Institution of the Family
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The family is seen as an endangered institution and as an institution under attack. The nuclear family has been held out as the "ideal" family structure, and many have been opining in recent years that the nuclear family seems to be disappearing in a world where divorce and unwed motherhood are occurring at high rates. Many families today are single-parent families with only a mother in the household. There may be different reasons why this is so. Unwed mothers represent one type of single-parent families where the mother is forced to be the sole parent and has always been the sole parent as far as the child is concerned. Widows represent another type of single-parent household, and divorced women represent still another. Proposals have been made as to what families should be like and how to achieve this supposed ideal, and there is a political movement to return to "traditional values," by which is meant a stronger family. It is not clear what can be done to strengthen the family. It is clear that the family was never the rock-solid institution it has been made out to be and that in the past, it was held together as much by economics as by a dedication to the family or a sense of moral duty. Two things should be done about the family today: 1) provide supports to strengthen the family in every way possible, following a number of proposals offered for doing so, from better education to better jobs; and 2) stop demonizing alternative family structures because they ar
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le family lifestyles (Buchsbaum 3).
The Democrats often take a more open view of what constitutes a legitimate family, and they also believe some government programs are necessary and helpful.
The nature of the debate really begins, however, with the question of what constitutes a family, and that is the issue that has to be decided first in order to develop a means for strengthening the family as a unit and for turning aside many of the forces that are tearing the family apart. There is a centrist position in the debate, but that position also begins at the same starting point:
The belief that married-couple families are superior is probably the most pervasive prejudice about family life in the Western world, and the centrists are busy transmuting it into a social scientific "truth." They claim that research demonstrates that having two married, biological parents is the passport to a child's welfare, and thereby to society's welfare. . . Claiming that research proves that divorce and unwed motherhood inflict devastating harm on children, centrists seek to revive the social stigma that once marked these "selfish" practices (Stacey 120).
Too often, of course, this aspect of the debate makes it seem as if these practices w
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Approximate Word count = 1378
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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