American family

The American family unit is in the process of change. There were mainly two types of families: the extended and the nuclear. The extended family most often included mother, father, children, and some other relatives, such as grandparents, living in the same house or nearby. Then as job patterns changed and the economy progressed from agricultural to industrial, people were forced to move to different parts of the country for job opportunities. These moves split up the extended family. The nuclear family became more prevalent; this consisted of only the parents and the children.

Today’s families are a diverse mix of single-parent households, remarried families, nuclear families, unmarried couples, and couples without children. There is no prototype for the «normal» family. Data from the 2000 Census shows that married couples with children make up just 24 percent of all households, compared to 40 percent in 1970. In fact, there are slightly more single person households in America, 25 percent, than nuclear family households.

Even within nuclear families, the model is changing. Families are getting smaller. The number of families with just one child has doubled since the seventies and now accounts for more than 20 percent of families. Meanwhile, families with four or more children decreased from 17 percent in 1970 to 6 percent in 2000.

These changes in family structure can be attributed to several factors. For one, people are marrying later. The average age for first marriage is now 26.8 for men and 25.1 for women. That means more adults spend at least some time living alone. Both later marriage and divorce lead to smaller families. Divorce also results in more single parent families, though some of those classified as single parents may actually be in co-parenting situations. Widespread affluence also results in more people living alone. Some choose not to remarry after divorce; others put off marriage.

As you can see, today’s family can be made up of diverse combinations. With the divorce rate nearly one in two, there is an increase in single-parent homes: a father or mother living with one or more children. Blended families occur when previously married men and women marry again and combine the children from former marriages into a new family. On the other hand, some couples are deciding not to have any children at all, so there is an increase in two-person childless families. There are also more people who live alone: single, widowed, divorced. Now, one in five Americans lives alone.

In the American family the husband and wife usually share important decision-making. When the children are old enough, they participate as well. Foreign observers are frequently amazed by the permissiveness of American parents. The old rule that «children should be seen and not heard» is rarely followed, and children are often allowed to do what they wish without strict parental control. The father seldom expects his children to obey him without question, and children are encouraged to be independent at an early age. Most teenagers try to find summer or after-school jobs, so that they can have their own money. Some people believe that American parents carry this freedom too far. Young people are expected to break away from their parental families by the time they have reached their late teens or early twenties.

Women in the USA constitute 51,4% of the country’s population. Many of them are earning money outside their homes today. Among women who are eighteen to sixty-four years old, sixty-two per cent have jobs. A significant number of married women have entered the labour force not only for economic reasons but because they want to have other interests in addition to their homes.

Today more women are holding jobs of greater diversity than ever before. More and more women earn their own livelihood; a lot of them take on the role of chief wage earner in their families. But the women are fighting for equal rights with men in business and professional matters. They are against discrimination of women in receiving managers and supervisors positions and not regularly receiving the same pay for the same work that men do. Thus women have formed “liberation” groups that are militantly campaigned for the removal of differences in pay and job opportunities for women, a campaign that resulted in 1972 in the proposal of an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution.

A result of this is that within the home the women in the USA have become much more nearly a partner than she was in the past, or than she is in many parts of the world. The husband shares with his wife the responsibilities of maintaining the home – helping with the housework, caring for children, and doing shopping. With both partners working outside the home, they believe that the duties within the home should not fall upon one person.

As you see, American women are very independent. Many members of feminist organizations believe that equality of men and women still requires changing the traditional role of women in the society.