Family

outline:  characterization

importance

types of families – plus and cons (includes small and big families)

changes – women rights, divorces, functions then and now

my own family – roles, my opinion on a subject

Family is a basic social group united through bonds of kinship or marriage. Ideally, the family provides its members with protection, companionship, security and socialization. The structure of the family and the needs that family fulfills vary from society to society. The nuclear family, compounded of two adults and their children, is the main unit in some societies. In other societies it is only one ring of chain called extended family, which includes grandparents and other relatives.

Our family is the institution which provides us the care which we need from our very beginning. It supports us with love, which is very important for us, especially in the early stage of our lives. The family helps us to get to know a piece of the world, where we live. I dare to say that the family gives us the very first education and also parents teach their children to speak.

Children who grow up out of family (crèche) lack emotional rear, they don’t have a place which they can call “home”, a place to where they can return anytime they want, a place where they feel safe.

Family provides us a roof above our heads. Nothing is same as home. Parents care for their children financially. Children don’t have to care about money and they have food to eat. But there are also exceptions, things vary from society to society. Except all this family gives all needed support for children’s making life decision, such as making selection in a huge variety of high schools.

By the 1970s, the nuclear family hasn’t been the only one type of family. There have been another types of families since then, such as the one-parent family, the step family, the homosexual family and the childless family.

One-parent families in the past were usually the result of the death of one parent. Now most one-parent families are the result of divorce or unmarried mothers bear children. Children from this type of family usually live with their mother. However, I think that it is better for a child to grow up with both of the parents. When you don’t have both parents there is always something missing.

Another type is the stepfamily. It can be created by a new marriage of a single parent. In stepfamily problems in relations between nonbiological parents and children may generate tension. When both remarried parents have their own child there can rise a disagreement between this children. I think that it may be tough for a child to accept a new mother or father into their life.

Childless families may be the result of choice of parents. They may prefer to build their career and postpone having a child. In the past the reason of not having a child might be the infertility of one of the partners. This can be also the problem of today’s couples but people have more opportunities of adoption nowadays and the conception can be also made in laboratory on condition that one of the partner isn’t totally infertile.

Homosexual couple can also live together as a family more openly today. These couples also have the opportunity of adoption.

Family as a conception and as itself has gone through many changes for past 40 years. Today people usually live together for a longer time before they get married. The reason may be economical or simply they don’t feel like bounding. There many unmarried couples and it isn’t nothing strange nowadays if a unmarried couple has a child.

The role of men has also changed. Man is not any longer the head of family. I think that the roles of both parents are divided 50/50 at present. Women’s word has a bigger account. The family doesn’t also depend only on father’s money because women also work and they have more employment opportunities nowadays.

Another change is that parents normally bring up 2 children at present. The family with many children is rare and the only-child family may be preferred in the present world.

The family also doesn’t so many functions as it used to have. Other institutions take care of economic production, education and religion. The bounds between family members aren’t any more so tight – the world has changed, life is faster, parents are more focused on their job.

There are also more divorces. Divorce used to be a forbidden fruit in the past. It wasn’t acceptable by religion and law used to be very strict in this matter. People feel free for divorce nowadays. There are many reasons why people get divorced – financial, their relationship isn’t good, sexual, etc.

My family isn’t too large. I have one older brother and no cousins from the mother’s side. I don’t really know my father’s side of family because he came from Slovakia, I have only met his father and sister with her husband and two sons. My mother has the leading role in my family and she takes care of bills and paperwork.

In the future I would like to have 2 children – a boy and a girl. I would get married not sooner than at the age of 26 and I would get married because I would love my wife.