Nuclear Family Essay

986 Words4 Pages
The term “nuclear family” is a title given by social scientists to describe a family structure that became popular in western countries after World War two. Considered to be proof of the preferred social status of the privileged, it was a patriarchal family, consisting of a man as head-of-household, his wife as domestic keeper and care giver to their biological children Before this form of family gained its popularity, families consisted of anyone and everyone, from servants to what we would consider extended family The second half of this century has seen a marked decline of the “nuclear family “in popularity, causing some debate as to whether this can be perceived as disintegration or a natural social willingness to diversify. The decline of the overall occurrence of the nuclear family can be contributed to any number of changes seen in society over the years; such as divorce, government welfare systems, personal preferences/choice and women’s rights, gay rights and blended families to name a few . The question as to whether or not the “nuclear family” is breaking down or disintegrating is technically irrelevant. By using words such as “disintegrating” it is assuming families are weakened and disadvantaged by not being “nuclear”. This does not take into consideration that the term “family” in itself, is an ever changing entity based upon the needs and wants of those in which it contains A “nuclear family” is simply a structure in which a family can arrange itself. “Nuclear” families are not breaking down as such; it is more that they are redundant in a tradition sense. They are a nostalgic idealist view of what some social scientists believe a family “should” consist of , they have since evolved, in a modern sense, to be part of a broad range of family structures. In the early days of the “nuclear family”, divorce was rare and usually only initiated by the male
Open Document