since his income had to support only very few batch. Thus, the individual husband and father was no longer weighed down by traditions or extended social obligations. In addition, the education of his children and the care of his aged or sick parents began to be taken over by the state.In view of these developments, some(prenominal) observers have noted a fit between the nuclear family and industrialism. In other words, small, intimate, and mobile families be best suited to advance the cause of industrial enterprise and, conversely, industrialization seems to encourage the formation of small families. After all , in modern industrial societies there is a popular trend toward equality and personal independence. This, in turn, allows for the free choice of a marriage partner, place of residence, and occupation. In an extended family these freedoms are always restricted, because a wrong choice would affect too many relatives.Thus, people who want to take full advantage of the new possibilities normally marry late and keep their families small. However, this rule also has its exceptions. Sometimes large families are more useful, because they can serve as a back-up unit by providing shelter and aid at crucial moments. This may be especially important for non-U individuals who try to move up, although the higher classes often also maintain extensive family ties. Thus, even in amply industrialized societies one can find many men and women who appreciate the traditional extended family or at least a large network of relatives.Still, by and large, the closely-knit nuclear family has been dominan t in Western societies for the last several generations, and thus it has shaped the general perception of what a family should be A man and a woman marry for love, have two or three children, live alone by themselves in a family home or apartment, and spend all their free time together. The man leaves for work in the morning, while the woman takes care of the children and the house. She also cooks dinner and ministers to her exhausted husband when he returns at night. Once or twice a year, at Thanksgiving or Christmas, there is a brief, ceremonial occasion get-together with other relatives at Grandmas house, but otherwise everyone keeps his distance and minds his own business.Obviously, according to this ideal model, the family members are relatively isolated from the larger kindred and, indeed, from the rest of the community. However, they are to be compensated for this isolation by a greater emotional warmth inside the nuclear circle. Father, mother, and children are to be the w orld for each other. A deep mutual love is supposed to keep them together and boost their morale as they argue economically with other small family units. Unfortunately, as many families have discovered, things do not always work out that way. The lack of wider contacts is often perceived as crippling, too much closeness becomes oppressive, and inescapable familiarity breeds contempt. Therefore, almost from the beginning, the modern nuclear family has also been subject to reprehension.In Victorian times, when the cult of the home was at its height, this criticism was expressed mainly by great bourgeois writers, such as Flaubert, Ibsen and Strindberg, who denounced the hypocrisy, shallowness, and dullness of middle-class life, and who undefended the suffering and vicious psychological infighting behind the facade of respectability. The family was further criticised on philosophical and political evidence by Friedrich Engels who tied it to the origin and maintenance of private pro perty. Finally, Sigmund Freud provided perhaps the most serious, if indirect, accusation when he set forth the happy nuclear household as the breeding ground of neurosis and sexual perversion.At any rate, by the late 19th century the disadvantages of the bourgeois family model had also become evident to many average men and women. The emotional hothouse atmosphere of the home began to seem stifling, and what once had been praised as a sanctuary was more and more often condemned as a prison. In the traditional extended family, children had been able to choose between several male and female adult role models now they had only their parents. Formerly, their earliest education had been shaped by a number of different people and a variety of influences now they depended entirely on their own mother and father. Actually, the latter was not even always available. Since he no longer worked inside the house, his children had no clear conception of his social role.Instead, he became simply an abstract supplier and disciplinarian, a mysterious and distant authority figure. He was occasionally loved, frequently feared, but rarely understood. At the same time, the wife and mother found herself more restricted than ever before. Her greatly increased matriarchal duties kept her confined inside her four walls. She could venture outside only for a visit to perform or to go shopping. Her world had shrunk, and her functions were narrowly circumscribed. She had to be feminine, motherly, sensitive, proper, and in all matters of importance she had to defer to her husband.It is understandable, therefore, that many Victorian women began to resent the nuclear family and their position in it. Thus, it was a signal of things to come when, in Ibsens A Dolls House, the heroine Nora simply walked out on her husband and children. As time went by, more and more women demanded complete juristic equality with men and the freedom to develop their full potential as human beings. They bega n to struggle for the right to vote and the reform of marriage and divorce laws. They also entered the work force in ever increase numbers. Finally, during World War I, they proved their capabilities in many formerly inaccessible jobs and thereby further emancipated themselves from the home. See also The Emancipation of Women.)Recent decades have seen a continuation of this trend. In many families straight off both husband and wife work outside the house, while the children spend much of their time in a nursery, daycare center, kindergarten, or school. As a result, the emotional ties between family members have become approximately less constrictive, and a greater tolerance prevails. The influence of peer groups has grown, not only for the children, but also for their mothers. The traditional male and female roles are being reevaluated.The mass media keep everyone in touch with the larger community and its continued transformation. Still, the family circle as such has not widened. Grandparents are rarely part of the household, but live on their own in retirement villages, senior citizen centers, or nursing homes. Unmarried relatives move to a singles hotel or apartment building. Thus, the average American family remains fairly small. Indeed, there are now many fatherless families consisting only of a woman and her children.The one-parent family or core family is usually describe as an incomplete nuclear family, and there is a general assumption that it is socially undesirable. The lack of a father figure is seen as detrimental to child development, and hasty generalizations are made about unjustified female influence. In the U.S. these comments sometimes even have racist overtones, as mother-child families are frequently found in the poor black population. However, with the rising divorce rate, this family type has also become increasingly roughhewn in the white middle class. Indeed, at the present time about 1 out of 6 children in America lives with only one parent, and the number of such households may well increase in the future. After all, our welfare regulations and other government policies often have the effect of breaking up families that would otherwise stay together.Our legisiatures have not yet learned how to test new laws through family impact studies which would shop such unintended consequences in advance. Still, in the meantime it should be remembered that the one-parent family is not necessarily bad. In the long time following the two World Wars, millions of women have successfully brought up their children alone, and this impressive example should caution us against superficial judgments. Moreover, upon closer examination, many core families are discovered to maintain close connections to wider kinship groups and thus turn out to be more open and viable than might have been supposed. Finally, we know that there are also many father-child families which have not received sufficient critical attention.It is another p erplexity whether the nuclear family itself, even when complete, is still the best available option. Many people today are convinced that small, single households are uneconomical and wasteful, that they are still emotionally unhealthy, that they perpetuate outmoded sterotypical sex roles, and that they crap competitive, egotistical children in an age when universal cooperation seems the only hope of mankind. It is also argued that the modern family no longer has any other function than to provide love and intimacy, and that this is by no means enough to pardon its existence.Indeed, since families have been largely relieved of their economic, educational, and protective functions by the state, sexual attachment has become the nearly exclusive basis of marriage, and this basis is notoriously weak. Frequent divorce and remarriage, however, while perhaps practical for the adults, hardly seem in the best interest of the children. Under the circumstances, it is only fitting that a num ber of thoughtful men and women should continue to search for more stable, new and improved family models.