American Family Transformation

The Transformation of the American Family

The “American family” has gone through some dramatic changes over the last fifty years or so, and all we have to do is turn on our televisions to see the transformation. During the cold war era, the American family, or the nuclear family as it was known, was portrayed in television and movies as a white husband, his white wife, and their 2.5 white kids. Merriam-Webster dictionary still defines the nuclear family as “a family group that consists only of father, mother, and children.” However, a lot has changed from the days of the bomb shelter. Those images of Ozzy and Harriet and their kids running happily in their small suburban home are long gone. In their place are images of what has become the “Modern Family,” where two gay men are raising an adopted

Back in the 1950’s, an idea like this would never be brought up, but the following years was a time where women became more independent and began to move away from automatically becoming mothers. Instead, they wanted to take part in the workforce and have more freedom. “My plans — professionally, daily, long-term, even just for vacation — are free from all the contingencies that come with children” (Sandler, 2013).

A lot has changed over the last 50 or 60 years for the traditional American family. At one time, the average American family was made up of the white husband, wife, and 2.5 kids. Now, the American family can be made of either a man and a woman and their kids, a gay couple with adopted children, just the husband and wife who never get around to having children, or the family that is made up of people who are coming from divorce and who bring the children from their previous marriages together into an entirely new