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German Family Structure

It is difficult to present an accurate overview of any large cultural group because there are in any such group a range of expressions of the common culture. However, this important caveat aside, it is certainly possible to distinguish broad cultural differences between one group of people and another: Germans are not absolutely different from the Irish or Micronesians, but they are also certainly distinguishable in clear ways from other groups. This paper examines the traditional German family structure and how it is connected to larger cultural values with German society as a whole.

German society has been (and remains) generally patriarchal. This is true of European societies in general, of course, and women in German society have certainly had a greater degree of freedom than that granted to women in southern European cultures where women often led lives almost entirely separate from men and often had the most minimal of personal freedoms. The traditional German family structure gave to men authority in their households and an active role in the workplace while women were supposed to dedicate themselves to the "three K's" - children of Kinder (children), Kirche (church), and Knche (kitchen) - with Kleider (clothes) sometimes thrown in. Just as husbands had authority over their wives so mothers had authority over their children, who were expected to be obedient and hard-working (a fairly common cultural trait in agricultural societies).

This relegation to the private sphere began to break down in Germany as elsewhere as industrialization moved young women as well as men into the cities and into the factories and a German women joined with others across the globe to demand the same legal and political rights as men. Women would increase their importance within the family structure and within German society as a whole through the role that they took on after World War II:

Throughout the 20th century, however, women have gradu...

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German Family Structure. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 11:28, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1688119.html