essay on familial relationships in modern society

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Importance of Family Relationships

Categories: Family Relationships Parent-Child Relationship

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Published: Aug 31, 2023

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Emotional support and security, healthy development and identity formation, nurturing communication skills, shared traditions and cultural heritage, crisis support and resilience, socialization and moral development, interpersonal skills and conflict resolution, elderly care and generational exchange, building strong communities and societal cohesion, conclusion: the enduring significance of family bonds.

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Essay on Family in Modern Society

Students are often asked to write an essay on Family in Modern Society in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on Family in Modern Society

The role of family.

Family is the cornerstone of society, providing love, support, and guidance. In modern society, families take on various forms, reflecting diversity and progress.

Changing Family Structures

Traditional nuclear families are evolving. Now, we see single-parent, blended, and same-sex parent families. These changes reflect societal acceptance and adaptability.

Family and Society

Families shape societal norms and values. They teach us about relationships, responsibility, and empathy. Thus, families play a crucial role in molding future citizens.

Challenges Faced by Families

Modern families face issues like work-life balance, digital distractions, and societal pressures. Overcoming these challenges strengthens family bonds.

250 Words Essay on Family in Modern Society

Introduction.

Family, a fundamental social unit, has been the cornerstone of society since time immemorial. In modern society, however, the concept of family has evolved significantly, reflecting socio-economic changes and progressive values.

The Evolution of Family Structure

Historically, the conventional family structure was a patriarchal one, with a clear division of roles. Today, we see a shift towards egalitarian families. The rise of dual-income families, single-parent families, and diverse family structures, such as LGBTQ+ families, signifies this change.

Role of Technology

Technology has redefined familial bonds. Digital platforms enable families separated by geographical boundaries to maintain connections. Yet, concerns regarding technology-induced isolation within families persist.

The Impact of Modern Lifestyles

Modern lifestyles have imposed challenges on families. The increased pace of life, emphasis on individual achievements, and economic pressures often lead to stress and reduced family time. However, this has also fostered a culture of resilience and adaptability among families.

Family in modern society is a dynamic entity, constantly adapting to socio-cultural changes. Despite the challenges posed by modernity, the essence of family as a supportive, loving unit perseveres. As society continues to evolve, so will the concept of family, reflecting the diversity and complexity of human relationships.

500 Words Essay on Family in Modern Society

Changing structure of family.

The traditional nuclear family, once the cornerstone of societal structure, has been replaced by a variety of family forms. Single-parent households, same-sex families, cohabiting couples, and multi-generational households are now commonplace. This shift reflects societal changes such as the acceptance of diverse sexual orientations, the rise in divorce rates, and economic factors that encourage multi-generational living. Despite these changes, the family remains a crucial unit for socialization, providing emotional support and shaping individual identity.

Challenges to the Family Institution

Modern society presents numerous challenges to the family. Globalization and technological advancements have led to increased mobility and communication, disrupting traditional family bonds. The rise of individualism and the shift towards a more career-oriented society have also impacted the time and energy devoted to family life. Additionally, economic pressures, such as the need for dual incomes, have further strained familial relationships.

The Role of Family in Social Stability

Despite these challenges, the family continues to play a vital role in maintaining social stability. It serves as the primary institution for the socialization of children, instilling societal norms, values, and cultural heritage. The family also provides an essential support network, offering emotional, financial, and health-related assistance to its members. Furthermore, it contributes to societal cohesion by forging inter-familial and community relationships.

Adapting to Modern Society

In response to modern societal changes, families have shown remarkable adaptability. Flexible work arrangements, for instance, have allowed parents to balance their professional and familial responsibilities. Technology, while often seen as a disruptor, has also enabled families to stay connected across geographical distances. Moreover, the acceptance of diverse family structures has allowed for the redefinition of family roles, contributing to a more inclusive society.

In conclusion, the family in modern society is a dynamic institution, continually evolving and adapting to societal changes. Despite facing numerous challenges, it remains a fundamental unit of society, providing socialization, support, and stability. As society continues to evolve, so too will the concept of family, reflecting the diverse and complex nature of modern life. Understanding these changes is crucial for shaping social policies that support families in their myriad forms.

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Modern Families: Intimate and Personal Relationships Essay

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Introduction

Qualitative analysis, reference list, appendix: interview questions and responses.

Parenting and family experiences have changed significantly over the last century, owing to healthy lifestyle choices and the impact of modern society. To provide light on some of the difficulties faced by modern families, this paper will discuss the family of a close relative, Queen (pseudonym), and draw on research to explain how social influences impact her family history. Additionally, the study explores family across place to demonstrate how the nation in which my relative was born may have affected their family’s experiences, perspectives and decisions. Since Queen’s family lived in the United States and my family resided in England, this paper presents an integrated comparison of household aspects in the two countries. That is, the analysis compares and contrasts family facets and experiences in the two national perspectives. Taking care of all family members fosters a responsible culture in which youngsters learn the value of attending to their future children.

Individuals’ perceptions of their families might be shaped by their life experiences. Each family has its own unique perspective on family interactions and gender engagement. I explored Queen’s upbringing and family’s perspective on interaction and gender in my conversation with her. Queen was raised in a typical bourgeoisie Christian family along with two of her siblings. She grew up in a dual parental environment. She was raised in Oneonta, a rural town in northern New York. Contrary to Queen’s family, I grew up in a bourgeoisie Catholic mixed race household in the United Kingdom, where I was raised together with a sibling and two adopted cousins in a dual parenting environment. Like Queen, I also grew up in a very small town. My hometown is Rye, and it lies less than town 2 kilometres from the sea in East Sussex. Family dynamics and interactions have a significant impact on virtues and gender, resulting in both similarities and variations in relation to gender interaction.

Traditionally, women have been responsible for child rearing. However, this has evolved into a shared duty in which all parents engage in various ways in raising their children (Carr and Utz, 2020). One aspect contributing to this new attitude is the pressing necessity to handle the family’s growing requirements in cases when the father is unable to care for his family properly (Hall, 2019). This entails both parents shouldering the challenges of providing for their families while also parenting their children.

With respect to interactions inside the family units, the way individuals define and express meaning might be somewhat different or quite similar. Family communication is critical because it expresses needs, desires and worries that affect how family members all communicate in the community. When Queen’s parents had a disagreement, they discussed it in a courteous and private approach away from Queen and her brother and sister. My parents discussed disagreements more aggressively in front of me and other members of my family. Concerning spirituality and the lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender community (LGBTQ+), Queen’s family was overwhelmingly positive and strong in conveying information that they harboured no negative thoughts or judgments about them. Similarly, because we had family members who were part of the LGBTQ+ community, my parents taught us to accept individuals for who or what they are and not to criticise them.

When it comes to family interactions within the house, from a day of work and school, Queen’s family would gather around the dining table, sans phones, and share their day’s experiences. Nevertheless, when talking after work or school, we rarely met at the family table and spoke; instead, we assembled in the sitting room to watch TV and enjoy our meal. There was a communication breakdown in this context. When it came to explaining education to Queen’s family, her parents were adamant that their children receive higher education.

It was never a choice for Queen or her siblings to seek further education; it was a given. Her father and mother were both teachers, which enabled them to grow up with these principles implanted in them. In contrast, my mother transmitted education more effectively than my father. My parents did not obtain a university education, and my mother always told me and my brothers that we could choose to attend or not since college was not for all. Within a family, there are several modes of interpersonal communication; whether nonverbal or vocal, each home handles it differently. As explained in our different families, these modes of communication are distinct yet teach comparable family values.

Gender and Family Analysis

Men have historically been portrayed as breadwinners and heads of households and should thus actively seek to disassociate themselves from this position to offer sufficient care and attention for the family. The concept of an active father has just lately become a goal, and it was previously not a societal requirement. Within the family, mothers and fathers have long had their own recognised norms (Seltzer, 2019). Women have historically been housewives, while males have assumed the exclusive role of breadwinner. However, gender conventions are evolving in contemporary culture. The percentage of stay-at-home men has risen over the years, and fathers are continually expressing the interest to take adequate time with family members.

Gender roles have a critical part in operations within households. The family is a vital institution that has the potential to provide sufficient care, empowerment and nurturing of talents. Certain families maintain a strong sense of tradition. The family’s wife or mother remains at home to care for the children and do household responsibilities. The male or father figure works to support his family. Many individuals feel that this would be the proper way to do things (Seltzer, 2019). Gender dictates family expectations. This analysis discusses such expectations and their implications for the family. Gender as a sociological phenomenon instead of a biologically determined identity largely explains historical changes in male’s and female’s activities, as well as in culturally defined standards of suitable women’s and men’s behaviour. Gendered conduct is impacted by culturally created views of what constitutes proper behaviour for good fathers and mothers, and mannered individuals while raising the children.

Family is the primary influence on how a person exhibits their gender. Each family demonstrates it uniquely, based on the inspirations and characteristics present (Hammack, Frost and Hughes, 2019). Gender is a social construct that is used to clarify and describe how males and females are perceived. When it comes to determining who played the dominating position in her parents’ relationship, there was none in Queen’s household since both her father and mother were equal partners. They both played similar dominant positions in the relationship that resulted in marital equality. In comparison to my household, my mother was the main provider and had a more dominating position in the union, but my father was the stay-at-home spouse who took on ‘maternal’ responsibilities.

Queen’s parents never used gender to control her or her siblings. Her father did explain etiquette in regard to how a woman should be handled based on her brothers’ gender. Queen and her sister received the same treatment as her brother. Household tasks were distributed equally, and her father used a more expressive schema when offering orders. These instructions were delivered to all youngsters in the home on an equal footing. Conversely, my parents addressed gender expectations in the home differently. I was the only female in my family, and my mother instilled in me the importance of learning to cook and wash dishes. My sibling and cousins were expected to help with outdoor tasks since they were men, as my father had taught them. Discipline was uniformly displayed in Queen’s family. Both of her parents were responsible for imparting punishment to her and her brother and sister, and it was not done in a men or women dominant manner. My parents, on the contrary, handled punishment differently.

My father had more expressed paradigm qualities, but my mother exhibited more functional schema characteristics. They both, however, had a hand in instilling discipline in me and my brothers. The majority of families engage their children in activities while channelling them according to their gender. In Queen’s household, her parents promoted gender-neutral and all-inclusive events. They thought that both women and men activities should not be considered exclusive of the pursuits of the other sex. As with Queen’s parents, my family held the same beliefs on conventional gender-based hobbies. My parents let me and my brothers participate in whatever interests we pleased as long as we remained comfortable.

All parents will eventually have to find their children’s significant other, and their reactions will vary. Queen’s parents were quite accommodating and friendly toward her and her siblings’ close friends, even when they resorted to staying overnight at one another’s residences. When her father met her boyfriend for the first time, he portrayed himself in a harsh manner but was more comfortable with his son’s girlfriend. Both of my parents were quite even in their attitudes and dealings with me and any significant other; however, they were not permitted to stay overnight at our house due to my parents’ religious connection.

Halloween is a favourite holiday in Queen’s family, and it is a great day in the United States. The family is enchanted by the décor, horror film marathons and seasonal delicacies. A visitor from the United States would be devastated to discover that the UK’s Halloween spirit is limited to flyers advertising a children’s frightening storytime at the libraries and a single bin of heartbreaking pumpkins at the food store. On a similar issue, certain sections of the UK commemorate Guy Fawkes Night or Day with balefire and firework displays in November, despite the fact that the holiday does not apply in the United States.

When Queen’s family and I dined together at a United States restaurant for the first time, I was frightened when the waiter pulled my debit card and swiped it following the meal. I was also surprised by the requirement to sign on the receipt, and that is evidently not the usual in the United Kingdom. In most restaurants in the United Kingdom, the waiter delivers the complete credit card reader to the table. As they are watching, the consumer enters the credit card and responds to any on-screen prompts before retrieving the receipt and departing. Though I believe that using a customer’s credit card following a meal creates a security risk because someone may potentially duplicate the card data while the owner is not looking, Queen’s family members like the simplicity of just surrendering their cards to a waiter and letting them handle the rest.

Growing up in the United Kingdom, where October is virtually a month-long festival of pumpkin flavour and apple harvesting, I was somewhat aback to discover that members of Queen’s family in the US do not revere fall in the same manner. I was absolutely perplexed by the concept of consciously planning to view fall leaves. When Queen initially mentioned that some individuals in the United States go for excursions or drives only to view the varying leaves, I could not stop giggling. When she added that this is frequently referred to as “leaf-peeping”, I almost passed out. The United Kingdom is famous for its “drinking culture”, or the mingling and partying that occurs in the country’s numerous cherished bars and nightclubs.

It is a common tradition in the United Kingdom to purchase a round of beverages for a group of friends. It is considered disrespectful to skip one’s turn when a group of people rotates responsibilities. However, while I can understand the advantages of having a designated bartender, I prefer the US technique of autonomous drink-buying, which allows one to drink at their own speed and not have to worry about keeping track of their friends’ booze consumption. In the UK, unless you are a frequent patron, it is uncommon to open a single bottle of beer on a bar tab. Although gratuities are not required, they are appreciated.

In the United States, patriotism is a way of life. A person flying an American flag at the front of their house or showing up for lunch with a red, blue and white headband would not raise a red flag with Queen’s family or other Americans. It is also common to see patriotic bumper stickers on automobiles in the US, as well as lyrics in popular songs about being an American. British patriotism, at least in the cities where I have lived, is much different from American patriotism. Donning an England flag on your yard or wearing an England T-shirt every day is not anything I have ever witnessed. People and families in the United Kingdom are not as obsessed with ‘doing’ patriotism as their American counterparts.

There is no huge fuss about blow-drying one’s hair or plugging an electronic toothbrush in the bathtub in the US. Family members are not permitted to have power outlets in their bathroom in the UK unless they are at least three feet away from the tubs or bath, which is not often practical in small bathrooms. Electric showers are rather prevalent in shower stalls, despite the fact that they are not permitted in the UK. These machines use electricity to heat the water, so even if the water heater fails, a person will still take a shower. They are activated by pressing a button, and they often have a shower nozzle and temperature controls.

Cost of Living

Poor and middle-class families feel the pain of increasing living costs far more acutely than their wealthier counterparts. Housing becomes unaffordable as living costs escalate. Despite the dramatic growth in salaries over the decades, housing expenses have continued to increase at a higher rate (Hammack, Frost and Hughes, 2019). When income is compared to rental costs historically, rent has steadily consumed a greater share of monthly salary year after year. Housing, medical services, and education expenditures continue to utilise an increasing percentage of household budgets and have increased faster than salaries (Seltzer, 2019). The modern middle-class households work longer hours, deal with new types of stress and take on bigger financial hazards than prior generations. The cost of living affects a household’s socioeconomic status and has a significant impact on other elements of family life such as healthcare, schooling, religion, political involvement and encounters with the justice system.

A family’s cost of living might be increased by altering the lifestyle. Such lifestyle adjustments may be geographical or situational in nature. A situational adjustment that increases the cost of living may include a person choosing to dine at more upscale restaurants or purchasing a vehicle with costlier monthly payments. A high cost of living may result in an increase in crime. A significant augment in the cost of living has the potential to drive an individual towards bribery; the core of corruption. The rising cost of living makes it more difficult for a person to maintain a certain quality of life (Chambers, 2017). Although the cost of living is critical, the majority of people would prefer obtaining higher pay. If the living costs are low, earnings are sometimes limited as well. Long-term financial prospects are frequently better in more expensive places, with greater earnings that are not countered by a rising standard of living.

England is not a cheap place to reside in, but compared to the United States, it is a cheaper option. The cost of living in London is $4,750 per month, compared to $5,800 per month in New York City, for a family of four to afford. Some shocks await an American family relocating to the United Kingdom. For instance, a gallon of fuel costs $6. In August 2021, the average price of gasoline in the United States was a little under $4 a gallon. Prescription medication expenses are highly subsidised by the National Health Service (Mouratidis, 2018). Most locals, as well as a small percentage of newcomers, pay for their own private health insurance, allowing them to avoid long waits for specialist consultations.

For any household, utility expenditures may be astronomical. Basic utility prices in London are around 60 percent more expensive than in New York City. The price of an education in a private school is significantly lower (Chambers, 2017). London’s pre-school and kindergarten costs are 27% less expensive than New York City’s. Prices for food in New York City restaurants and supermarkets are often greater than they are in London. The cost of going around New York City, whether by subway, bus or cab, is quite low. However, in New York City, internet service costs around 50% more than in London. To determine the cost of living in a nation or area, economists and statisticians consider the level of income needed to maintain an average standard of living (Chambers, 2017). The cost of living is a measure of how much money one may spend on necessities such as food and clothes as well as healthcare, education, and transportation. English living costs are 0.5 percent cheaper than American living costs on this wide metric. English rent is 23% cheaper than in the United States.

Family and gender equality communication play a significant influence in a household’s customs and culture. The values of each family may differ, yet they may still be represented in a variety of ways, depending on how they were conveyed. Attributable to our families’ upbringings, Queen and I might have come from quite different backgrounds, yet we nevertheless share many of the same ideals. Our families portrayed distinct theoretical backgrounds when it comes to how they socialised and communicated. However, despite the fact that not all families are conventional and flawless, theories of interaction and gender can have a broad variety of viewpoints. Parents have difficulties in carrying out their parental obligations to the best of their abilities while also juggling the demands of their professional lives. Fathers have historically been depicted as breadwinners and heads of households and should thus actively seek to disassociate themselves from this standpoint to offer adequate care and attention for the family. Gender roles have a significant part in operations within families. An individual or family’s ability to maintain an average standard of living is taken into consideration by economists when calculating a country’s cost of living index. It is cheaper to live in England than America.

Carr, D. and Utz, R. (2020) ‘Families in later life: a decade in review’, Journal of Marriage and Family , 82 (1), pp. 346-363. Web.

Chambers, D. (2017) ‘ Networked intimacy: algorithmic friendship and scalable sociality ’, European Journal of Communication , 32 (1), pp. 26-36. Web.

Hall, S. (2019) ‘ Everyday austerity: towards relational geographies of family, friendship and intimacy ’, Progress in Human Geography , 43 (5), pp. 769-789. Web.

Hammack, P., Frost, D. and Hughes, S. (2019) ‘Queer intimacies: a new paradigm for the study of relationship diversity’, The Journal of Sex Research , 56 (4-5), pp. 556-592. Web.

Mouratidis, K. (2018) ‘Built environment and social well-being: how does urban form affect social life and personal relationships?’, Cities , 74 , pp. 7-20. Web.

Seltzer, J. (2019) ‘Family change and changing family demography’, Demography , 56 (2), pp. 405-426. Web.

When and where were you born?

I was born in Oneonta, in America in 1995.

Which part of the world did you grow up in?

I grew up in Oneonta before moving to New York City a few years ago.

Do you have any brothers or sisters?

Yes, I have two siblings: a brother and a sister. Both are far older than I am and have families.

Communication

Is there a method your parents used to resolve a disagreement when they were having one?

The conflicts between my parents were always handled in a courteous and private style, away from me and my siblings.

Do you think your parents had a bad or favourable attitude toward the LGBTQ+ community because of their religious beliefs?

My family was upbeat and strong in conveying the word that they did not have negative sentiments or judgments about them or their situation. My parents had the conviction that sexual orientation is intrinsic to who one is and should not be used as a basis for discrimination, violence, abuse, or any form of ill-treatment.

What methods did your family use to communicate with one another after a hard day at work and school?

My family members would gather around the dining table without our phones in sight, and we would share our day’s events with one another.

When you were talking with your siblings, how would you describe the degree of interaction that existed between you and them?

We used to care for and respect one another, and that has remained the case. This is primarily due to our upbringing and the positive influence of our parents on us.

What methods did your parents use to explain the significance of education to you as a child?

I remember my parents being adamant about the fact that we would go to college. It was never a question of if or not I and my siblings would go on to further education; it was just something that was expected of us. Due to the fact that my father and mother were both teachers, they were able to instil these strong beliefs in us, their children.

In your family, who was the most powerful person in the room? And why was this so?

None of my parents had the ability to exert dominance over the other in the relationship since they were equal partners in the union. They each played the same dominating roles in the relationship, which resulted in their marriage being equal in every way.

Is it true that your parents taught you manners that were special to your gender? What, specifically, were they?

My parents never used my gender or the gender of my siblings to influence us. My father did emphasise proper etiquette in relation to my brother’s gender, specifically in connection to how a girl should be handled.

Did your mother and father discipline you in a different way than you would have expected them to? Describe the distinctions between the two.

In my family, everyone was held to the same standards of behaviour. When it came to transmitting discipline to me and my brother and sister, both of my parents were in charge, and it was never done in a way that indicated man or woman supremacy.

Did you ever get the impression that your parents were favouring you over your brother and sister when it came to engaging in specific chores or activities? If so, how would you describe it?

My sister and I were handled in the same way as my brother was. Household tasks were distributed equally, and my father preferred to use more of an expressive schema when giving directives. These instructions were delivered to all of the youngsters in the home on an equal basis. Gender activities were encouraged in my household since they were seen as equal and inclusive of all. My parents believed that actions carried out by women or men should not be considered exclusive of those carried out by people of the opposing sex.

What was your family’s reaction when you announced that you were bringing a close friend into the house?

I and my brother or sister’s close acquaintances were treated with great courtesy and hospitality by my parents, even when it meant spending the night at one another’s homes.

Was there a difference in response between you and your brothers?

When it came to my father’s first meeting with the girls’ boyfriends, he conducted himself in a strict manner; but, when it came to my brother’s friends, he appeared more relaxed.

What would you consider the typical American family’s way of life?

October 31st is one of my favourite holidays, and it is a great celebration in the United States. The décor, zombie film marathons and seasonal sweets are all things I enjoy about the holiday season. My favourite part of dining out is when the waiter takes my credit card and swipes it after the meal is over. My family members like the ease of just providing our credit cards to the waiters and letting them to take care of the meal payment on their behalf. We also like the independent beverage purchasing approach used in the United States. Another characteristic of the United States that my family admires is casual patriotism. For example, we frequently choose to dress in garments that are coloured in the same manner as the American flag. Apart from that, popular music in the United States frequently has lyrics that express pleasure in being an American, and most automobiles have patriotic stickers on them. The fact that I can blow dry my hair or charge my toothbrush in the washroom is not a huge thing in my family or throughout the United States, unlike some other nations such as England.

What is the average cost of living for a family in the United States?

In order to maintain a moderate standard of living in New York, a nuclear family would require an income of around $5,800 per month. In August 2021, the average countrywide price of gasoline in the United States was lingering just under $4 per gallon. When dining out or shopping at a grocery store in the United States, food prices are often expensive, regardless of the eatery. The cost of commuting in New York City, whether by public transit or taxicab, is comparatively inexpensive. However, the prices of internet access are rather high.

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Article contents

Family, culture, and communication.

V. Santiago Arias V. Santiago Arias College of Media and Communication, Texas Tech University
and Narissra Maria Punyanunt-Carter Narissra Maria Punyanunt-Carter College of Media and Communication, Texas Tech University
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.504
Published online: 22 August 2017

Through the years, the concept of family has been studied by family therapists, psychology scholars, and sociologists with a diverse theoretical framework, such as family communication patterns (FCP) theory, dyadic power theory, conflict, and family systems theory. Among these theories, there are two main commonalities throughout its findings: the interparental relationship is the core interaction in the familial system because the quality of their communication or coparenting significantly affects the enactment of the caregiver role while managing conflicts, which are not the exception in the familial setting. Coparenting is understood in its broader sense to avoid an extensive discussion of all type of families in our society. Second, while including the main goal of parenting, which is the socialization of values, this process intrinsically suggests cultural assimilation as the main cultural approach rather than intergroup theory, because intercultural marriages need to decide which values are considered the best to be socialized. In order to do so, examples from the Thai culture and Hispanic and Latino cultures served to show cultural assimilation as an important mediator of coparenting communication patterns, which subsequently affect other subsystems that influence individuals’ identity and self-esteem development in the long run. Finally, future directions suggest that the need for incorporating a nonhegemonic one-way definition of cultural assimilation allows immigration status to be brought into the discussion of family communication issues in the context of one of the most diverse countries in the world.

parental communication
dyadic power
family communication systems
cultural assimilation

Introduction

Family is the fundamental structure of every society because, among other functions, this social institution provides individuals, from birth until adulthood, membership and sense of belonging, economic support, nurturance, education, and socialization (Canary & Canary, 2013 ). As a consequence, the strut of its social role consists of operating as a system in a manner that would benefit all members of a family while achieving what is considered best, where decisions tend to be coherent, at least according to the norms and roles assumed by family members within the system (Galvin, Bylund, & Brommel, 2004 ). Notwithstanding, the concept of family can be interpreted differently by individual perceptions to an array of cultural backgrounds, and cultures vary in their values, behaviors, and ideas.

The difficulty of conceptualizing this social institution suggests that family is a culture-bound phenomenon (Bales & Parsons, 2014 ). In essence, culture represents how people view themselves as part of a unique social collective and the ensuing communication interactions (Olaniran & Roach, 1994 ); subsequently, culture provides norms for behavior having a tremendous impact on those family members’ roles and power dynamics mirrored in its communication interactions (Johnson, Radesky, & Zuckerman, 2013 ). Thus, culture serves as one of the main macroframeworks for individuals to interpret and enact those prescriptions, such as inheritance; descent rules (e.g., bilateral, as in the United States, or patrilineal); marriage customs, such as ideal monogamy and divorce; and beliefs about sexuality, gender, and patterns of household formation, such as structure of authority and power (Weisner, 2014 ). For these reasons, “every family is both a unique microcosm and a product of a larger cultural context” (Johnson et al., 2013 , p. 632), and the analysis of family communication must include culture in order to elucidate effective communication strategies to solve familial conflicts.

In addition, to analyze familial communication patterns, it is important to address the most influential interaction with regard to power dynamics that determine the overall quality of family functioning. In this sense, within the range of family theories, parenting function is the core relationship in terms of power dynamics. Parenting refers to all efforts and decisions made by parents individually to guide their children’s behavior. This is a pivotal function, but the quality of communication among people who perform parenting is fundamental because their internal communication patterns will either support or undermine each caregiver’s parenting attempts, individually having a substantial influence on all members’ psychological and physical well-being (Schrodt & Shimkowski, 2013 ). Subsequently, parenting goes along with communication because to execute all parenting efforts, there must be a mutual agreement among at least two individuals to conjointly take care of the child’s fostering (Van Egeren & Hawkins, 2004 ). Consequently, coparenting serves as a crucial predictor of the overall family atmosphere and interactions, and it deserves special attention while analyzing family communication issues.

Through the years, family has been studied by family therapists, psychology scholars, and sociologists, but interaction behaviors define the interpersonal relationship, roles, and power within the family as a system (Rogers, 2006 ). Consequently, family scholarship relies on a wide range of theories developed within the communication field and in areas of the social sciences (Galvin, Braithwaite, & Bylund, 2015 ) because analysis of communication patterns in the familial context offers more ecological validity that individuals’ self-report measures. As many types of interactions may happen within a family, there are many relevant venues (i.e., theories) for scholarly analysis on this subject, which will be discussed later in this article in the “ Family: Theoretical Perspectives ” section. To avoid the risk of cultural relativeness while defining family, this article characterizes family as “a long-term group of two or more people related through biological, legal, or equivalent ties and who enact those ties through ongoing interactions providing instrumental and/or emotional support” (Canary & Canary, 2013 , p. 5).

Therefore, the purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the most relevant theories in family communication to identify frustrations and limitations with internal communication. Second, as a case in point, the United States welcomes more than 50 million noncitizens as temporary visitors and admits approximately 1 million immigrants to live as lawful residents yearly (Fullerton, 2014 ), this demographic pattern means that nearly one-third of the population (102 million) comes from different cultural backgrounds, and therefore, the present review will incorporate culture as an important mediator for coparenting, so that future research can be performed to find specific techniques and training practices that are more suitable for cross-cultural contexts.

Family: Theoretical Perspectives

Even though the concept of family can be interpreted individually and differently in different cultures, there are also some commonalities, along with communication processes, specific roles within families, and acceptable habits of interactions with specific family members disregarding cultural differences. This section will provide a brief overview of the conceptualization of family through the family communication patterns (FCP) theory, dyadic power theory, conflict, and family systems theory, with a special focus on the interparental relationship.

Family Communication Patterns Theory

One of the most relevant approaches to address the myriad of communication issues within families is the family communication patterns (FCP) theory. Originally developed by McLeod and Chaffee ( 1973 ), this theory aims to understand families’ tendencies to create stable and predictable communication patterns in terms of both relational cognition and interpersonal behavior (Braithwaite & Baxter, 2005 ). Specifically, this theory focuses on the unique and amalgamated associations derived from interparental communication and its impact on parenting quality to determine FCPs and the remaining interactions (Young & Schrodt, 2016 ).

To illustrate FCP’s focus on parental communication, Schrodt, Witt, and Shimkowski ( 2014 ) conducted a meta-analysis of 74 studies (N = 14,255) to examine the associations between the demand/withdraw family communication patterns of interaction, and the subsequent individual, relational, and communicative outcomes. The cumulative evidence suggests that wife demand/husband withdraw and husband demand/wife withdraw show similar moderate correlations with communicative and psychological well-being outcomes, and even higher when both patterns are taken together (at the relational level). This is important because one of the main tenets of FCP is that familial relationships are drawn on the pursuit of coorientation among members. Coorientation refers to the cognitive process of two or more individuals focusing on and assessing the same object in the same material and social context, which leads to a number of cognitions as the number of people involved, which results in different levels of agreement, accuracy, and congruence (for a review, see Fitzpatrick & Koerner, 2005 ); for example, in dyads that are aware of their shared focus, two different cognitions of the same issue will result.

Hereafter, the way in which these cognitions are socialized through power dynamics determined socially and culturally by roles constitutes specific interdependent communication patterns among family members. For example, Koerner and Fitzpatrick ( 2006 ) provide a taxonomy of family types on the basis of coorientation and its impact on communication pattern in terms of the degree of conformity in those conversational tendencies. To wit, consensual families mostly agree for the sake of the hierarchy within a given family and to explore new points of view; pluralistic families allow members to participate equally in conversations and there is no pressure to control or make children’s decisions; protective families maintain the hierarchy by making decisions for the sake of achieving common family goals; and laissez-faire families, which are low in conversation and conformity orientation, allow family members to not get deeply involved in the family.

The analysis of family communication patterns is quintessential for family communication scholarly work because it influences forming an individual’s self concept in the long run. As a case in point, Young and Schrodt ( 2016 ) surveyed 181 young adults from intact families, where conditional and interaction effects between communication patterns and conformity orientation were observed as the main predictors of future romantic partners. Moreover, this study concluded that FCPs and interparental confirmation are substantial indicators of self-to-partner confirmation, after controlling for reciprocity of confirmation within the romantic relationship. As a consequence, FCP influences children’s and young adults’ perceptions of romantic behavior (e.g., Fowler, Pearson, & Beck, 2010 ); the quality of communication behavior, such as the degree of acceptation of verbal aggression in romantic dyads (e.g., Aloia & Solomon, 2013 ); gender roles; and conflict styles (e.g., Taylor & Segrin, 2010 ), and parental modeling (e.g., Young & Schrodt, 2016 ).

This suggests three important observations. First, family is a very complex interpersonal context, in which communication processes, specific roles within families, and acceptable habits of interactions with specific family members interact as subsystems (see Galvin et al., 2004 ; Schrodt & Shimkowski, 2013 ). Second, among those subsystems, the core interaction is the individuals who hold parenting roles (i.e., intact and post divorced families); the couple (disregarding particular sexual orientations), and, parenting roles have a reciprocal relationship over time (Le, McDaniel, Leavitt, & Feinberg, 2016 ). Communication between parenting partners is crucial for the development of their entire family; for example, Schrodt and Shimkowski ( 2013 ) conducted a survey with 493 young adult children from intact (N = 364) and divorced families (N = 129) about perceptions of interparental conflict that involves triangulation (the impression of being in the “middle” and feeling forced to display loyalty to one of the parents). Results suggest that supportive coparental communication positively predicts relational satisfaction with mothers and fathers, as well as mental health; on the other hand, antagonist and hostile coparental communication predicted negative marital satisfaction.

Consequently, “partners’ communication with one another will have a positive effect on their overall view of their marriage, . . . and directly result[ing in] their views of marital satisfaction” (Knapp & Daly, 2002 , p. 643). Le et al. ( 2016 ) conducted a longitudinal study to evaluate the reciprocal relationship between marital interaction and coparenting from the perspective of both parents in terms of support or undermining across the transition to parenthood from a dyadic perspective; 164 cohabiting heterosexual couples expecting their first child were analyzed from pregnancy until 36 months after birth. Both parents’ interdependence was examined in terms of three variables: gender difference analysis, stability over time in marriage and coparenting, and reciprocal associations between relationship quality and coparenting support or undermining. The findings suggest a long-term reciprocal association between relationship quality and coparenting support or undermining in heterosexual families; the quality of marriage relationship during prenatal stage is highly influential in coparenting after birth for both men and women; but, coparenting is connected to romantic relationship quality only for women.

Moreover, the positive association between coparenting and the parents’ relationship relates to the spillover hypothesis, which posits that the positive or negative factors in the parental subsystem are significantly associated with higher or lower marital satisfaction in the spousal subsystem, respectively. Ergo, overall parenting performance is substantially affected by the quality of marital communication patterns.

Dyadic Power

In addition, after analyzing the impact of marital interaction quality in families on marital satisfaction and future parental modeling, it is worth noting that marital satisfaction and coparenting are importantly mediated by power dynamics within the couple (Halstead, De Santis, & Williams, 2016 ), and even mediates marital commitment (e.g., Lennon, Stewart, & Ledermann, 2013 ). If the quality of interpersonal relationship between those individuals who hold parenting roles determines coparenting quality as well, then the reason for this association lies on the fact that virtually all intimate relationships are substantially characterized by power dynamics; when partners perceive more rewards than costs in the relationship, they will be more satisfied and significantly more committed to the relationship (Lennon et al., 2013 ). As a result, the inclusion of power dynamics in the analysis of family issues becomes quintessential.

For the theory of dyadic power, power in its basic sense includes dominance, control, and influence over others, as well as a means to meet survival needs. When power is integrated into dyadic intimate relationships, it generates asymmetries in terms of interdependence between partners due to the quality of alternatives provided by individual characteristics such as socioeconomic status and cultural characteristics such as gender roles. This virtually gives more power to men than women. Power refers to “the feeling derived from the ability to dominate, or control, the behavior, affect, and cognitions of another person[;] in consequence, this concept within the interparental relationship is enacted when one partner who controls resources and limiting the behavioral options of the other partner” (Lennon et al., 2013 , p. 97). Ergo, this theory examines power in terms of interdependence between members of the relationship: the partner who is more dependent on the other has less power in the relationship, which, of course, directly impact parenting decisions.

As a case in point, Worley and Samp ( 2016 ) examined the balance of decision-making power in the relationship, complaint avoidance, and complaint-related appraisals in 175 heterosexual couples. Findings suggest that decision-making power has a curvilinear association, in which individuals engaged in the least complaint avoidance when they were relatively equal to their partners in terms of power. In other words, perceptions of one another’s power potentially encourage communication efficacy in the interparental couple.

The analysis of power in intimate relationships, and, to be specific, between parents is crucial because it not only relates to marital satisfaction and commitment, but it also it affects parents’ dyadic coping for children. In fact, Zemp, Bodenmann, Backes, Sutter-Stickel, and Revenson ( 2016 ) investigated parents’ dyadic coping as a predictor of children’s internalizing symptoms, externalizing symptoms, and prosocial behavior in three independent studies. When there is a positive relationship among all three factors, the results indicated that the strongest correlation was the first one. Again, the quality of the marital and parental relationships has the strongest influence on children’s coping skills and future well-being.

From the overview of the two previous theories on family, it is worth addressing two important aspects. First, parenting requires an intensive great deal of hands-on physical care, attention to safety (Mooney-Doyle, Deatrick, & Horowitz, 2014 ), and interpretation of cues, and this is why parenting, from conception to when children enter adulthood, is a tremendous social, cultural, and legally prescribed role directed toward caregiving and endlessly attending to individuals’ social, physical, psychological, emotional, and cognitive development (Johnson et al., 2013 ). And while parents are making decisions about what they consider is best for all family members, power dynamics play a crucial role in marital satisfaction, commitment, parental modeling, and overall interparental communication efficacy in the case of postdivorce families. Therefore, the likelihood of conflict is latent within familial interactions while making decisions; indeed, situations in which family members agree on norms as a consensus is rare (Ritchie & Fitzpatrick, 1990 ).

In addition to the interparental and marital power dynamics that delineates family communication patterns, the familial interaction is distinctive from other types of social relationships in the unequaled role of emotions and communication of affection while family members interact and make decisions for the sake of all members. For example, Ritchie and Fitzpatrick ( 1990 ) provided evidence that fathers tended to perceive that all other family members agree with his decisions or ideas. Even when mothers confronted and disagreed with the fathers about the fathers’ decisions or ideas, the men were more likely to believe that their children agreed with him. When the children were interviewed without their parents, however, the majority of children agreed with the mothers rather than the fathers (Ritchie & Fitzpatrick, 1990 ). Subsequently, conflict is highly present in families; however, in general, the presence of conflict is not problematic per se. Rather, it is the ability to manage and recover from it and that could be problematic (Floyd, 2014 ).

One of the reasons for the role of emotions in interpersonal conflicts is explained by the Emotion-in-Relationships Model (ERM). This model states that feelings of bliss, satisfaction, and relaxation often go unnoticed due to the nature of the emotions, whereas “hot” emotions, such as anger and contempt, come to the forefront when directed at a member of an interpersonal relationship (Fletcher & Clark, 2002 ). This type of psychophysical response usually happens perhaps due to the different biophysical reactive response of the body compared to its reaction to positive ones (Floyd, 2014 ). There are two dimensions that define conflict. Conflict leads to the elicitation of emotions, but sometimes the opposite occurs: emotions lead to conflict. The misunderstanding or misinterpretation of emotions among members of a family can be a source of conflict, as well as a number of other issues, including personality differences, past history, substance abuse, mental or physical health problems, monetary issues, children, intimate partner violence, domestic rape, or maybe just general frustration due to recent events (Sabourin, Infante, & Rudd, 1990 ). In order to have a common understanding of this concept for the familial context in particular, conflict refers to as “any incompatibility that can be expressed by people related through biological, legal, or equivalent ties” (Canary & Canary, 2013 , p. 6). Thus, the concept of conflict goes hand in hand with coparenting.

There is a myriad of everyday family activities in which parents need to decide the best way to do them: sometimes they are minor, such as eating, watching TV, or sleeping schedules; others are more complicated, such as schooling. Certainly, while socializing and making these decisions, parents may agree or not, and these everyday situations may lead to conflict. Whether or not parents live together, it has been shown that “the extent to which children experience their parents as partners or opponents in parenting is related to children’s adjustment and well-being” (Gable & Sharp, 2016 , p. 1), because the ontology of parenting is materialized through socialization of values about every aspect and duty among all family members, especially children, to perpetuate a given society.

As the findings provided in this article show, the study of family communication issues is pivotal because the way in which those issues are solved within families will be copied by children as their values. Values are abstract ideas that delineate behavior toward the evaluation of people and events and vary in terms of importance across individuals, but also among cultures. In other words, their future parenting (i.e., parenting modeling) of children will replicate those same strategies for conflict solving for good or bad, depending on whether parents were supportive between each other. Thus, socialization defines the size and scope of coparenting.

The familial socialization of values encompasses the distinction between parents’ personal execution of those social appraisals and the values that parents want their children to adopt, and both are different things; nonetheless, familial socialization does not take place in only one direction, from parents to children. Benish-Weisman, Levy, and Knafo ( 2013 ) investigated the differentiation process—or, in other words, the distinction between parents’ own personal values and their socialization values and the contribution of children’s values to their parents’ socialization values. In this study, in which 603 Israeli adolescents and their parents participated, the findings suggest that parents differentiate between their personal values and their socialization values, and adolescents’ values have a specific contribution to their parents’ socialization values. As a result, socialization is not a unidirectional process affected by parents alone, it is an outcome of the reciprocal interaction between parents and their adolescent children, and the given importance of a given value is mediated by parents and their culture individually (Johnson et al., 2013 ). However, taking power dynamics into account does not mean that adolescents share the same level of decision-making power in the family; thus, socialization take place in both directions, but mostly from parents to children. Finally, it is worth noticing that the socialization of values in coparenting falls under the cultural umbrella. The next section pays a special attention to the role of culture in family communication.

The Role of Culture in Parenting Socialization of Values

There are many individual perceived realities and behaviors in the familial setting that may lead to conflict among members, but all of them achieve a common interpretation through culture; indeed, “all family conflict processes by broad cultural factors” (Canary & Canary, 2013 , p. 46). Subsequently, the goal of this section is to provide an overview of the perceived realities and behaviors that exist in family relationships with different cultural backgrounds. How should one approach the array of cultural values influencing parental communication patterns?

An interesting way of immersing on the role of culture in family communication patterns and its further socialization of values is explored by Schwartz ( 1992 ). The author developed a value system composed of 10 values operationalized as motivational goals for modern society: (a) self-direction (independence of thought and action); (b) stimulation (excitement, challenge, and novelty); (c) hedonism (pleasure or sensuous gratification); (d) achievement (personal success according to social standards); (e) power (social status, dominance over people and resources); (f) conformity (restraint of actions that may harm others or violate social expectations); (g) tradition (respect and commitment to cultural or religious customs and ideas); (h) benevolence (preserving and enhancing the welfare of people to whom one is close); (i) universalism (understanding, tolerance, and concern for the welfare of all people and nature); and (j) security (safety and stability of society, relationships, and self).

Later, Schwartz and Rubel ( 2005 ) applied this value structure, finding it to be commonly shared among over 65 countries. Nevertheless, these values are enacted in different ways by societies and genders about the extent to which men attribute more relevance to values of power, stimulation, hedonism, achievement, and self-direction, and the opposite was found for benevolence and universalism and less consistently for security. Also, it was found that all sex differences were culturally moderated, suggesting that cultural background needs to be considered in the analysis of coparental communication when socializing those values.

Even though Schwartz’s work was more focused on individuals and societies, it is a powerful model for the analysis of the role of culture on family communication and parenting scholarships. Indeed, Schwartz et al. ( 2013 ) conducted a longitudinal study with a sample of 266 Hispanic adolescents (14 years old) and their parents that looked at measures of acculturation, family functioning, and adolescent conduct problems, substance use, and sexual behavior at five time points. Results suggest that higher levels of acculturation in adolescents were linked to poorer family functioning; however, overall assimilation negatively predicted adolescent cigarette smoking, sexual activity, and unprotected sex. The authors emphasize the role of culture, and acculturation patterns in particular, in understanding the mediating role of family functioning and culture.

Ergo, it is crucial to address the ways in which culture affects family functioning. On top of this idea, Johnson et al. ( 2013 ) observed that Western cultures such as in the United States and European countries are oriented toward autonomy, favoring individual achievement, self-reliance, and self-assertiveness. Thus, coparenting in more autonomous countries will socialize to children the idea that achievement in life is an outcome of independence, resulting in coparenting communication behaviors that favor verbal praise and feedback over physical contact. As opposed to autonomy-oriented cultures, other societies, such as Asian, African, and Latin American countries, emphasize interdependence over autonomy; thus, parenting in these cultures promotes collective achievement, sharing, and collaboration as the core values.

These cultural orientations can be observed in parents’ definitions of school readiness and educational success; for Western parents, examples include skills such as counting, recognizing letters, or independently completing tasks such as coloring pictures, whereas for more interdependent cultures, the development of obedience, respect for authority, and appropriate social skills are the skills that parents are expecting their children to develop to evaluate school readiness. As a matter of fact, Callaghan et al. ( 2011 ) conducted a series of eight studies to evaluate the impact of culture on the social-cognitive skills of one- to three-year-old children in three diverse cultural settings such as Canada, Peru, and India. The results showed that children’s acquisition of specific cognitive skills is moderated by specific learning experiences in a specific context: while Canadian children were understanding the performance of both pretense and pictorial symbols skillfully between 2.5 and 3.0 years of age, on average, Peruvian and Indian children mastered those skills more than a year later. Notwithstanding, this finding does not suggest any kind of cultural superiority; language barriers and limitations derived from translation itself may influence meanings, affecting the results (Sotomayor-Peterson, De Baca, Figueredo, & Smith-Castro, 2013 ). Therefore, in line with the findings of Schutz ( 1970 ), Geertz ( 1973 ), Grusec ( 2002 ), Sotomayor-Peterson et al. ( 2013 ), and Johnson et al. ( 2013 ), cultural values provide important leverage for understanding family functioning in terms of parental decision-making and conflict, which also has a substantial impact on children’s cognitive development.

Subsequently, cultural sensitivity to the analysis of the familial system in this country needs to be specially included because cultural differences are part of the array of familial conflicts that may arise, and children experience real consequences from the quality of these interactions. Therefore, parenting, which is already arduous in itself, and overall family functioning significantly become troublesome when parents with different cultural backgrounds aim to socialize values and perform parenting tasks. The following section provides an account of these cross-cultural families.

Intercultural Families: Adding Cultural Differences to Interparental Communication

For a country such as the United States, with 102 million people from many different cultural backgrounds, the presence of cross-cultural families is on the rise, as is the likelihood of intermarriage between immigrants and natives. With this cultural diversity, the two most prominent groups are Hispanics and Asians, particular cases of which will be discussed next. Besides the fact that parenting itself is a very complex and difficult task, certainly the biggest conflict consists of making decisions about the best way to raise children in terms of their values with regard to which ethnic identity better enacts the values that parents believe their children should embrace. As a result, interracial couples might confront many conflicts and challenges due to cultural differences affecting marital satisfaction and coparenting.

Assimilation , the degree to which a person from a different cultural background has adapted to the culture of the hostage society, is an important phenomenon in intermarriage. Assimilationists observe that children from families in which one of the parents is from the majority group and the other one from the minority do not automatically follow the parent from the majority group (Cohen, 1988 ). Indeed, they follow their mothers more, whichever group she belongs to, because of mothers are more prevalent among people with higher socioeconomic status (Gordon, 1964 ; Portes, 1984 ; Schwartz et al., 2013 ).

In an interracial marriage, the structural and interpersonal barriers inhibiting the interaction between two parents will be reduced significantly if parents develop a noncompeting way to communicate and solve conflicts, which means that both of them might give up part of their culture or ethnic identity to reach consensus. Otherwise, the ethnic identity of children who come from interracial marriages will become more and more obscure (Saenz, Hwang, Aguirre, & Anderson, 1995 ). Surely, parents’ noncompeting cultural communication patterns are fundamental for children’s development of ethnic identity. Biracial children develop feelings of being outsiders, and then parenting becomes crucial to developing their strong self-esteem (Ward, 2006 ). Indeed, Gordon ( 1964 ) found that children from cross-racial or cross-ethnic marriages are at risk of developing psychological problems. In another example, Jognson and Nagoshi ( 1986 ) studied children who come from mixed marriages in Hawaii and found that the problems of cultural identification, conflicting demands in the family, and of being marginal in either culture still exist (Mann & Waldron, 1977 ). It is hard for those mixed-racial children to completely develop the ethnic identity of either the majority group or the minority group.

The question of how children could maintain their minority ethnic identity is essential to the development of ethnic identity as a whole. For children from interracial marriage, the challenge to maintain their minority ethnic identity will be greater than for the majority ethnic identity (Waters, 1990 ; Schwartz et al., 2013 ) because the minority-group spouse is more likely to have greater ethnic consciousness than the majority-group spouse (Ellman, 1987 ). Usually, the majority group is more influential than the minority group on a child’s ethnic identity, but if the minority parent’s ethnicity does not significantly decline, the child’s ethnic identity could still reflect some characteristics of the minority parent. If parents want their children to maintain the minority group’s identity, letting the children learn the language of the minority group might be a good way to achieve this. By learning the language, children form a better understanding of that culture and perhaps are more likely to accept the ethnic identity that the language represents (Xin & Sandel, 2015 ).

In addition to language socialization as a way to contribute to children’s identity in biracial families, Jane and Bochner ( 2009 ) indicated that family rituals and stories could be important in performing and transforming identity. Families create and re-create their identities through various kinds of narrative, in which family stories and rituals are significant. Festivals and rituals are different from culture to culture, and each culture has its own. Therefore, exposing children to the language, rituals, and festivals of another culture also could be helpful to form their ethnic identity, in order to counter problems of self-esteem derived from the feeling of being an outsider.

To conclude this section, the parenting dilemma in intercultural marriages consists of deciding which culture they want their children to be exposed to and what kind of heritage they want to pass to children. The following section will provide two examples of intercultural marriages in the context of American society without implying that there are no other insightful cultures that deserve analysis, but the focus on Asian-American and Hispanics families reflects the available literature (Canary & Canary, 2013 ) and its demographic representativeness in this particular context. In addition, in order to acknowledge that minorities within this larger cultural background deserve more attention due to overemphasis on larger cultures in scholarship, such as Chinese or Japanese cultures, the Thai family will provide insights into understanding the role of culture in parenting and its impact on the remaining familial interaction, putting all theories already discussed in context. Moreover, the Hispanic family will also be taken in account because of its internal pan-ethnicity variety.

An Example of Intercultural Parenting: The Thai Family

The Thai family, also known as Krob Krua, may consist of parents, children, paternal and maternal grandparents, aunts, uncles, grandchildren, in-laws, and any others who share the same home. Thai marriages usually are traditional, in which the male is the authority figure and breadwinner and the wife is in charge of domestic items and the homemaker. It has been noted that Thai mothers tend to be the major caregivers and caretakers in the family rather than fathers (Tulananda, Young, & Roopnarine, 1994 ). On the other hand, it has been shown that Thai mothers also tend to spoil their children with such things as food and comfort; Tulananda et al. ( 1994 ) studied the differences between American and Thai fathers’ involvement with their preschool children and found that American fathers reported being significantly more involved with their children than Thai fathers. Specifically, the fathers differed in the amount of socialization and childcare; Thai fathers reported that they obtained more external support from other family members than American fathers; also, Thai fathers were more likely to obtain support for assisting with daughters than sons.

Furthermore, with regard to the family context, Tulananda and Roopnarine ( 2001 ) noted that over the years, some attention has been focused on the cultural differences among parent-child behaviors and interactions; hereafter, the authors believed that it is important to look at cultural parent-child interactions because that can help others understand children’s capacity to socialize and deal with life’s challenges. As a matter of fact, the authors also noted that Thai families tend to raise their children in accordance with Buddhist beliefs. It is customary for young Thai married couples to live with either the wife’s parents (uxorilocal) or the husband’s parents (virilocal) before living on their own (Tulananda & Roopnarine, 2001 ). The process of developing ethnicity could be complicated. Many factors might influence the process, such as which parent is from the minority culture and the cultural community, as explained in the previous section of this article.

This suggests that there is a difference in the way that Thai and American fathers communicate with their daughters. As a case in point, Punyanunt-Carter ( 2016 ) examined the relationship maintenance behaviors within father-daughter relationships in Thailand and the United States. Participants included 134 American father-daughter dyads and 154 Thai father-daughter dyads. The findings suggest that when quality of communication was included in this relationship, both types of families benefit from this family communication pattern, resulting in better conflict management and advice relationship maintenance behaviors. However, differences were found: American fathers are more likely than American daughters to employ relationship maintenance behaviors; in addition, American fathers are more likely than Thai fathers to use relationship maintenance strategies.

As a consequence, knowing the process of ethnic identity development could provide parents with different ways to form children’s ethnic identity. More specifically, McCann, Ota, Giles, and Caraker ( 2003 ), and Canary and Canary ( 2013 ) noted that Southeast Asian cultures have been overlooked in communication studies research; these countries differ in their religious, political, and philosophical thoughts, with a variety of collectivistic views and religious ideals (e.g., Buddhism, Taoism, Islam), whereas the United States is mainly Christian and consists of individualistic values.

The Case of Hispanic/Latino Families in the United States

There is a need for including Hispanic/Latino families in the United States because of the demographic representativeness and trends of the ethnicity: in 2016 , Hispanics represent nearly 17% of the total U.S. population, becoming the largest minority group. There are more than 53 million Hispanics and Latinos in the United States; in addition, over 93% of young Hispanics and Latinos under the age of 18 hold U.S. citizenship, and more than 73,000 of these people turn 18 every month (Barreto & Segura, 2014 ). Furthermore, the current Hispanic and Latino population is spread evenly between foreign-born and U.S.-born individuals, but the foreign-born population is now growing faster than the number of Hispanic children born in the country (Arias & Hellmueller, 2016 ). This demographic trend is projected to reach one-third of the U.S. total population by 2060 ; therefore, with the growth of other minority populations in the country, the phenomenon of multiracial marriage and biracial children is increasing as well.

Therefore, family communication scholarship has an increasing necessity to include cultural particularities in the analysis of the familial system; in addition to the cultural aspects already explained in this article, this section addresses the influence of familism in Hispanic and Latino familial interactions, as well as how immigration status moderates the internal interactions, reflected in levels of acculturation, that affect these families negatively.

With the higher marriage and birth rates among Hispanics and Latinos living in the United States compared to non-Latino Whites and African American populations, the Hispanic familial system is perhaps the most stereotyped as being familistic (Glick & Van Hook, 2008 ). This family trait consists of the fact that Hispanics place a very high value on marriage and childbearing, on the basis of a profound commitment to give support to members of the extended family as well. This can be evinced in the prevalence of extended-kind shared households in Hispanic and Latino families, and Hispanic children are more likely to live in extended-family households than non-Latino Whites or blacks (Glick & Van Hook, 2008 ). Living in extended-family households, most likely with grandparents, may have positive influences on Hispanic and Latino children, such as greater attention and interaction with loving through consistent caregiving; grandparents may help by engaging with children in academic-oriented activities, which then affects positively cognitive educational outcomes.

However, familism is not the panacea for all familial issues for several reasons. First, living in an extended-family household requires living arrangements that consider adults’ needs more than children’s. Second, the configuration of Hispanic and Latino households is moderated by any immigration issues with all members of the extended family, and this may cause problems for children (Menjívar, 2000 ). The immigration status of each individual member may produce a constant state of flux, whereas circumstances change to adjust to economic opportunities, which in turn are limited by immigration laws, and it gets even worse when one of the parents isn’t even present in the children’s home, but rather live in their home country (Van Hook & Glick, 2006 ). Although Hispanic and Latino children are more likely to live with married parents and extended relatives, familism is highly affected by the immigration status of each member.

On the other hand, there has been research to address the paramount role of communication disregarding the mediating factor of cultural diversity. For example, Sotomayor-Peterson et al. ( 2013 ) performed a cross-cultural comparison of the association between coparenting or shared parental effort and family climate among families from Mexico, the United States, and Costa Rica. The overall findings suggest what was explained earlier in this article: more shared parenting predicts better marital interaction and family climate overall.

In addition, parenting quality has been found to have a positive relationship with children’s developmental outcomes. In fact, Sotomayor-Peterson, Figueredo, Christensen, and Taylor ( 2012 ) conducted a study with 61 low-income Mexican American couples, with at least one child between three and four years of age, recruited from a home-based Head Start program. The main goal of this study was to observe the extent that shared parenting incorporates cultural values and income predicts family climate. The findings suggest that the role of cultural values such as familism, in which family solidarity and avoidance of confrontation are paramount, delineate shared parenting by Mexican American couples.

Cultural adaptation also has a substantial impact on marital satisfaction and children’s cognitive stimulation. Indeed, Sotomayor-Peterson, Wilhelm, and Card ( 2011 ) investigated the relationship between marital relationship quality and subsequent cognitive stimulation practices toward their infants in terms of the actor and partner effects of White and Hispanic parents. The results indicate an interesting relationship between the level of acculturation and marital relationship quality and a positive cognitive stimulation of infants; specifically, marital happiness is associated with increased cognitive stimulation by White and high-acculturated Hispanic fathers. Nevertheless, a major limitation of Hispanic acculturation literature has been seen, reflecting a reliance on cross-sectional studies where acculturation was scholarly operationalized more as an individual difference variable than as a longitudinal adaptation over time (Schwartz et al., 2013 ).

Culture and Family Communication: the “so what?” Question

This article has presented an entangled overview of family communication patterns, dyadic power, family systems, and conflict theories to establish that coparenting quality plays a paramount role. The main commonality among those theories pays special attention to interparental interaction quality, regardless of the type of family (i.e., intact, postdivorce, same-sex, etc.) and cultural background. After reviewing these theories, it was observed that the interparental relationship is the core interaction in the familial context because it affects children from their earlier cognitive development to subsequent parental modeling in terms of gender roles. Thus, in keeping with Canary and Canary ( 2013 ), no matter what approach may be taken to the analysis of family communication issues, the hypothesis that a positive emotional climate within the family is fostered only when couples practice a sufficient level of shared parenting and quality of communication is supported.

Nevertheless, this argument does not suggest that the role of culture in the familial interactions should be undersold. While including the main goal of parenting, which is the socialization of values, in the second section of this article, the text also provides specific values of different countries that are enacted and socialized differently across cultural contexts to address the role of acculturation in the familial atmosphere, the quality of interactions, and individual outcomes. As a case in point, Johnson et al. ( 2013 ) provided an interesting way of seeing how cultures differ in their ways of enacting parenting, clarifying that the role of culture in parenting is not a superficial or relativistic element.

In addition, by acknowledging the perhaps excessive attention to larger Asian cultural backgrounds (such as Chinese or Japanese cultures) by other scholars (i.e., Canary & Canary, 2013 ), an insightful analysis of the Thai American family within the father-daughter relationship was provided to exemplify, through the work of Punyanunt-Carter ( 2016 ), how specific family communication patterns, such as maintenance relationship communication behaviors, affect the quality of familial relationships. Moreover, a second, special focus was put on Hispanic families because of the demographic trends of the United States, and it was found that familism constitutes a distinctive aspect of these families.

In other words, the third section of this article provided these two examples of intercultural families to observe specific ways that culture mediates the familial system. Because one of the main goals of the present article was to demonstrate the mediating role of culture as an important consideration for family communication issues in the United States, the assimilationist approach was taken into account; thus, the two intercultural family examples discussed here correspond to an assimilationist nature rather than using an intergroup approach.

This decision was made without intending to diminish the value of other cultures or ethnic groups in the country, but an extensive revision of all types of intercultural families is beyond the scope of this article. Second, the assimilationist approach forces one to consider cultures that are in the process of adapting to a new hosting culture, and the Thai and Hispanic families in the United States comply with this theoretical requisite. For example, Whites recognize African Americans as being as American as Whites (i.e., Dovidio, Gluszek, John, Ditlmann, & Lagunes, 2010 ), whereas they associate Hispanics and Latinos with illegal immigration in the United States (Stewart et al., 2011 ), which has been enhanced by the U.S. media repeatedly since 1994 (Valentino et al., 2013 ), and it is still happening (Dixon, 2015 ). In this scenario, “ask yourself what would happen to your own personality if you heard it said over and over again that you were lazy, a simple child of nature, expected to steal, and had inferior blood? . . . One’s reputation, whether false or true, cannot be hammered, hammered, hammered, into one’s head without doing something to one’s character” (Allport, 1979 , p. 142, cited in Arias & Hellmueller, 2016 ).

As a consequence, on this cultural canvas, it should not be surprising that Lichter, Carmalt, and Qian ( 2011 ) found that second-generation Hispanics are increasingly likely to marry foreign-born Hispanics and less likely to marry third-generation or later coethnics or Whites. In addition, this study suggests that third-generation Hispanics and later were more likely than in the past to marry non-Hispanic Whites; thus, the authors concluded that there has been a new retreat from intermarriage among the largest immigrant groups in the United States—Hispanics and Asians—in the last 20 years.

If we subscribe to the idea that cultural assimilation goes in only one direction—from the hegemonic culture to the minority culture—then the results of Lichter, Carmalt, and Qian ( 2011 ) should not be of scholarly concern; however, if we believe that cultural assimilation happens in both directions and intercultural families can benefit both the host and immigrant cultures (for a review, see Schwartz et al., 2013 ), then this is important to address in a country that just elected a president, Donald Trump, who featured statements racially lambasting and segregating minorities, denigrating women, and criticizing immigration as some of the main tenets of his campaign. Therefore, we hope that it is clear why special attention was given to the Thai and Hispanic families in this article, considering the impact of culture on the familial system, marital satisfaction, parental communication, and children’s well-being. Even though individuals with Hispanic ancentry were in the United States even before it became a nation, Hispanic and Latino families are still trying to convince Americans of their right to be accepted in American culture and society.

With regard to the “So what?” question, assimilation is important to consider while analyzing the role of culture in family communication patterns, power dynamics, conflict, or the functioning of the overall family system in the context of the United States. This is because this country is among the most popular in the world in terms of immigration requests, and its demographics show that one out of three citizens comes from an ethnic background other than the hegemonic White culture. In sum, cultural awareness has become pivotal in the analysis of family communication issues in the United States. Furthermore, the present overview of family, communication, and culture ends up supporting the idea of positive associations being derived from the pivotal role of marriage relationship quality, such that coparenting and communication practices vary substantially within intercultural marriages moderated by gender roles.

Culture is a pivotal moderator of these associations, but this analysis needs to be tethered to societal structural level, in which cultural differences, family members’ immigration status, media content, and level of acculturation must be included in family research. This is because in intercultural marriages, in addition to the tremendous parenting role, they have to deal with cultural assimilation and discrimination, and this becomes important if we care about children’s cognitive development and the overall well-being of those who are not considered White. As this article shows, the quality of familial interactions has direct consequences on children’s developmental outcomes (for a review, see Callaghan et al., 2011 ).

Therefore, the structure and functioning of family has an important impact on public health at both physiological and psychological levels (Gage, Everett, & Bullock, 2006 ). At the physiological level, the familial interaction instigates expression and reception of strong feelings affecting tremendously on individuals’ physical health because it activates neuroendocrine responses that aid stress regulation, acting as a stress buffer and accelerating physiological recovery from elevated stress (Floyd & Afifi, 2012 ; Floyd, 2014 ). Robles, Shaffer, Malarkey, and Kiecolt-Glaser ( 2006 ) found that a combination of supportive communication, humor, and problem-solving behavior in husbands predicts their wives’ cortisol and adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH)—both physiological factors are considered as stress markers (see 2006 ). On the other hand, the psychology of individuals, the quality of family relationships has major repercussions on cognitive development, as reflected in educational attainment (Sohr-Preston et al., 2013 ), and highly mediated by cultural assimilation (Schwartz et al., 2013 ), which affects individuals through parenting modeling and socialization of values (Mooney-Doyle, Deatrick, & Horowitz, 2014 ).

Family Change in Global Perspective: How and Why Family Systems Change

Author Note

Changes in family systems that have occurred over the past half century throughout the Western world are now spreading across the globe to nations that are experiencing economic development, technological change, and shifts in cultural beliefs. Traditional family systems are adapting in different ways to a series of conditions that forced shifts in all Western nations. In this paper, I examine the causes and consequences of global family change, introducing a recently funded project using the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and U.S. Census Bureau data to chart the pace and pattern of changes in marriage and family systems in low- and middle-income nations.

Global Family Changes

I still vividly recall from my graduate student days at Columbia University more than a half century ago noted sociologist William J. Goode strutting around the lecture hall complaining that we do not have a good general theory about why and how family systems are changing globally. Of course, he didn’t use the term “globally” explicitly because the word was not yet in fashion. In the mid-1960s, Goode made the theoretical argument that there would be a transformation in family systems around the world, from longstanding traditional forms to the “conjugal household.” With this term he was suggesting that family systems around the world would eventually converge with the Western model of the nuclear family—comprised of a married couple and their children in a single household, rather than multigenerational or complex households. Goode contended that the conjugal family was most compatible with the growth of market capitalism and a job-based economy. Consequently, he speculated that the Western system would eventually spread across the globe. Evidence of rapid economic growth and the development of a modern economy that have come to be called “globalism” had already moved beyond the West in the early post-War era to parts of Asia, just as Goode was completing his book World Revolution and Family Patterns (1963), which contained data from 50 countries and analyzed the impact of family on societies.

In what became a classic analysis of change in family systems, Goode (1963) assembled a large array of extant data describing recent patterns in a number of the world’s regional family systems. He convincingly demonstrated that over time, traditional agricultural-based economies and the family systems to which they had given rise were being undermined by the growth of job-based economies and the spread of Western ideas. At the same time, family patterns that had been in place around the globe were yielding to more Western-style practices such as the growing expectation of strong marital bonds, lower fertility, and fewer intergenerational households.

Goode (1963) argued that the Western family system had changed to fit (adapt to) an economy that increasingly required more education and geographical mobility. These changes in turn would erode the authority of family elders and reduce their formal control over their children, he asserted. Modern family systems in the West, he predicted, would initiate free mate choice based on compatibility and sentiment rather than on family interests or parental control. Finally, he showed that these modern features of Western family systems were being adopted in many regions of the world in the aftermath of the World War II.

Had Goode (1963) been able to imagine the revolution in gender roles that was also just on the horizon, he might have pointed to it as another major change in family systems. However, he was largely unable to foresee the events of the next several decades whereby the gender-based division of labor still observed in the West in the 1960s would give way to a growing demand for gender equality, although he hinted at this possibility (see Cherlin, 2012 ; Furstenberg, 2013 ). More recently, some theorists have examined the weakening of gender stratification as an independent source of family adaptation to economic growth ( Esping-Andersen, 2009 ; Esping-Andersen & Billari, 2015 ; Goldscheider, Bernhardt, & Lappegard, 2015 ; McDonald, 2000 ).

Nonetheless, Goode’s masterwork (1963) influenced the writing of the next generation of sociologists and demographers who studied global and regional patterns of change in family systems. Although his theoretical perspective included the possibility that ideational change (i.e., a shift in cultural values) might precede or follow structural changes in family systems, a number of theorists, in response, emphasized and even prioritized the importance of value change through social diffusion (e.g., see Coale & Watkins, 1986 ; Hendi, 2017 ; Johnson-Hanks et al., 2011 ; Watkins, 1990 ) Just as Max Weber (1905) argued in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism more than a century earlier, these theorists have argued that culture is an independent influence on changing preferences for individual choice, a value set that is often seen as an export from the West. However, researchers— Caldwell, 1976 ; Inglehart, 1990 ; Lesthaeghe and Surkyn, 1988 ; Thornton, 2001 ; Van de Kaa, 1987 ; among others—have challenged the underlying assumption of economic determinism that they saw in Goode’s theory.

In a book on changing family systems titled Between Sex and Power: Family in the World —in some sense a sequel to Goode’s (1963) book from 40 years earlier— Therborn (2004) argued for the separate influence of law and public policy as an independent institutional driver of change both in the developed and developing worlds. Others have pointed to the potentially causal influence of changing demographic pressures owing to declines in mortality and fertility that prompted changes in the timing of life events such as marriage and childbearing ages ( Bianchi, 2014 ; Bongaarts, 2015 ; Bongaarts, Mensch, & Blanc, 2017 ; Hertrich, 2017 ). Along the same line, reproductive technology has brought about new possibilities in the timing and organization of the life course, indicating that technology can also have an independent influence on change in family patterns ( Golombok et al. 1995 ; Inhorn, Birenbaum, & Carneli, 2008 ).

These broad theories of why and how family systems change have stimulated a sizeable body of national and regional studies on patterns of family change throughout the world ( Allendorf & Pandian, 2016 ; Amador, 2016 ; Cuesta, Rios-Salas, & Meyer, 2017 ; Kumagai, 2010 ; Kuo & Raley, 2016 ; Seltzer, 2004 ; Seltzer et al., 2005 ; Thornton et al., 2014 ; etc.). Yet, it is still fair to say that since the publication of Goode’s (1993) book more than a half century ago, there has been no systematic attempt to test in the broadest sense his theory of how change in family systems occurs or the competing explanations that have been advanced in response to his bold predictions using demographic data on a global scale.

Nonetheless, the idea of a growing convergence in fertility patterns has become a major topic of inquiry among demographers and economists ( Casterline & National Research Council, 2001 ; Coleman, 2002 ; Crenshaw, Christenson, & Oakey, 2000 ; Dorius, 2008 ; Hendi, 2017 ; Rindfuss, Choe, & Brauner-Otto, 2016 ; Wilson, 2001 , 2011 ). Even taking account of this distinct line of research, a broader investigation of how and why family systems change over time, much less the systematic testing of Goode’s broad theory and the responses to it, has been stymied by the absence of comparable data on global family systems. The availability of such data would permit the empirical examination of competing explanations of the transformation of family systems in response to economic, cultural, social, demographic, and political change.

This paper examines some of the issues that must be addressed before family scholars can develop and test theoretical explanations for why and how family systems change. I begin by enumerating the major changes that have occurred in families across the globe, before introducing a conceptual framework for investigating why change is coming about more rapidly in some regions of the world than in others. After describing why systems are changing, I turn to a particular feature of the change: growing patterns of inequality that are being generated by diverging family patterns across social class strata. Finally, I conclude by describing an ongoing project through which colleagues and I are assembling extensive and reliable data to study these issues.

Worldwide Changing Family Practices

Broadly speaking, it is easy to argue that some degree of convergence in family patterns worldwide, as presented below, has already occurred, particularly if the terrain is restricted to marriage and fertility, although researchers have noted continuing evidence of heterogeneity as well ( Holland, 2017 ; Pesando & the GFC team, in press ).

The age at first marriage has been rising in most nations of the world ( Jones & Yeung, 2014 ). This pattern was evident in Western Europe and English-speaking countries during the latter third of the last century and has continued into the present ( Stevenson & Wolfers, 2007 ). It is now evident that similar changes have occurred more recently in virtually all countries in Eastern Europe, large areas of East Asia (with some important exceptions. such as much of India, China, Indonesia, and Vietnam), and part of Africa and Latin America ( Bongaarts, Mensch, & Blanc, 2017 ; García & de Oliveira, 2011 ; Harwood-Lejeune, 2001 ; Raymo et al., 2015 ). Although not uniform, the pattern is sufficiently widespread to lead most researchers to conclude that the institution of marriage is undergoing profound changes in most parts of the world in response to economic and social change ( Cherlin, 2012 ).
The rise in the age at first marriage is just one reason for the general decline in fertility that has occurred worldwide except in rural Africa and parts of the Middle East ( Bongaarts, 1978 ; Casterline, 2017 ; Madsen, Moslehi, & Wang, 2018 ). As I have already noted, marriage at a later age typically implies less family influence on the choice of partner and perhaps a growth in heterogamous unions, at least initially, as individuals have more options to form families of their own choosing, including remaining single. This pattern has increased in most nations, especially where females have entered the labor force in greater numbers ( Esteve, Garcia-Roman, & Permanyer, 2012 ; Harknett & Kuperberg, 2012). In some family systems, particularly in the economically advanced nations of East Asia, a growing fraction of women seem to be exercising their option to delay marriage indefinitely ( Furstenberg, 2013 ; Jones, 2005 ; Raymo et al., 2015 ). As in the West, marriage is apparently becoming more discretionary in Eastern Europe and parts of Asia ( Jones, Hull, & Mohamad, 2011 ; Thornton & Philipov, 2009 ).
As marriage has become more optional, the practice of cohabitation (before, after, or in lieu of a formal union) has grown throughout the Western world and in Eastern Europe (Heuveline & Timberlake, 2004; Holland, 2017 ; Lundberg, Pollak, & Stearns, 2016 ; Thornton & Philipov, 2009 ). In many nations in Latin America and the Caribbean, where cohabitation has long been a preferred form among certain ethnic and racial minorities, it has become more widely practiced among more economically advantaged individuals who previously confined their unions to formal marriage ( Covre-Sussai et al., 2015 ; Esteve & Lesthaeghe, 2016 ; Esteve, Lesthaeghe, & Lopez-Gay, 2012 ; Lesthaeghe, 2014 ).
Divorce after marriage has become more common in most nations, especially those with previously low rates of marital dissolution ( Surkyn & Lesthaeghe, 2004 ). While marital stability has increased in some countries among the most educated, it has declined at the same time for the less educated and skilled portion of the population ( Schwartz & Han, 2014 ). As marriage has moved to a more companionate form, divorce is increasingly viewed as an acceptable option for couples in unsatisfactory relationships (Goode, 1963; Thornton & Young-DeMarco, 2004 ).
A concomitant trend is the growth of childlessness in families in most wealthy nations, which is associated with declining fertility ( Kreyenfeld & Konietzka, 2017 ; Rowland, 2007 ). In a growing number of nations in Europe, the English-speaking nations, and the advanced economies of Asia such as Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, substantial proportions of women are electing not to have children (and often not to marry ( Jones, 2007 ). Living alone has become more common in many countries of the world as growing numbers of females have entered the labor force and opted not to marry ( Jones, 2005 ). Childlessness appears to be on the rise in East Asia and other rapidly developing parts of the globe.
The rapid growth of women’s participation in the labor force in most developing and almost all developed nations has been accompanied by a change in men and women’s domestic roles ( Goldscheider, Bernhardt, & Lappegard, 2015 ; McDonald, 2000 ). In many nations, the ideology of gender equality may have grown faster than its actual practice. Nonetheless, throughout the developing and developed world, a push for women’s rights has meant that females now have far more access to education and labor market participation in the 21 st Century ( Duflo, 2012 ; Goldin, 2006 ). And, this trend is only likely to increase as women’s rights are enforced by changes in legal statutes and public policies. Moreover, spousal beating and sexual coercion have been identified as serious problems in countries that at one time legitimized these practices ( Yount, 2009 ).
The weakening of the institution of marriage has been accompanied by a growing tolerance for premarital sexual behavior and out-of-wedlock childbearing ( Thornton & Young-DeMarco, 2004 ). Although much of the non-marital childbearing is occurring within informal unions, the stability of non-marital unions with children is lower than marital unions with children ( Manning, Smock, & Majumdar, 2004 ). This particular trend may be contributing to the growing stratification in family systems between the advantaged and disadvantaged. The privileged are more likely to marry and have children after marriage, whereas those less well-off are having them before or outside of marriage, contributing to a perpetual economic and social disadvantage ( Kalil, 2015 ; Lundberg, Pollak, & Stearns, 2016 ; McLanahan, 2004 ). It is worth noting that in parts of the developing world, the pattern of consensual marriages has long existed, particularly in Latin America and the West Indies ( Esteve & Lesthaeghe, 2016 ).
The stratification of family systems is both a cause and consequence of rising levels of inequality in most nations with advanced economies, and introduces profound differences in children’s opportunities. Among the educated, children are more often the products of intense investment; less educated parents often lack both the resources and the skills to prepare their children for a more demanding educational system in order to acquire the knowledge and skills needed today (Dronkens, Kalmijn & Wagner, 2006; Schneider, Hastings, & LaBriola, 2018 ). In all likelihood this pattern is appearing in developing nations ( Kalil, 2015 ; Pesando & the GFC team, in press ).
Although preferences for intergenerational arrangements continue to prevail in some parts of the world, individuals forming families are increasingly less likely to reside in conjoint and complex households ( Ruggles & Heggeness, 2008 ). The decline of intergenerational households in some nations may also reflect the declining influence of the older generation; in at least some of these nations, there is concern that the elderly may lack traditional family support in later life ( Grundy, 2006 ; Taylor et al., 2018 ).

These trends in marriage and family do not generally occur singly as family systems change from agricultural-based to industrial- and post-industrial based economies. They typically evolve as interrelated changes that co-occur over time, although not necessarily in a predictable or orderly sequence of adaptations to exogenous changes in the economy, polity, technological advances, and alterations in the culture of a society. Demographers have referred to these related features as the second demographic transition ( Lesthaeghe, 2010 , 2014 ; McLanahan, 2004 ). By this they mean that family systems have become more governed by members’ individual preferences than by elders (especially males) who once assumed considerable authority to impose their will on the family as a collective system. As Therborn (2004) argued, the decline of patriarchy appears to be at the core of family system change, although it cannot be considered a cause of it in the strictest sense of the word. More accurately, as I assert in the next section, the changes are brought about by a host of factors that work in tandem to undermine the existing order that is often based on patriarchal expectations.

Why Change Occurs in Family Systems

The transformation of family systems in many regions of the world and in particular nations has been amply documented by demographers, sociologists, and economists cited earlier according to some of the trends just described, but this transformation has not been explained in a strict sense. It is clear that the development of a job-based economy is one of the central sources of change, much as Goode (1963) claimed a half century ago. However, economic development does not take place in isolation from broader societal changes, that is, institutional changes in education, health, law, and the spread of technology alter existing institutions and longstanding cultural assumptions ( Meyer et al., 1975 ).

To illustrate, I have borrowed a conceptual scheme that depicts some of the sources of social change from an ongoing research project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that is designed to examine this process in family systems across the globe and is being carried out by a team of scholars at the University of Pennsylvania, including Hans-Peter Kohler (Project Head), Luca Maria Pesando, Andres Castro, and collaborators in several European nations (see http://web.sas.upenn.edu/gfc ; Pesando & the GFC team, in press). Using data from the worldwide Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), the Global Family Change (GFC) Project has extracted indicators of family change to identify patterns of change in low- and middle-income countries and test the processes by which family system change occurs (see Figure 1 ).

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Determinants of Family Change.

In this research project, my colleagues and I make a fundamental assumption that alterations in family patterns can arise from societal adaptations to a number of different exogenous sources introduced into a society through parallel and often complementary processes. Change in family systems often comes about when transformations in macro-level conditions occur; the most important of these being the transition from a predominately traditional subsistence economy to a production-oriented economy transformed by its capacity to provide exports to agro-business, manufacturing, and industry. This transformation, much as Goode (1963) argued, creates or expands a job-based economy that favors younger and more geographically mobile individuals, including young and typically unmarried women. Economic development is typically centered in urban areas, implying a shift from a rural to an urban population, bringing about a loss of family control, especially when young people in cities often continue to support their kin financially in the countryside.

Such economic developments do not invariably go hand in hand with shifts in cultural expectations and practices, but it is not uncommon to see, especially among the young, a reorientation to more individually-determined lifestyles and a decline in social control by elders, and especially in men’s control of women ( Cherlin, 2012 ). Quite independently, economic development introduces new technologies ( Greenwood, 2019 ). The rapid spread of the use of computers and smart phones has stimulated a growth in the use of social media in developing nations, a powerful influence on younger persons who have quickly adopted these new forms of communication ( Pew Research Center, 2018 ). So, exposure to social influences begins to extend well beyond the family, village institutions, or even national political sources of opinion. Inevitably, peer-mediated contexts begin to hold more weight on public opinion, and the extended family system loses influence accordingly ( Allendorf, 2016 ; Bongaarts & Watkins, 1996 ; Cherlin, 2012 ).

Accompanying and preceding economic development also come alterations in existing political, social, and even religious institutions. The educational system becomes both a channel of mobility and in many nations a new way that families can maintain or achieve advantage if they choose to invest in their children’s long-term futures through schooling. The importance of schooling grows as it extends from primary to secondary institutions, and ultimately to tertiary education for the affluent and the talented. Education itself often presents a powerful counterweight to traditional practices both inside and outside the home, upsetting longstanding cultural understandings. For women, whose presence in secondary and tertiary education has grown to a majority in many countries, the impact of additional schooling can be transformative, eroding traditional gender norms and giving economic advantages to more educated women ( Esteve, Garcia-Roman, & Permanyer, 2012 ; Schwartz & Han, 2014 ).

In the polity and the public sphere, shifts in the opinions of economic and political elites often must take account of the changed economic status of women that comes with education and greater involvement in the labor market. Relatively little is known about the timing of broad institutional changes that bring about women’s greater involvement in the polity. And, lacking systematic data, little is known about how gender involvement in education and work plays out inside the family. Alternatively, changes within family systems may occur in response to cultural ideas about equality that travel through different routes such as mass and social media or come about because of legal or policy changes. Political leaders advocate and adopt new policies that often are imported from rich nations or more economically developed neighbors in the region ( Meyer, 1975 ; Watkins, 2001). New ideas and practices may be imported, but they are typically modified to suit the institutional structures in place and mediated by national traditions and culture that tailor and shape them to conform to existing cultural forms. New policy dilemmas arise in the process of economic development, with the dissemination of new forms of technology, and the spread of cultural ideas and information. Invariably, certain countries must support or ban new reproductive technologies, the content of Western movies and social media, and laws regulating same-sex marriage. Thus, disagreements over public policies related to these practices and issues can happen rapidly, and we suspect independently, of the level and pace of economic development.

It is wrong to assume that the process of economic and social development works invariably from the top down, with those having more education or resources always adopting new family patterns sooner than the rest of the population, but this flow from the well off to the less privileged often occurs ( Pesando & the GFC team, in press ). Changes can simultaneously occur at the macro, mezzo, and micro levels; values can and do change as individuals move from the countryside to the city, or leave their home countries to find work elsewhere ( Hu, 2016 ). Increases in migration to and from other nations are undoubtedly a source of new information, values, and daily practices. Ideas are promulgated through channels of mass and social media that promote educational advancement, individual fulfillment, or gender equality, undermining traditional family patterns sometimes even in nations that are lagging in economic advancement.

At the individual level, change occurs as people confront new and unfamiliar situations as they occur or, at least, are imaginable (such as going to a university, engaging in sex before marriage, or migrating to another country for employment). As Mills (1959) observed decades ago in The Sociological Imagination , cultural contradictions emerge in all societies experiencing change, that compel individuals to adopt new ways of thinking and new forms of behavior. Nowhere is this more evident than in the change that occurs within family systems as older practices no longer seem to have the same cultural grip that they once had. One only has to think about how many people have begun to eschew formal marriage today in the West, adopting social practices such as cohabitation or single parenthood or gay marriage, that were socially unacceptable, even unthinkable, a half century ago ( Biblarz & Savci, 2010 ; Moore & Stambolis-Ruhstorfer, 2013 ).

In sum, social change is an organic and systemic process that permeates a society and its existing institutions. And at the micro-level of individuals and families, it is received or resisted by the powerful and powerless alike. It will not take precisely the same form in all nations because it is mediated by a nation’s historical experience, its cultural priorities, and existing institutional arrangements ( Cook & Furstenberg, 2002 ). Thus, the process of change will vary, producing both similar and dissimilar responses, depending on existing political/historical experience, cultural, and social arrangements. This is why Billari and Liefbroer (2010) asserted that there can be a convergence to divergence when describing patterns of family change.

Where and When Changes in Family Systems Occur

It should be evident from my previous descriptions of the complex and variegated nature of how changes in family systems occur that new patterns and practices are adopted unevenly both across and within various nations. A major reason why the pattern of change is not uniform is that exposure to both economic and cultural changes differs depending on the specific social contexts in which individuals and their families are embedded. Think, for example, of the vast differences in exposure to these changes that living in a capital city of a developing nation versus in a remote area might mean. This is aptly illustrated by the changes in attitude about marriage now occurring in Vietnam where attitudes about marriage timing, cohabitation, and premarital sex differ widely from countryside to urban environments (Minh & Hong, 2015).

A second source of variability in family system changes is that receptivity to new ideas or practices will vary depending on such factors as age, gender, education, ethnic and religious affiliations, and a host of other conditions. For example, adoption of new methods of contraception, say by young unmarried women, can be a sensitive indicator of what might be called a predisposition to modernity when the logic of having large numbers of children becomes questionable for some in a society but not for others. As I have already noted, there are powerful differences in the stakes of adopting new practices that threaten to undermine the way things have long been done in any developing nation. Any adequate theory purporting to explain family system change must account not only for the total change but also for the variable levels of change within a nation.

Historians of family change in the West have made this point repeatedly in noting that change is uneven in any given nation. Such was the case with Protestants in England during the 16 th century who were more open to changing childrearing practices to emphasize a child’s relationship to God than were Catholics ( Stone, 1977 ). The upper classes also adopted new and different ideas concerning childrearing, owing to religious ideology and education than did the rest of the population. Several centuries ago in Western Europe and the United States, urban residents and young people in general were more receptive to growing preferences for individualism and the rise of sentiment in family relationships than were their rural and older counterparts ( Shorter, 1977 ). Similarly, in the developing world today, some groups will be more welcoming of certain new practices than others, depending on the degree to which they are embedded in certain institutional contexts that reinforce a commitment to existing family patterns. Any adequate theory of family change must account for both where it takes hold and how its spreads within nations. The analysis of big data generated by patterns of media use, for example, is potentially an attractive source of information for investigating how change runs through established and new social networks in the developing world.

In early stages of economic and social development, increasing variability in family behaviors within a developing nation is to be expected as new family patterns such as premarital sexual behavior and marriage delay are adopted unevenly, let’s say between rural and urban areas, the more and less educated, or, for example, among some ethnic groups and not others. Over time, this variability may decline as practices become more widely accepted and diffused. But note how differences in family patterns may also persist for long periods of time. One only has to think about how enduring differences have been observed in Europe between the Northern and Southern nations ( Perelli-Harris, 2014 ), or the continuing variation between family patterns such as cohabitation, family size, or the prevalence of intergenerational households in Northern and Southern Italy ( Gabrielli & Hoem, 2010 ).

Economic Inequality and Family Systems

Adaptation to macro-level changes in the economy or mezzo-level changes that occur within institutions creates new winners and losers in the developing world, as has happened in the past in nations with advanced economies (see www.welfare.org ). I have argued elsewhere that an interaction is occurring between changing family systems and growing economic inequality, which has been a trend in virtually all post-industrial economies and many rapidly developing nations ( Furstenberg, 2011 , 2013 ). It is not difficult to imagine why and how family change is amplified by economic divergence and vice versa. For example, educational attainment can be assumed to weigh more heavily on outcomes in economies that utilize advanced skills and knowledge; access to education, especially higher education, may in turn affect the process of family change ( Esping-Anderson, 2016 ).

In the United States and many nations in Europe, destinies among the well off and the not so well off began to diverge in the latter decades of the 20 th century as the nuclear family became increasingly important as both an agency of socialization and parental management of children ( McLanahan, 2004 ). Family forms, such as whether parents marry or even reside together at the time of birth, birthing procedures, maternal health, breastfeeding, styles of parenting, and different abilities of families to manage and place their children in contexts that promote (or diminish) opportunity have new and perhaps more lasting effects than they might have had in the past. Parents’ influence on school performance appears to be growing in societies where educational attainment has become a more important criterion for success in later life. In rich nations, poorer families and middle-income families have begun to fall behind their wealthier counterparts in promoting their children’s level of schooling ( Lareau, 2011 ). Children receiving less intense socialization and particularly preparation for schooling may have fewer potential paths in life than their more educated counterparts to make it into the middle class.

Nations substantially differ in their commitments to reducing the disparities created in advanced economies through the redistribution of public resources and development of policies that attempt to reduce and offset the powerful early influences on children’s development that are associated with lower social class position. Limited efforts by some nations, such as the United States, to mitigate the potent effects of family patterns of socialization have created substantial gaps in children’s life chances ( Smeeding, 2006 ), which is an evitable result of the great differences in resources and the capabilities of parents in many contemporary societies to place their children in settings that will provide them with the skills and training to enter and succeed in school.

The evidence that social class disparities in family systems are growing globally has not been established despite the fact that inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, has grown in all but a few nations over the past several decades ( Bowles, Gintis, & Groves, 2008 ). And there are indications of shifts in family practices, such as marriage and non-marital childbearing, that may be diverging at the top and bottom of the socioeconomic ladder in some Western nations, most notably the United States ( Cherlin, 2010 ; Lundberg, Pollak, & Stearns, 2016 ; McLanahan, 2004 ). However, this divergence in family patterns is also evident in some European nations and may be appearing in certain rapidly developing countries in East Asia ( Bernardi & Boertien, 2017 ; Harkonen, 2017 ).

Although certainly occurring elsewhere, evidence for a widening of social class in family behaviors is most apparent in the United States, where over the past 30 years or more, Americans have lost ground in creating conditions that ensure equality of opportunity—an ideal that Americans have long believed is essential to maintaining a just society ( Chetty et al., 2014 ; Corak, 2013 ). Class differences in family patterns have widened on a variety of fronts even as family variations among racial and ethnic groups have shrunk ( Reardon, 2011 ). In fact, I would contend that Americans now have a two-tiered family system—a system where family patterns among rich and poor have begun to diverge even more sharply than they did a half century ago when sociologists first documented considerable variation ( Furstenberg, 2013 ).

At the bottom and increasingly in the middle of U.S. income distribution, marriage is occurring less often before the transition to parenthood ( Lundberg, Pollak, & Stearns, 2016 ). Many births are less likely to be planned and often occur in ephemeral partnerships; a growing number of lower-income couples are having children from more than one union, a pattern that has come to be known as multi-partnered childbearing ( Fomby & Osborne, 2017 ; Guzzo, 2014 ). This emerging trend of couples having children in two or more unions means that parents, fathers in particular, are dividing their investments of time, money, and emotion among their children in multiple households, and many are growing up in households where fathers (and less often mothers) come and go ( Thomson, 2014 ).

Of course, certain benefits could be gained when children can rely on several parent figures, but they are only likely to occur when the parents are deeply invested (spend time, money, and emotion) in the lives of both their biological and non-biological offspring ( Akashi-Ronquest, 2009 ; Henretta, Van Voorhis, & Soldo, 2014 ). Evidence suggests that fathers in these circumstances often lack the resources to meet their parental obligations even if they have the desire to do so ( Berger, Cancian, & Meyer, 2012 ). Presently, little is known about the enduring commitments of parents who do not reside with their biological children and the behaviors of surrogate parents who replace them in the household ( Carlson & Furstenberg, 2006 ; Hans & Coleman, 2009 ). However, most of what is known about the importance of stability, stimulation, and emotional bonds in early life suggests that children’s development may be compromised in conditions where there is a high family flux arising from the absence or replacement of biological parents ( Fomby & Cherlin, 2007 ).

Beyond the form of the family and parenting processes in early life, parents’ ability to channel resources to their children matters both early and later in life. Support by extended family members can sometimes help to mitigate the absence of parental resources. However, research on the flow of intergenerational resources suggests that children from privileged families provide far more assistance to their children and grandchildren than occurs in poor families where resources are in short supply. Indeed, the gap between rich and poor children grows in part because wealthier grandparents are better positioned to help out by providing housing assistance and child support when needed ( Albertini, Kohli & Vojel, 2007 ).

A host of advantages for children are strongly associated with adequate income and education. Just to mention a few, children in privileged families (those whose parents have a college education) live in more desirable neighborhoods with better schools, libraries, and recreation facilities, and in these preferred contexts, they are more likely to have supervised peer relationships with children of other privileged families in preschool and afterschool programs or during the summer ( Lareau, 2011 ; Minh et al., 2017 ; Schneider, Hastings, & LaBriola, 2018 ). Lower-income parents cannot afford these amenities unless the programs are publically funded or subsidized, which for the most part does not happen in most low-income communities in the United States ( Esping-Andersen, 2016 ).

Thus, it is not surprising to discover that substantial differences exist between the better off and less well off in preparation for schooling, and that these initial differences only widen over time because many children enter school systems that are ill-equipped to compensate for the disadvantages of growing up poor ( Alexander et al., 2014 ). A large body of research has documented how stratification in family practices is creating trajectories of disadvantage in middle and later childhood, during adolescence, and, more recently in early adulthood ( Furstenberg, 2011 ).

The reverse image of this cycle of disadvantage occurs when children are born into well-off families in American society. Even before birth, the situations of advantaged families have sharp, positive differences at birth. Childbearing is highly likely to occur within a marital union, where the relationship has often been time-tested ( Upchurch, Lillard, & Panis, 2002 ). Not infrequently, the partners have been cohabitating and enter marriage because they are ready to have children ( Sassler & Miller, 2011 ). Women in higher income groups receive prenatal care more often ( Osterman & Martin, 2018 ); they are less likely to smoke, drink to excess, and more often adhere to healthy diets (Furstenberg, 2010; Pampel, Denney, & Krueger, 2011 ). Thus, children born into privileged families enter life in better health and with parents who are well prepared to keep them healthy and thriving. Their homes and neighborhoods are safer so that children in affluent and educated families are less at risk of having accidents or suffering stressful experiences. Moreover, they have better chances of receiving therapeutic interventions when negative events do occur ( Duncan et al., 1998 ).

Parental socialization practices differ sharply by socioeconomic status in ways that also favor the better off. A long tradition of research by developmental psychologists and family sociologists has shown that better educated and wealthier parents have the resources to instruct their children in ways that prepare them to succeed in school ( Yamamoto & Sonnenschein, 2016 ); moreover, these parents are more confident and skilled in communicating with teachers and school personnel when their child is not doing well ( Ankrum, 2016 ). And, they possess the social capital to help place their offspring in advantageous educational and cultural settings when they are young and when they reach adolescence and early adulthood (Conley, 2001; Lareau, 2011 ).

Research both in the United States and abroad, following the important work of Lareau (2011) , has identified the “concerted cultivation” provided to children by parents with more resources and education. Increasingly, the family has become a “hothouse for development” where parents have become ever more alert to strategies to assist their children from the cradle to career opportunities. These parents probably deploy more psychological, cultural, and social capital than in earlier eras when there was a more laissez-faire or informal approach to childcare and childrearing ( Bianchi, 2011 ).

The United States is something of an outlier in the West when it comes to public services and support for children and families, especially lower-income families. Consequently, the class gradient in these families’ behaviors, such as non-marital and single parenthood, unintended pregnancies, prenatal care, neonatal services, preschool, and afterschool, may be more pronounced than in other English-speaking nations, Europe, and the wealthy nations of Asia. Forms of the family and family practices and processes have not yet been well studied in a cross-national context, much less a global one. However, countries have different tolerances for income inequality and different levels of commitment for public services to address social issues, particularly their impacts on children. Thus, it remains to be seen how much variation in these behaviors by social class exists in different wealthy nations.

A New Research Frontier

Despite widespread acknowledgement that family systems are changing rapidly in many parts of the world, research to understand the process (how and why change occurs) and the direction (adoption of patterns that have become common features of Western systems) of change is still in its infancy. There is growing availability of harmonized data sets that include many Western and some non-Western nations. Researchers have begun to analyze data from studies such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Family Database, Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), Generations and Gender Surveys (GGS), national birth cohort studies, Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and its counterparts, Harmonised European Time Use Survey (HETUS), and the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), among others. However, there are formidable problems to examining many of the issues that I have mentioned in this paper.

Sample sizes are sometimes too small to permit informative analyses, representativeness remains an issue in many data sets, the number of countries is rarely large enough to support multilevel comparisons, and contextual information on cultural values or public policies is absent. The research community has not yet fixed its sights on understanding how change in family systems occurs, where change takes place, and what features of culture and social structure mediate the direction of change. Most of all, there is a lack information on how public policies mitigate some of the consequences of family system change for individuals and households.

The Penn–Oxford Project on Global Family Change (GFC), which is designed to examine change on a global scale, is well underway. It utilizes data from more than 100 nations by converting national censuses and Demographic and Health Surveys that have been conducted over several decades (see www.dhsprogram.com ). The aim of the GFC team is to convert the sources of information that are cross-sectional into life-course indicators (e.g., whether individuals are in school or not at different ages, whether they have married or have had children by different ages, and so on) that in turn will permit the GFC team to examine the tempo and sequence of family change over time. The GFC team is planning to create macro-level measures that can be appended to the various countries for which data exist to develop life-course indicators of change (Pesando & the GFC team, in press). This will allow examination of the influence, sequence, and order of family changes and the variating macro-level conditions that initiate these changes.

The attention of the GFC team will be on indicators of changing family patterns in the early part of the life course: change in the age of school leaving, home leaving, entrance to full-time employment, cohabitation, marriage, and first birth. But the team may also examine these indicators in combination to understand the sequence of family change such as childbearing outside of marriage, years of sexual activity outside of marriage, and the like. The intention is to identify associations between macro-level change (i.e., changes in the economy, cultural values, and technology) and the emergence of new family forms and changes in the process of family formation to examine how, why, and where change is taking place. The team will also be able to investigate whether evidence of emerging class differences in family patterns is occurring with the growth of inequality. By building a data set that contains macro-level data, evidence on changes in public policies, and measures of family change, we will be able to more systematically and rigorously test the web of associations suggesting potential chains of causal influence in processes that occur in family systems with the rise of new economies, technologies, and shifts in cultural priorities and practices.

In this paper, I have explored some of the challenges of examining how and why family systems are changing around the globe. I have discussed longstanding disagreements over the sources of change and why both convergence and divergence in family systems that are moving from agricultural-based to industrial-based economies should be expected. My account builds on the theory of the world’s family systems that William J. Goode (1963) proposed over a half century ago and that has yet to be subject to vigorous empirical examination. However, plans are underway to construct a global database at the University of Pennsylvania containing information that will permit researchers around the globe to map the pace and process of changes in family systems, focusing especially on the transition to adult status.

Throughout the world, the passage to adulthood is generally becoming more protracted and more discretionary. As a consequence, elders, especially men in traditional families, will lose influence over the direction of their children’s lives and the choices they make. The young and females in particular in much of the developing world are increasingly looking to education and employment as the means to personal advancement. This process will generally undermine family authority, although in its early stages, families are likely to continue to exert influence over mate selection in many nations where parental influence on marriage choice has been strong.

These changes are taking place in the context of growing economic inequality that is creating considerable divergences in family practices at the top and bottom of the socioeconomic distribution. Family systems in many nations with advanced economies are witnessing greater stability among the privileged while instability is growing in these same systems among the under-privileged. If not counteracted by public policies aimed at mitigating the impact of these divergent family practices within societies, a hardening of the stratification system that creates ever stronger barriers to social mobility can be expected in the developing world.

Acknowledgments

I gratefully acknowledge support for this paper through the Global Family Change (GFC) Project ( http://web.sas.upenn.edu/gfc ), which is a collaboration between the University of Pennsylvania, University of Oxford (Nuffield College), Bocconi University and the Centro de Estudios Demograficos (CED) at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. Funding for the GFC Project is provided through NSF Grant 1729185 (PIs Kohler & Furstenberg), ERC Grant 694262 (PI Billari), ERC Grant 681546 (PI Monden), the Population Studies Center and the University Foundation at the University of Pennsylvania, and the John Fell Fund and Nuffield College at the University of Oxford.” I am indebted to Shannon Crane and Luca Maria Pesando for their helpful comments on the paper.

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What Is The Importance Of Family In Modern Society?

With advancements in technology, changing cultural norms, new priorities, and advanced forms of communication fueled by the internet, you may wonder how family holds up in modern society. The concept of family is likely to continue to be essential for people from all walks of life, despite changing beliefs and customs. Research often demonstrates the importance of family for numerous areas of well-being . No matter how much life changes and the concept of family evolves, it may continue to benefit human health and wellness by offering a sense of belonging and support. If you’re experiencing family-related challenges, it can be helpful to speak to an objective person, such as a licensed therapist, for insight and guidance.

Its definition may evolve, but family may remain essential

The traditional definition of a "nuclear family" typically entailed one man and one woman who were married and had biological children. However, today’s families can be more inclusive and may look different than family stereotypes. Additionally, research usually labels many different types of families.

Benefits of a healthy family

As modern life can add pressure and stress, a healthy family dynamic can have multiple benefits, regardless of whether it's a biological family, adoptive family, or chosen family.

Helps you meet your basic needs

Many years ago, Abraham Maslow created the Hierarchy of Needs . At the bottom of this hierarchy are usually basic needs, including water, food, rest, and health. A family may provide these necessities, which can serve as building blocks for other needs.

Research also suggests that social connection can be considered a need, as it usually improves physical and mental health. Family may offer social connection in abundance.

Allows you to belong to something

A sense of belonging can come from the family, group, or community we belong to, and it can contribute to our emotional well-being by allowing us to feel connected socially.

Offers a built-in support system

Research shows that the support system families provide can have a profound impact throughout different stages of life. Difficult times are often inevitable, but a family may provide a sense of stability and connection that can make it easier to get through them.

Contributes to health

Children might experience a healthy lifestyle when they live in a healthy family. They may eat healthy meals, enjoy time outdoors, and get prompt medical attention when needed.

Health benefits can exist for parents in families, too. Research has shown that people with children in their families tend to live longer , even after the children have grown up and moved away.

Provides support when someone is ill

Facing medical problems alone can be challenging. A family may help alleviate this difficulty by offering support and assistance as you heal.

Offers community benefits

A strong family structure may reduce the likelihood of delinquency and crime. This can mean that the family unit may substantially impact an individual and their community.

Educates children

One way many parents contribute to society is by educating their children. Parents and caregivers often begin teaching children at a very young age. They may help them learn to walk and teach them new words as they develop their vocabulary and language skills. They also may teach them manners and take advantage of learning opportunities in everyday life.

Many parents also encourage scholarship opportunities, ethical behavior, and social skills that can benefit children throughout adolescence and into adulthood.

All families may struggle sometimes

Even though families can have benefits, they may face challenges at times. When it comes to overcoming the difficulties of family life, you might find support in your friends. You can also seek the help of a professional with training and experience in family dynamics.

Seeking help

Talking to a therapist may help you explore your feelings about family and learn to express those feelings openly. You may also learn to understand the family influences that shaped your personality.

Benefits of online therapy

Online therapy can be an easy and convenient way to receive insight and guidance from a licensed therapist. It can be helpful to vent to an objective person during therapy sessions, and you can attend these sessions from any location with an internet connection. With an online therapy platform, you can even seek out a therapist who specializes in helping their clients navigate family-related concerns.

Effectiveness of online therapy

Although more research may be needed regarding the efficacy of individual online therapy for addressing family-related challenges, a growing body of evidence generally supports the idea that online therapy can be just as effective as face-to-face therapy.

What is the importance of family in our life?

Family can often serve as a cornerstone of our emotional support system, playing a role in each individual's emotional health. This foundational element often sets the stage for future relationships and helps build self-esteem.

What is the importance of family to a person?

Family can provide unconditional love and emotional support, which are key factors in building an individual's self-esteem. These early relationships set the groundwork for personal relationships and adult life.

What are 10 important aspects of family in your life?

Emotional support: Family offers a safety net for emotional well-being.
Unconditional love: The love from family is often lifelong and uncompromising.
Moral and ethical guidance: Family serves as our first role model, teaching us social skills and crucial role values.
Financial support: Financial stability often starts with family support.
Educational support: Family’s involvement can positively impact academic performance.
Healthy families: A supportive family environment can contribute to healthy relationships.
Family traditions and history: Knowing your family history adds a sense of belonging.
Role models: Family provides the first role models in a child’s life.
Open communication: Communication within the family contributes to emotional health and strong personal relationships.
Sense of belonging: Family gatherings, such as family meals, add to the sense of community.

Why are family relationships among the most important we will ever have?

Family relationships can lay the foundation for how we manage future relationships. The skills learned in the family context are applied to personal relationships in adult life, playing an important role in our overall emotional well-being.

What is the most important value in your relationship as a family?

Important values, like unconditional love and open communication, can form the bedrock on which the emotional health of each individual in the family is built. These values often lead to a unified family, increasing senses of security, stability and support.

What is important in life, family or love?

Family often provides the first experience of unconditional love, and this foundational emotional support sets the tone for what we seek in other personal relationships throughout adult life.

Is having a family the most important thing?

Having a family often offers emotional support and unconditional love, serving as an individual’s foundational support system and playing a crucial role in emotional health. However, many aspects of life are important, and family is not necessarily more important than other relationships in your life.

Why is family more important than happiness?

Family often serves as a significant source of happiness, fulfilling our needs for emotional support and unconditional love.

What is the importance of family unity?

Family unity offers a conducive environment for emotional health and well-being. This unity is often fostered through open communication during family meals, contributing to each individual's ability to maintain relationships.

What brings unity to the family?

Common values and open communication are key factors that bring family unity. Family meals and traditions also play a part, serving as regular platforms for them to express emotional support and unconditional love.

What Is Family Support? Understanding Services Available To You Medically reviewed by Laura Angers Maddox , NCC, LPC
Is Sibling Rivalry Normal? How Conflict Between Siblings Works Medically reviewed by Elizabeth Erban , LMFT, IMH-E
Relationships and Relations

Late modern perspectives on the family

Table of Contents

Last Updated on September 26, 2023 by Karl Thompson

Late-Modernists such as Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck recognise that people have more choice in terms of their relationships and family arrangements, but do not believe that people are as free as postmodernists suggest. There are still underlying patterns, and shared experiences of relationships that are a consequence of our living in a ‘late-modern’ society – rather than families just being diverse and random.

For example, people are less likely to get married because of structural changes: gender equality means that both partners have to work and spend longer building their careers, which means the average person has less time to spend making a relationship work, which means a decline in marriage, and an increase in divorce.

Ulrich Beck also argues that fewer people getting married is because of an increase in ‘risk consciousness’ – people see that nearly half of all marriages end in divorce and so they are less willing to take the risk and get married.

This is not simply a matter of freedom of choice – people are ‘reflexive’ – they look at society, see the risk of marriage, and then choose not to get married – their personal decisions are informed by what they see going in society.

Beck also talks of individualisation – a new social norm is that our individual desires are more important than social commitments, and this makes marriage less likely.

Giddens builds on this and says that the typical relationship today is the Pure Relationship – one which lasts only as long as both partners are happy with it, not because of tradition or a sense of commitment. This makes cohabitation and serial monogamy rather than the long term commitment of a marriage more likely.

Anthony Giddens: Choice and Equality

Giddens argues that in recent decades the family and marriage have been transformed by greater choice and a more equal relationship between men and women. Giddens argues that relationships are now characterised by three general characteristics:

Ulrich Beck: The ‘Risk Society’ and The Negotiated Family

Today’s risk society contrasts with the modern society of the past with its stable nuclear family and traditional gender roles. Beck argues that even though the traditional patriarchal family was unequal and oppressive, it did provide a stable and predictable basis for the family by defining each member’s role and responsibly. However the patriarchal family has been undermined by two trends.

These trends have led to the rise of the negotiated family. Negotiated families do not conform to the traditional family norm, but vary according to the wishes and expectations of their members, who decided what is best for them by discussion. They enter the relationship on an equal basis.

Evaluating Late Modern Perspectives on the Family

There is a lot of sociological evidence that supports the view that there is still a social structure which shapes families, that people don’t have 100% freedom to make choices about families, and a lot of evidence that families require a lot of negotiation to work.

The dual earner household is the norm

There has been an increase in dual earner households. Between 2003 to 2013 the proportion of families with dependent children in which both parents worked full time rose from 26% to 31%, a significant increase in just 12 years. (1).

graph showing dual earner households from 2002 to 2022

Older people not wanting to get married….

bar charts showing proportions of people who want to get married in the UK in 2022: 60% of 18-34 year olds want to get married, but only 11% of 55s and over.

Young people feel social pressure to get married

Young people don’t themselves value traditional family structures such as marriage, but still feel under social pressure to get married according to a Relate Milestone Surve y of 2000 people carried out in 2022.

Negotiated families

A good example that supports the Late Modern perspective on relationships is this article in Psychology Today: How Much Time do you need to dedicate to your relationship ? Part of the advice is to have a periodic check-in with each other about where the relationship is going – which means ‘negotiating’ the relationship!

This Co-Parenting Guide is an interesting example of helping people to negotiate change in a relationship. It offers advice on how to include in-laws in children’s lives after a divorce. This kind of ‘expert advice’ online is very late modern.

Signposting and Related Posts

(2) YouGov (2022) Do Britons Still Want to Get Married ?

Family Bonding Essay Writing Guide

Academic writing

Essay paper writing

Essays about family is a popular assignment because family values are considered to be the essential aspect of human relationships. The complex economic situation, as well as the dramatic changes that have occurred in people’s lives in recent years, have exacerbated the problem of family ties. There is no wonder that a ‘what causes a family to have close relationships’ essay is a fairly popular type of research work like racism or abortion essay. Of course, there are various opinions on what should constitute family values, and their formation depends on each person’s background. In this article, you will find useful information about families as well as some tips on how to write a good essay about family relationship. Moreover, you will discover some curious facts and statistics on this topic.

Information for an essay about the family in modern society

Before writing an essay on family relationships in modern society, let’s consider the concepts of marriage and family. Historically, marriages were arranged mostly due to economic reasons, especially in the Medieval Ages. As the main goal of marriage was to create an alliance between families, most couples formed the union not because of mutual love but for economic liaisons.

Now let’s talk about the concept of family. Firstly, let’s review the definition of the word “family”.

Generally speaking, family is a group of people who live together and have very personal level of relationship. The traditional family, which is shown in the media, advertising, and TV, consists of a father, mother, and children. However, in practice, it is not always that way. There are different types of families; for example, nuclear, extended, complex, single-parent, childless, etc. It is a good idea to mention them in your research paper on family values.

Due to the fact that there are different kinds of families, each of the households has its own problems. However, family relationships essay should describe general problems that are topical for each type and propose effective solutions.

Researchers note that nowadays, the modern family is in a state of profound changes that affect all aspects of life. There are clearly observed trends in birth rate (which is decreasing), conscious childlessness, and big number of divorces over the world.

Inform the readers of your importance of family relationships essay that nowadays, we are the witnesses of new and complex stage of evolution, which is a transition from a traditional family model to a new one. This change is explained by the entirely new lifestyle of current generations. The former foundations are being destroyed, and the structure of the family is simplified.

Statistics for essays on family values

Scientists often use surveys in order to track any changes in a society. Here are some curious sociological polls that revealed a very interesting picture which may be represented in essays about family relationships:

The typical American family consists of 3 people on average, while in Europe there are approximately 2.3 persons.
36% of divorces happen during first 5 years of living together. Unions concluded by spouses under the age of 20 years are terminated in 99.9% of cases.
More than one-third of respondents can’t formulate a convincing motivation for marriage, which suggests that this union is not a priority in their personal value system.
Both men and women consider a favorable family climate their main value.
The opinion of husbands and wives does not coincide when it comes to sexual harmony in marriage. Sex is the third most important factor in the family hierarchy of needs for husbands and the fourth – for wives.
The pregnancy period was a happy one only for three women out of a hundred.

It can be stated in a short speech about family that the values of people of different age and sex reflect the specifics of a certain period of life. Moreover, they contradict each other in a number of scales. Of course, one of the reasons for the significant differences in the hierarchy of family values was the transformation of the patriarchal family, which continues to this day. The causes of this phenomenon lie in the process of family evolution, which should be considered in the essay on importance of family relationships.

Transformation of family values in the evolution of marriage

There is a significant number of marital relationships forms. However, it is impossible to consider all of them in a short essay about family. But for actual contemporary research, the most important notions are ‘the patriarchal model’ and ‘the modern family’ (which is called a ‘transformed’ one by some researchers).

According to some sociologists, there are several types of relations functioning in society: patriarchal or traditional; focused on children or modern; marital or postmodern. Modern family is a ‘marriage of good friends’ united for the common organization of life and upbringing of children. Let’s consider what was before such democratic changes.

For many centuries, the absolute parental power and authoritarian system of upbringing was adopted in the patriarchal family. The slightest violation of these principles led to inevitable sanctions. Children were subjected to corporal punishment if they talked to their parents rudely or refused to follow their orders. Moreover, according to sociologists, there was no concept of responsibility of parents towards kids.

At the same time, along with the irresponsibility of adults, there were excessive demands on kids. They had to stick to the main rule ‘Honor thy father and thy mother.’ So, you may note the positive changes in upbringing that we experience now in your relationship between parents and children essay.

Next, there was compulsory collectivism and centralism in the patriarchal family. The interests of community did not just dominate the family realm – they were of a tremendous value, while individual interests were not taken into account.

This trend can be clearly seen in the example of marriage. Young people married not for love but at the will of parents, which in this case would satisfy the interests of the family as a whole. Marriage was considered as something like a transaction. Later, there was a rigid consolidation of roles in the family. The domination of the husband took place due to the concentration of economic resources in his hands.

There are four main patriarchal priorities which should be indicated in scholarly articles on family values:

Family and economy are inseparable concepts. Production depends on demographic indicators. The social roles of men and women are strictly differentiated in this case.
The power of kinship, its dominance in social life.
Inseparable dependence on the land. In the past, most families were peasants, and the whole life of the society depended on the land they owned.
The creation of large families was a consequence of the adoption of socio-cultural norms of early marriage and high birth rate due to the high mortality and a short lifespan of the population.

The change in economic relations and egalitarian tendencies in a society gave rise to two trends that radically transformed the patriarchal system of values:

The first one is the liberation of children from their parents. The young generation could finally enjoy independence and experience life on their own. Therefore, modern sociologists associate the effectiveness of socialization with the preservation of a certain moral and psychological distance between parents and children. You may describe this positive trend in what makes a family happy essay.
The second movement is the liberation of women from men. In the middle of the twentieth century, women actively explored areas of activity that were unusual for them before: social, political, and cultural. Men lost their monopoly in industries with low skilled labor (for example, telephone solicitor) and service sphere (for example, nursing).

Thus, the features of the new marriage model are connected with the transformation of patriarchal values. The modern type of relationships is determined not by kinship (as in patriarchal society) and not by the next generations (as in the family focused on children). You can mention this fact in your essay on family relationships and conflict.

Finally, one more idea that was adopted during the transformational period is that sexuality can’t be reduced to procreation only. It should be mentioned in essays about family love that eroticism is the main feature of postmodern unions.

Now you know a lot about the transformation of family values. So you can highlight the main points of the transition from traditional models to modern ones in your argumentative essay on family relationships. Note that the principle of kinship is characteristic of ‘traditionalism.’

The agrarian society regarded a family household as its main economic unit. As a rule, all adults used to work at home planting crops. The modern model involves the division of the house and work. There is a hired labor in large enterprises with an individual payment regardless of the status in kinship ties.

However, some aspects of the patriarchal family still remain unchanged. Due to the socio-cultural division of family responsibilities, women who finally started working continue to conduct household activities without any help. This double workload is interpreted as the result of male domination. Therefore, the desirable equitable distribution of household functions between husband and wife is declared the ideal for family democratization. You can discuss this fact in your what makes a happy family essay as well.

So as you can see, there are a lot of aspects to touch upon in such type of paper. By the way, you may finish the importance of family values essay with the following conclusion: the essence of the modern social transformations lies in changing the hierarchy of family values.

Useful tips on how to write quality importance of family essays

As you definitely know, an essay is an academic paper on a certain topic. The main features of such paper are unique author’s style, relatively small size, subjective interpretation of the topic, and ease of narration. Essays about family values is a frequent assignment in schools and colleges, so you have to do your best to deliver a really quality paper to your teacher or professor. Luckily, in this part of the article, we will consider the basic writing rules.

To begin with, you need to determine the content of your “why family is important” essay. It means that you have to think what ideas you will convey in your paper. The presence of the following details in the essay is a must:

Relevant topic. In some cases, teachers provide students with good family essay ideas. If there is a choice, it’s better to take the topic that interests you or the one you are well-versed in.
Proper format. Do not underestimate the importance of proper margins, citations, and the font you use when writing. The requirements of the teacher should be taken into account in order to get a good grade.
Conformity with a readership. Think about the target audience of your paper. Why do you want to convince the readers of your point of view? What arguments will you use for that? Study the most suitable material in order to provide proof of your arguments.
Credible sources. Find out what references can be used in the article about family love. Do you need to specify the number of main sources and additional ones? Can you use Wikipedia in search of material? This is a fairly good choice for acquaintance with a great variety of family essay topics. But, in some cases, references to more authoritative sources are required.
No plagiarism. Use quotes in accordance with the rules so that there will be no need to redo the paper last night before the submission.
Open-mindedness. Do not ignore statements and facts that contradict your arguments. Good researchers mentions the points of view opposing their opinions for comparative purposes or modify them. For example, imagine you are writing the “what effect social media has on family relationships” essay. It’s important to determine whether you will describe only positive/negative factors or simply make a review without supporting a certain side. If you are inclined towards a certain viewpoint, search for information that contradicts it and include it in your text.
Learning from the best. Conduct an analysis of quality speeches about family importance. There are a lot of informative speech topics for college students on the Web. Most likely, you will find good papers on your topic.
Unique ideas. Of course, it is possible to cite other people’s arguments as evidence supporting statements that you make. But in some cases, it is required to make the speeches about family a bit more unique.

Following these tips, you will definitely deliver a quality essay! But if you struggle to write a paper on your own, it is better to use thesis paper writing service.

Writing an essay about how technology affects family relationships

A lot of essay questions about family relationships usually cover the aspect of the use of technology and how it influences communication between family members. Particularly, it’s hard to deny the fact that the new generation is more tech-savvy than the older one, which may cause certain misunderstandings between them. Primarily, parents are often concerned that their children have more interest in their phones than in anything else whatsoever. There are many essay topics you can choose to address this. For example, “spend time with a family” essay can cover the importance of family gatherings at least once a week with a ban on phones during this time. You can list the pros of such approach or find scientific evidence on the significance of such practices. If you want to reflect on your own experiences, you can write a family bonding essay and describe what you and your parents do to strengthen your relations and how, if ever, technology affects it. The effect of technology should not necessarily be negative. For example, with a lot of streaming services available, you can now choose something interesting to watch together and discuss the movie or the show later.

However, usually, when talking about effects of technology on the quality of time families spend together, people imply that it is a hindrance. The easiest way to highlight it would be writing a social media effects on family relationships essay. Lately, people have become so consumed by different social media that they barely communicate in the real life. Moreover, this issue does not just affect kids. Many parents become addicted as well, and might sometimes neglect their own needs and the needs of their children. If you find enough information about it, it can even be enough to write a research paper about family relationships.

How to write a paper about family?

First thing first, compile a plan of work and carefully consider how you will structure the text. Determine the introduction to your narrative, what will be reflected in the main part, and what family relationships essay conclusion will be presented in the end.

The next important thing to talk about is a thesis statement. Identify a few good ideas among those that were expressed and include them in your thesis to later cover them in the body of the paper. Afterward, write the main part of your work. At this stage, you should consider the size of the essay in order to cover every point without going over the word limit. By the way, it’s a good idea to use the free-writing method in order to create a paper. You can make the text more coherent a bit later.

Here are some more tips to consider in order to submit a paper that will stand out among other works:

Do not use ambiguous or vague phrases. The main idea in each paragraph should be specific and understandable. For example, if you’re writing a positive family relationships essay, make a list of what exactly you think makes such relationships positive. Once you’re done, make it into a thesis statement.
When writing a paper on a controversial topic (for example, “step-family relationships” essay) remember that the reader may not accept your point of view or be particularly fond of your arguments, so it’s very important not to seem incompetent or tactless.
It is necessary to avoid such pronouns as I, you, your, we, etc. Topics that imply the disclosure of the author’s personal experience or ideas can be considered an exception. For example, in such papers as “the best lesson my family taught me” essay, it would be impossible to avoid using the abovementioned pronouns
Do not be afraid to be sincere and open-hearted. For example, if you are writing a “what does family mean to you” essay, you can tell some nice stories about your family or recall some moments when you were really close.
Choose a suitable title and compile the introductory part. In the end, these parts will determine the desire of the reader to get acquainted with your paper. As well as the conclusion, the introduction should focus the reader’s attention on the problem under consideration.
Avoid using obvious statements like ‘I am writing this what family means to me essay about.’ They are self-explanatory and redundant.
Write the final part. It is necessary to sum up all the arguments presented to show that you have covered the topic thoroughly.
The arguments should prompt the reader to draw certain conclusions. In the final part of the work, the thesis statement should be mentioned again in order to remind the audience what they are reading about.
Thoroughly formulate the final sentence summarizing all of the ideas presented before. For example, if you are writing why is family important essay, you can finish it by reiterating why your family is important to you.
Reread your paper carefully the day after its completion. Your essay must be finished a few days before the final deadline so that you have enough time to make the necessary corrections and adjustments.

We hope that this article was useful. Now you know how to write an essay about your family and the importance of kinship values as a social phenomenon. Good luck!

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Essay on Importance of Family for Students and Children

500 words essay on importance of family.

In today’s world when everything is losing its meaning, we need to realize the importance of family more than ever. While the world is becoming more modern and advanced, the meaning of family and what stands for remains the same.

A family is a group of people who are related by blood or heritage. These people are linked not only by blood but also by compassion, love, and support. A person’s character and personality are shaped by his or her family. There are various forms of families in today’s society. It is further subdivided into a tight and extended family (nuclear family, single parent, step-family, grandparent, cousins, etc.)

Family – A synonym for trust, comfort, love, care, happiness and belonging. Family is the relationship that we share from the moment we are born into this world. People that take care of us and help us grow are what we call family, and they become lifelines for us to live. Family members have an important role in deciding an individual’s success or failure in life since they provide a support system and source of encouragement.

It does not matter what kind of family one belongs to. It is all equal as long as there are caring and acceptance. You may be from a joint family, same-sex partner family, nuclear family, it is all the same. The relationships we have with our members make our family strong. We all have unique relations with each family member. In addition to other things, a family is the strongest unit in one’s life.

Things That Strengthens The Family

A family is made strong through a number of factors. The most important one is of course love. You instantly think of unconditional love when you think of family. It is the first source of love you receive in your life It teaches you the meaning of love which you carry on forever in your heart.

Secondly, we see that loyalty strengthens a family. When you have a family, you are devoted to them. You stick by them through the hard times and celebrate in their happy times. A family always supports and backs each other. They stand up for each other in front of a third party trying to harm them proving their loyalty.

Most importantly, the things one learns from their family brings them closer. For instance, we learn how to deal with the world through our family first. They are our first school and this teaching strengthens the bond. It gives us reason to stand by each other as we share the same values.

No matter what the situation arises, your family will never leave you alone. They will always stand alongside you to overcome the hardships in life. If anyone is dealing with any kind of trouble, even a small talk about it to the family will make ones’ mind lighter and will give them a sense of hope, an inner sense of strength to fight those problems.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Importance of Family

One cannot emphasize enough on the importance of family. They play a great role in our lives and make us better human beings. The one lucky enough to have a family often do not realize the value of a family.

However, those who do not have families know their worth. A family is our source of strength. It teaches us what relationships mean. They help us create meaningful relationships in the outside world. The love we inherit from our families, we pass on to our independent relationships.

Moreover, families teach us better communication . When we spend time with our families and love each other and communicate openly, we create a better future for ourselves. When we stay connected with our families, we learn to connect better with the world.

Similarly, families teach us patience. It gets tough sometimes to be patient with our family members. Yet we remain so out of love and respect. Thus, it teaches us patience to deal better with the world. Families boost our confidence and make us feel loved. They are the pillars of our strength who never fall instead keep us strong so we become better people.

We learn the values of love, respect, faith, hope, caring, cultures, ethics, traditions, and everything else that concerns us through our families. Being raised in a loving household provides a solid foundation for anyone.

People develop a value system inside their family structure in addition to life lessons. They learn what their family considers to be proper and wrong, as well as what the community considers to be significant.

Families are the epicentres of tradition. Many families keep on traditions by sharing stories from the past over the years. This allows you to reconnect with family relatives who are no longer alive. A child raised in this type of household feels as if they are a part of something bigger than themselves. They’ll be proud to be a part of a community that has had ups and downs. Communities thrive when families are strong. This, in turn, contributes to a robust society.

Q.1 What strengthens a family?

A.1 A family’s strength is made up of many factors. It is made of love that teaches us to love others unconditionally. Loyalty strengthens a family which makes the members be loyal to other people as well. Most importantly, acceptance and understanding strengthen a family.

Q.2 Why is family important?

A.2 Families are very important components of society and people’s lives. They teach us a lot about life and relationships. They love us and treat us valuably. They boost our self-confidence and make us feel valued. In addition, they teach us patience to deal with others in a graceful and accepting manner.

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Families, Relationships and Societies

An international journal of research and debate.

Families, Relationships and Societies ( FRS ) is a vibrant social science journal advancing scholarship and debates in the field of families and relationships. It explores family life, relationships and generational issues across the life course. Bringing together a range of social science perspectives, with a strong policy and practice focus, it is also strongly informed by sociological theory and the latest methodological approaches. The title encompasses the fluidity, complexity and diversity of contemporary social and personal relationships and their need to be understood in the context of different societies and cultures. Read more about Families, Relationships and Societies.

Impact Factor: 1.1 Frequency: February, May, August and November

Shrinking futures: ecologically childfree as emotion management

Critical reflexivities of women who cared for others during their childhood, doing (in)equality in swedish families: women’s narratives of outsourcing domestic work, intergenerational transmission of social memory: a narrative review 1, parental stress, coercive and encouraging parenting among chinese one-child, two-child and three-child families, ‘i try to do something a bit different’: exploring fathers’ integration of care ethics in everyday family lives, a qualitative exploration of adoptive family practices in contemporary india: the voices of adoptees of closed adoptions, ‘there’s a huge hole left in the middle of the family’: locating family practices within the context of (sibling) bereavement, a sociology of forgiveness in relationships: why the sociology of personal life should be interested in forgiveness, being ‘a good mother’ in türkiye: negotiating expert advice and intensive motherhood 1, constructing co-parenthood: first-time parents’ experiences and meanings of co-parental cooperation at four to six months postpartum, division of labour in families: an integrative dyadic classification approach, making sense of what families leave behind: a middle-class schoolgirl’s diaries in 1920s london, complex roles of families in enabling sex trafficking in edo, nigeria, can you keep a secret family histories, secrets and ethics, alone and together in domestic space: navigating spatial and conceptual relationship boundaries in finnish small-scale communes, intimacy, relationality and interdependencies: relationships in families dealing with gambling harms during covid-19, ‘family doesn’t have to be mom and dad’: an exploration of the meaning of family for care-experienced young people, complex marital paradigms: divergence between the importance of getting married and being married, instigating father-inclusive practice interventions with young fathers and multi-agency professionals: the transformative potential of qualitative longitudinal and co-creative methodologies, paternal and maternal love for married and unmarried sons and daughters, mixed-sex civil partnerships: developing a morality of love, my brother’s keeper: masculinities, social mobility and the role of familial care for working-class men, parents’ social networks, transitional moments and the shaping role of digital communications: an exploratory study in austria, denmark, england and portugal, relationships, technology and the role of living arrangements during social lockdown related to covid-19, resourceful family economy during lgbtq family-forming processes, more than mothers: changing intimacies and relationships among low-income women in chile, attitudes of young people in germany towards parental involvement in paid work: evidence of intergenerational transmission, tiny happy people brain building and the ‘word gap’, volume 13 (2024): issue 2 (may 2024): special issue: families, relationships and technologies. edited by esther dermott, harriet churchill, isabella crespi, manik deepak-gopinath, sara eldén and tina miller, families, relationships and technology: empirical analysis, policy challenges and ways of thinking, how digital technologies become embedded in family life across generations: scoping the agenda for researching ‘platformised relationality’, configuring the digital relationship landscape: a feminist new materialist analysis of a couple relationship app, pre-problem families: predictive analytics and the future as the present, digital technologies in children’s everyday lives and in ‘doing family’, the role of digital status in adult child–parent relationships in european comparative perspective, performing parenthood through digital communication technologies at school: the case of whatsapp parents’ groups in chile, sharing as displaying: parents’ sharenting practices within conflictual separations, the digital governmentality of marriage migration: policing us spousal reunification, national belonging and borders in digital spaces, intimacy as a competency: information-seeking practices in (marriage) migration online support groups, using technology in family relationships lived apart, ‘managing’ tech and a growing family.

Gender and Justice is open for submissions!

Be one of the first to publish in this new journal advancing critical feminist scholarship on justice.

Open access

Browse all our Open Access content, as well as information on how to publish OA with us.

Aims and scope Journal metrics Abstracting and indexing Equity, Diversity and Inclusion David Morgan Prize Testimonials Contact us

Aims and scope

International and comprehensive in scope, FRS covers a range of theoretical, methodological and substantive issues, from large-scale trends, processes of social change and social inequality to the intricacies of family practices. It welcomes scholarship based on theoretical, qualitative or quantitative analysis. High-quality research and scholarship is accepted across a wide range of issues. Examples include family policy, changing relationships between personal life, work and employment, shifting meanings of parenting, issues of care and intimacy, the emergence of digital friendship, shifts in transnational sexual relationships, effects of globalising and individualising forces and the expansion of alternative ways of doing family. Encouraging methodological innovation, and seeking to present work on all stages of the life course, the journal welcomes explorations of relationships and families in all their different guises and across different societies.

Articles and contributions are drawn from a number of disciplines and subject areas including sociology, social policy, social work, childhood studies, demography, youth studies, family studies, gender studies, ageing and gerontology, health and social care, education, psychology, social history, sociolegal studies, politics, criminology and psychosocial studies.

The applied focus of the journal embraces a diverse global field and encourage a critical engagement with policy and practice developments and issues within and across welfare regimes.

The Open Space section of the journal offers a unique opportunity to consider facets of family lives, relationships and societies from unexpected and novel (including non-academic) perspectives. The Open Space section is included in special and themed issues of the journal only, so do look out for future calls. These calls will offer and encourage dialogue with a broader community than usually found in academic journals and enable alternative perspectives and insights to be shared. Contributions to this section usually range between 1,000 and 3,000 words. Further guidance will be provided as particular calls are made. For further details please contact the Open Space editor Tina Miller ( [email protected] ).

Journal metrics

Impact factor and rankings.

2023 Impact Factor: 1.1 (2yr), 1.4 (5yr) Ranked 41st out of 66 in Family Studies

2023 Journal Citation Indicator: 0.59 Ranked 39th out of 66 in Family Studies

2023 Scopus Cite Score: 2.1

Abstracting and indexing

Families, Relationships and Societies is abstracted in:

European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences (ERIH PLUS)
Journal Citation Reports, Social Science Edition
ProQuest Central
ProQuest Sociology Collection
ProQuest Social Science Premium Collection
Social Science Citation Index
Social Care Online

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion statement outlines the ways in which we seek to ensure that equity, diversity and inclusion are integral to all aspects of our publishing, and how we might encourage and drive positive change.

David Morgan Prize

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of FRS , the journal we launched a prize to recognise outstanding contributions made to the journal.

The prize is created in memory of David Morgan, former president of the British Sociological Association (BSA), and past member of the FRS editorial team.

Announcing the 2023 winners of the David Morgan Prize

We are delighted to announce that the 2023 winner of the David Morgan Prize is Claudia Fonseca for their article Knowledge forms and gendered moralities in policies of infant care in Brazil . To celebrate the author's achievement, this paper will be made free to access until 1 July 2024.

Read the winning article

We would also like to give an honourable mention to the following articles, which are free to access until the 1 April 2024

Care is not a tally sheet: rethinking the field of gender divisions of domestic labour with care-centric conceptual narratives Andrea Doucet

Family relatedness: a challenge for making decisions in child welfare Rosi Enroos and Tarja Pösö

Parenting in the pandemic: exploring the experiences of families with children on Universal Credit before and during the COVID-19 pandemic Marsha Wood and Fran Bennett

A prize of £100 worth of Policy Press/Bristol University Press books will be awarded to the winner. The paper will be made freely available for a period of three months and promoted widely.

Eligibility

The winning paper will be selected by the FRS Editorial Panel who will draw up an initial shortlist from articles published (or due to be published) in the current volume of the journal.

The authors of the shortlisted papers are asked whether they would like to be considered for the prize ahead of final nomination. Contributions to the journal from editorial board members are excluded from the article prize selection process.

Assessment criteria

A panel involving Editorial Board members will judge the applications on the written material provided. The assessment criteria are:

Published (or due to be published) in the current year.
Research papers only
Originality: a novel contribution to the field of families and relationships
Significance: the work is likely to exert influence within its field of study
Demonstrates rigorous social science methods and theory: uses compelling evidence to argue its case

Previous winners

Find a list of all of the winners of the David Morgan Prize here .

Testimonials

"Families, Relationships, and Societies fills an important niche, providing a forum as dynamic as families themselves to enhance our understanding of the vitality and complexity of relationships today ." Jessica L. Collett , University of Notre Dame, USA

"Across the world, family practices and ways of ‘doing’ family are undergoing profound changes. This welcome addition to the field will open up new avenues for international scholarship; counter the stereotype that 'family is primarily about parenting’; and challenge us to think critically about the changing relationship between families and the state. It is also refreshing — and timely — to see older people placed centre stage in these considerations." Professor Miriam Bernard , Emeritus Professor of Social Gerontology, Keele University, UK

Editorial office [email protected]

Editor-in-Chief Esther Dermott: [email protected]

Co-Editors Isabella Crespi: [email protected] Manik Deepak-Gopinath: [email protected] Sara Eldén: [email protected] Elena Moore: [email protected]

Open access, subscriptions and free trials: Policy Press: [email protected]

Read our instructions for authors for guidance on how to prepare your submissions. The instructions include the following:

What we're looking for How to submit an article Ethical guidelines Copyright Style Alt-text References English language editing service Open Access Self-archiving and institutional repositories How to maximise the impact of your article Contact us

Visit our journal author toolkit for resources and advice to support you through the publication process and beyond.

What we’re looking for

Academic articles should not be longer than 8,000 words, including abstract (150 words maximum), notes, tables, figures and references. The journal provides a forum for dialogue between research, policy and practice in the field of families and relationships across the life course. It is underpinned by sociological understandings of the fluid, complex and diverse nature of contemporary relationships, seen in varied social, cultural and historical contexts. While rooted in sociological theory and methods, submissions to Families, Relationships and Societies come from subject areas across the social sciences and related life course disciplines and from policy and practice communities. Papers are expected to have relevance to academic, policy and practitioner audiences, enabling a wide range of perspectives to be brought together in one place to foster innovation and development within disciplines and advance interdisciplinary research and practice.

Open Space: Information on how to submit an Open Space contribution

The Open Space section of the journal Families, Relationships and Societies offers a unique opportunity to consider facets of family lives, relationships and societies from unexpected and novel (including non-academic) perspectives. The Open Space section is included in special and themed issues of the journal only , so do look out for future calls. These calls will offer and encourage dialogue with a broader community than usually found in academic journals and enable alternative perspectives and insights to be shared. Contributions to this section usually range between 1,000 and 3,000 words. Further guidance will be provided as particular calls are made. For further details please contact the Open Space editor Tina Miller ( [email protected] ).

Please follow the instructions below on how to submit your Open Space article to Editorial Manager. Open Space submissions do not carry abstracts. Contact the Editorial Assistant ( [email protected] ) if you require any assistance. Special issue guest editors will be responsible for supplying the whole issue of a journal, including Open Space articles that fit the theme of the special issue, if they wish to include these. Support from the Open Space editors will be provided if guest editors struggle to find Open Space pieces.

All articles are refereed to assess their suitability for publication.

How to submit an article

Editorial Manager

All submissions should be made online at the Families, Relationships and Societies Editorial Manager website: http://www.editorialmanager.com/frs/default.aspx , in Word or Rich Text Format (not pdf). New users should first create an account, specify their areas of interest and provide full contact details.

Manuscripts must be in Word or Rich Text Format (not pdf). New users should first create an account, specify their areas of interest and provide full contact details.

Preparing your anonymised manuscript

Your initial submission must consist of the following separate files :

A cover page including : the article title, author name(s) and affiliations (institution affiliation and country only, no department details required), the article abstract (up to 150 words), up to five key words/short phrases and the article word count including references. A cover page template is available to download here .
A fully anonymised manuscript which does not include any of the information included in the cover page. It should not include any acknowledgements, funding details or conflicts of interest that would identify the author(s). References to the author's own work should be anonymised as follows: 'Author's own, [year]'. Please note that submissions that have not been sufficiently anonymised will be returned.
If you have any figures and tables please upload them as separate files at the end of the manuscript. Please indicate where these should be placed in the text by inserting: ‘Figure X here’ and provide numbers, titles and sources where appropriate.
In order to improve our accessibility for people with visual impairments, we are now required to ask authors to provide a brief description known as alt text to describe any visual content such as photos, illustrations or figures. It will not be visible in the article but is embedded into the images so a PDF reader can read out the descriptions. Guidance on how to write this is available here: Bristol University Press | Alt-text guidance for authors .

For help submitting an article via Editorial Manager, please view our online tutorial .

Once a submission has been conditionally accepted, you will be invited to submit a final, non-anonymised version.

Checklist: what to include in your final, accepted non-anonymised manuscript

A cover page including : the article title, author name(s) and affiliations (institution affiliation and country only, no department details required), the article abstract (up to 150 words), up to five key words and the word count.

The non-anonymised final manuscript including:

Funding details : list any funding including the grant numbers you have received for the research covered in your article as follows: 'This work was supported by the [Funding Agency] under Grant [number xxxx].'
Conflict of interest statement : please declare any possible conflicts of interest, or state 'The author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest' if there are none. Find out more about declaring conflicts of interest in the Bristol University Press/ Policy Press Ethical Guidelines .
Acknowledgements : acknowledge those who have provided you with any substantial assistance or advice with collecting data, developing your ideas, editing or any other comments to develop your argument or text.
Figures and tables : should be included as separate files at the end of the manuscript. Please indicate where these should be placed in the text by inserting: ‘Figure X here’ and provide numbers, titles and sources where appropriate. For advice about less common file formats please contact [email protected] .
Alt text : In order to improve our accessibility for people with visual impairments, we are now required to ask authors to provide a brief description known as alt text to describe any visual content such as photos, illustrations or figures. It will not be visible in the article but is embedded into the images so a PDF reader can read out the descriptions. Guidance on how to write this is available here: Bristol University Press | Alt-text guidance for authors .
Supplemental data : We recommend that any supplemental data are hosted in a data repository (such as figshare ) for maximum exposure, and are cited as a reference in the article.
Journal Contributor Publishing Agreement : Please upload a scanned copy of the completed and signed agreement with your final non-anonymised manuscript. The Journal Contributor Publishing Agreement can be downloaded here .

Editorial review process All submissions will be subject to double anonymous peer-review processes (unless stated otherwise) by referees currently working in the appropriate field. The editors aim to provide quick decisions and to ensure that submission to publication takes the minimum possible time. The final decision on publication rests with the editors.

Ethical guidelines

At Policy Press we are committed to upholding the highest standards of review and publication ethics in our journals. Policy Press is a member of and subscribes to the principles of the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE) , and will take appropriate action in cases of possible misconduct in line with COPE guidance.

Find out more about our ethical guidelines .

Copyright and permissions

Families, Relationships and Societies is published by Policy Press. Articles are considered for publication on the understanding that on acceptance the author(s) grant(s) Policy Press the exclusive right and licence to publish the article. Copyright remains with the author(s) or other original copyright owners and we will acknowledge this in the copyright line that appears on the published article.

Authors will be asked to sign a Journal Contributor Publishing Agreement to this effect, which should be submitted online along with the final manuscript. All authors should agree to the agreement. For jointly authored articles the corresponding author may sign on behalf of co-authors provided that they have obtained the co-authors' consent . The journal contributor agreement can be downloaded here .

Where copyright is not owned by the author(s), the corresponding author is responsible for obtaining the consent of the copyright holder. This includes figures, tables and excerpts. Evidence of this permission should be provided to Policy Press. General information on rights and permissions can be found here .

To request permission to reproduce any part of articles published in Families, Relationships and Societies, please email: [email protected] . For information on what is permissible use for different versions of your article please see our policy on self archiving and institutional repositories .

Please also read our Journals editorial policies .

British English spelling and punctuation is preferred.
Non-discriminatory language is mandatory. See our guidelines to sensitive language (appendix C of document).
Explanatory notes should be kept to a minimum. If it is necessary to use them, they must be numbered consecutively in the text and listed at the end of the article, before the references. Please do not embed notes in the text.
Please do not embed bibliographic references in the text, footnotes, live links or macros; the final submitted file should be clear of track changes and ready for print.
Tables and charts should be separated from the text and submitted in a Word or Excel file, with their placement in the text clearly indicated by inserting: ‘Table X here’. Please provide numbers, titles and sources (where appropriate).
Figures, diagrams and maps should be separated from the text and, ideally, submitted in an Encapsulated PostScript (.eps) file. Figures created in Word or Excel are acceptable in those file formats. If the figures, diagrams and maps are in other formats (i.e. have been pasted into a Word file rather than created in it) please contact [email protected] for advice. Please indicate where figures should be placed in the text, by inserting: ‘Figure X here’ and provide numbers, titles and sources (where appropriate).

In order to improve our accessibility for people with visual impairments, we are now required to ask authors to provide a brief description known as alt text to describe any visual content such as photos, illustrations or figures. It will not be visible in the article but is embedded into the images so a PDF reader can read out the descriptions. See our guidance on writing alt-text .

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Policy Press uses a custom version of the Harvard system of referencing:

In-text citations: give the author’s surname followed by year of publication in brackets;
If there is more than one reference to the same author and year, this should be distinguished by a, b, c, d and so on being added to the year.
In lists of references given within the text, place in chronological order, from old to new. For example (Smith, 1989; Jones, 1990; Amler, 2002; Brown, 2007).
List all references in full at the end of the article and remove any references not cited in the text;
Names should be listed in the references as cited, for example, surnames containing de, De, de la, Le, van, von, Van, Von should be listed under ‘D’, ‘L’ and ‘V’ respectively. If in doubt, check the author ORCID or a recognised database such as Scopus or Web of Science to verify their most known surname.
For works with multiple authors, list all names up to six. For works with more than six authors, list the first six names followed by ‘et al’.
Book and journal titles should be in italics;
Website details should be placed at the end of the reference;
Ibid/op cit: please do not use; we would prefer that you repeated the information.
Immediately before submitting your final version, check that all references cited in the text are in the reference list and that references in the reference list are cited correctly in the text.

Book : Bengtson, V.L. and Lowenstein, A. (2003) Global Aging and its Challenge to Families , New Jersey, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Darling, D. (2010) Injustice: Why Social Inequality Persists , Bristol: Policy Press.

Book with editor : Bengtson, V.L. and Lowenstein, A. (eds) (2003) Global Aging and its Challenge to Families , 5th edn, New Jersey, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Chapter in book or in multi-authored publication : Bengtson, V.L. and Lowenstein, A. (2003) Citizenship in action: the lived experiences of citizens with dementia who campaign for social change, in R. Smith, R. Means and K. Keegan (eds) Global Aging and its Challenge to Families , New Jersey, NJ: Transaction Publishers, pp 305–26.

Journal reference : Williamson, E. and Abrahams, H. A. (2014) A review of the provision of intervention programmes for female victims and survivors of domestic abuse in the UK, Journal of Women and Social Work , 29(1): 178-191. doi: doi.org/10.1177/0886109913516452

Jeffrey, C., Williams, E., de Araujo, P., Fortin-Rochberg, R., O'Malley, T., Hill, A-M., et al (2009) The challenge of politics, Policy & Politics , 36(4): 545–57. doi: doi.org/10.1177/0886108913516454

Website reference : Womensaid (2016) What is domestic abuse?, https://www.womensaid.org.uk/information-support/what-is-domestic-abuse/ .

Management Board

Esther Dermott , Editor-in-Chief : University of Bristol, UK Isabella Crespi , Co-Editor; The University of Macerata, Italy Manik Deepak-Gopinath , Co-Editor ; Open University, UK Sara Eldén , Co-Editor ; Lund University, Sweden Guanyu Jason Ran , Co-Editor ; Edinburgh Napier University, UK Lynn Jamieson , Editor at large ; University of Edinburgh, UK Margaret O'Brien , Chair of the Board ; University College London, UK

Kathryn Almack , Associate Editor ; University of Hertfordshire, UK Harriet Churchill , Associate Editor; University of Sheffield, UK Charlotte Faircloth , Associate Editor ; University College London, UK Mastoureh Fathi , Associate Editor; University College Cork, Ireland Patricia Hamilton , Associate Edito r; University of York, UK Tina Miller , Associate Editor ; Oxford Brookes University, UK Helen Norman , Associate Editor ; University of Leeds, UK Julie Walsh , Associate Editor ; University of Sheffield, UK Junko Yamashita , Associate Editor ; University of Bristol, UK

Kristoffer Chelsom Vogt , European Regional Editor ; University of Bergen, Norway France Winddance Twine , North American Regional Editor ; University of California Santa Barbara, USA Bren Neale , Consulting Editor ; University of Leeds, UK Tess Ridge , Consulting Editor ; University of Bath, UK

International Editorial Advisory Board

Jessica Hung-Chieh Chang , National Taiwan University, Taiwan Sarah Cunningham-Burley , University of Edinburgh, UK Barbara Fawcett , University of Strathclyde, UK Tom Fletcher , Leeds Beckett University, UK Jacques-Antoine Gauthier , University of Lausanne, Switzerland Daniela Grunow , Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, Germany Anna Gupta , Royal Holloway, University of London, UK Florencia Herrera , Diego Portales University, Chile Sarah Irwin , University of Leeds, UK An-Magritt Jensen , Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway Sibel Kalaycioglu , Middle East Technical University, Turkey Travis Kong , University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Eva Lloyd , University of East London, UK Kate Morris , University of Sheffield, UK Tulsi Patel , University of Delhi, India Lars Plantin , Malmö University, Sweden Pia Schober , Eberhard Karls University of Tuebingen, Germany

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How have marriage and relationships changed over time?

By JOHN FRYE | February 14, 2019

As social media and online dating platforms like Tinder and Hinge become more and more visible in American society, people are beginning to question whether relationships and the concept of love are evolving. Many feel as though technology has superseded human interaction and elevated the desire for quick hookups, while others contend that modern relationships remain fundamentally the same as they were in prior generations.

Sociologists like Andrew Cherlin, the Chair of the Sociology Department and the Director of the Program on Social Policy at Hopkins, are interested in how the perception and priorities of relationships have shifted over time. His research, which focuses on historical differences in marriage and family life, has led him to conclude that there are both notable changes and continuities in how Americans have loved one another over time.

Seventy-five years ago, Cherlin said, Americans chose to marry because of social pressure. He believes that marriage today remains a source of personal happiness and commitment — not just a source of legal benefits. His reasoning stems from arguments for the legalization of gay marriage.

“Lots of legislators said, ‘Why don’t we just give same-sex couples the same legal benefits that different-sex couples have?’” he said. “That wasn’t good enough for LGBTQ activists. They said that marriage is a sign of a first-class personal life.”

Cherlin described marriage as the “ultimate merit badge” and the symbol of a successful relationship.

Jeff Bowen, a social psychologist at Hopkins focused on relationship decision-making, contends that young people seek out stable, successful relationships, even outside of marriage. In this regard, he says, modern relationships have varied little from their predecessors.

According to Bowen, young people still desire a relationship that brings them happiness.

“People’s ultimate goals have a lot in common with what they were previously,” he said, “whether it’s to feel satisfied in their relationships or to manage a difficult moment.”

While relationships continue to thrive on mutual satisfaction, Bowen claims that the way modern couples achieve this sense of satisfaction is considerably different.

“A lot of those things are common across time,” he said. “But how people experience those challenges and communicate them is evolving with all the other forces within and outside the relationship.”

Much of this change in how partners manage their relationships stems from modern technology’s prominent role in current dating trends, Bowen said. Platforms like dating apps allow people to more directly communicate their interests to potential partners, as well as their goals for a prospective relationship.

Unlike in the past, Cherlin argued, the goal of many modern relationships is self-gratification.

“There’s been a shift in Western culture toward what you might call individualism: the idea that’s what important is my own satisfaction, my own personal growth and development, not my service to others,” Cherlin said. “A century or two ago, no one expected much personal happiness from marriage and family life; it was just something you did. Now marriage, like other decisions we make, is all about ourselves.”

According to Cherlin, that couples are getting married increasingly later in life reflects this attitude.

“Both young men and young women are pursuing more personal development after they graduate from college,” Cherlin said. “What we’ve seen is the emergence of a new life stage that people are calling ‘early adulthood’ that’s between being a teenager and being a full adult: a stage of life that goes from, say, 18 to upwards of age 30 in which people are gradually doing the things that make them an adult.”

Marriage, Cherlin said, remains an important aspect of adulthood. However, young people are spending more time on developing their careers and education before settling down. Marriage is no longer a building block of adulthood, Cherlin opined, but the “capstone.”

This trend is true for Hopkins students, who, according to Cherlin, tend to put off long-term relationships in favor of short, personally gratifying ones until they have completed their studies.

“Today, if the average Hopkins undergrad called her or his parents and said, ‘Hi, I found somebody I want to marry,’ I think the parents would be puzzled and possibly worried,” Cherlin said. “They’re not ready to have a long-term relationship because they’re too busy studying to get into medical school, but they’d like to have some personal, romantic or sexual fulfillment.”

While many Hopkins undergrads might gladly affirm this statement, Bowen argues that students might be more focused on relationship-building than they realize.

“Just from speaking to undergraduates, it’s certainly the case that academic priorities are a big part of people’s college experience here, and I think that’s true at a lot of institutions,” Bowen said. “The extent to which that might affect priorities about relationships, however, is hard to say.”

Bowen pointed to a lack of clear, empirical data about Hopkins students’ dating preferences, as well as research on students at other universities, as an indicator that students at Hopkins may very well be interested in long-term relationships throughout their academic careers.

“Largely, the research is still indicating that even in college, people share the goal with generations past of trying to end up in committed partnerships,” Bowen said.

Despite this, Bowen contends that the path to this ideal of a committed relationship has changed greatly. And while the interest for commitment is present, many college students still prefer to gradually ease their way into long-term relationships by engaging in various short-term romantic and sexual experiences.

Although the two researchers disagree on the extent of brief, sex-focused relationships on college campuses, they agree that commitment will remain integral to American romance for the foreseeable future.

As Cherlin stated, though marriage has changed, its importance in society has persisted despite the predictions of many sociologists.

“For decades, I’ve been waiting for marriage to fade away, as lots of people predicted it would. It hasn’t,” he said. “It could be here for a long time.”

COURTESY OF MOLLY GAHAGEN
Gahagan shares what she would tell her freshman self about her college experiences.

A letter to my freshman self: Molly Gahagen

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Ekinci reflects on his highs and lows of his time at Hopkins.

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Hopkins community mourns the loss of zoe underwood, hopkins establishes fellowship in honor of ethan posner, looking ahead to my long island interlude, embracing the unexpected, a letter to my freshman self: isabella madruga, weekly rundown, events this weekend (april 26–28), hopkins sports in review (april 17–21), science news in review: april 21, to watch and watch for: week of april 21, events this weekend (april 19–21), science news in review: april 14.

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DOI: 10.52589/bjmcmr-nygwllj9
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The Impact of Social Media on Family Relationships (A Study of Jahi, Abuja)

Kabiru J. , Alabi A.
Published in British Journal of Mass… 23 April 2024
British Journal of Mass Communication and Media Research

36 References

Effects of usage of social media on family relationships among youth a case study of district swabi, problematic social media use in adolescents and young adults: systematic review and meta-analysis, the impact of social media on relationship building among undergraduates students in nigeria, the role of social media in shaping public opinion and its influence on economic decisions, social support and family functioning during adolescence: a two-wave cross-lagged study, trust in social media: enhancing social relationships, aging and family relationships among aymara, mapuche and non-indigenous people: exploring how social support, family functioning, and self-perceived health are related to quality of life, family and relationship benefits of travel experiences, positive and negative impact of social media on youths in thiruvananthapuram district, social connection when physically isolated: family experiences in using video calls, related papers.

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Modern Relationships: Romance, Friendship, and Family in the 21st Century

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Cultural, political, and legal changes in the 21st century have changed the landscapes in which our close interpersonal relationships take place. Many choose to remain single or get married later. Online dating and cohabitation are more readily accepted and common. Our friendships, especially on social media, have gained importance. Issues surrounding gender identity, equity, and sexual orientation also loom large. With the help of technology, more couples, including same-sex couples, are now able to become parents. From same-sex to open and polyamorous marriages, how we define and perceive some of our most important close relationships have changed. The dissolution and reformation of partnerships and families have gained new importance as nontraditional families have become more common. The formation of families through adoption raises questions of identity and successful parenting. Relationships across cultural, racial, religious, and national lines are also more relevant in today’s pluralistic societies. Finally, what types of relationships are considered worthy of scholarly and scientific attention, and the lenses with which to study them, have also evolved. This volume compiles the latest research and theory on close relationships of the 21st century from multidisciplinary and international perspectives with the intent of taking stock of this shifting terrain.

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Modern Society: American Family Values

Subject:	Culture
Pages:	5
Words:	1183
Reading time:	5 min
Study level:	Bachelor

Introduction

Family values and marriage, position of women, child-rearing, “non-traditional” families, affects of globalization, works cited.

United States Ethnic Culture and family values are centered on individuals, messianic in nature, saving the world as aphorism, people are outspoken, expressive and efficient communicators, more individual influence and disseminated decision making prevails in negotiation style. US dealing with family counterparts are straight, more understated, gratitude and grudge for both favors and humiliations respectively are superseded by business purpose, strong ability to make immediate response but with the concept of global monoculture the scenario is fast changing and the families of US are in vicinity of alien cultures in recent time and the result of this exchange is quite uncertain on the American way of life and most importantly its family values.

It should be taken into account that one of the most distinguishable aspects of modern family values are its attitude towards sexuality and marriage. Given the many problems that are associated with marriage, it is not so surprising that many young people in post Modern societies- which, to a great extent, now values individual fulfillment over traditions or modern Society – have become disillusioned with the institution of marriage. This has resulted in the surging of non-traditional social structures. Divorce used to be quite rare in Pre modern Society, but in modern society it became extremely common. In the Soviet Union, for example, only 37 percent of marriages survive three years, and 70 percent break up within a decade. Men and women tend to divorce their spouses for different reasons (Meyer, 611). Women can claim a variety of reasons for seeking a separation from their spouses. Such reasons include physical, emotional, or mental abuse, heavy substance abuse, infidelity, sexual problems, or lack of support. Men seeking divorce from their wives complain of nagging, a dull sex life, or meddling in-laws. Women usually are more dissatisfied and find more fault with their marriages than men do. It must be added that the majority of men and women do eventually remarry. However, remarriages often fail as well. Divorced women with higher incomes and educations frequently delay remarrying, and many of these successful women never remarry (Grasmick, 357). Remarriages tend to be more gratifying for the husbands than for the wives, just as is the case with first marriages. All these factors are distinctively different from traditional US family values.

Regarding household works it can be stated that since family is such a basic and vital social unit in all societies, persons of all political persuasions have at-times visceral opinions about what things promote the institution and what forces degrade it. In the United States, conservatives and liberals view family very differently. Three of the most contentious issues regarding family life in America are abortion, feminism, and homosexuality. Feminism also sharply divides liberals and conservatives. Liberals intensely value individual fulfillment. They encourage women to seek satisfaction outside of the family. For example, they encourage women to maintain careers even with families. Meanwhile, conservatives maintain that a woman’s primary duty is to look after her husband and children. To many conservatives, individual fulfillment simply looks selfish. (Becker, 714)

In the context of Child-rearing it can be said that it is changing not just in the United States, but worldwide as well. The processes for rearing a child are changing because, in part, the institution of family is itself transforming. In traditional societies, the family system tended to take the form of the extended family. In extended families, more than two generations of the same kinship line lived together, either in the same residence or in nearby dwellings. All adults in these extended families shared responsibility for child-rearing. Then, during the Industrial Revolution, the nuclear family became the most common familial system, at least within the Western nations. In the modern world, the smaller nuclear family structure held many advantages over the traditional extended family. Nuclear families helped to promote geographical and social mobility. Smaller families also tended to spend less money simply because there were fewer individuals to provide for. This important social change would have profound effects on how children were raised. While the nuclear family offered increased economic feasibilities, the mother and father- who now had to raise the children on their own- sometimes found child-rearing to be exhausting and a burden. In addition, the children- to a considerable extent separated from most other family members- would sometimes find themselves alienated from these extended family members. In many respects, the nuclear family engenders a sense of loneliness within offspring (Meyer, 610).

In the last few decades, the number of “non-traditional” families has skyrocketed. These family structures include single-parent families and reconstituted families (nuclear families in which at least one member is a survivor of divorce). These “non-traditional” families pose special problems for children. Often, the head of the household in single-parent families does not possess the financial resources to take care of the offspring properly. In addition, some heads are so busy with work and other adult responsibilities that they cannot provide adequate supervision for the offspring. Reconstituted families face the difficult challenges of creating appropriate relationships among step-parents and step-children, between the children of one spouse and the children of the other spouse, and between various new half-brothers, half-sisters, and the existing children (Darling, 270).

In present day society, the destruction of traditional families and its values in order to initiate them into the global monoculture is more subtle than it was in the past. Most corporate and government leaders do not intend to destruct traditional cultures; for the most part, they are often unaware that they are doing so. Regardless of whether or not the concepts and approach of the development toward global monocultures is, in fact, more subtle than in previous generations, the effects of the destruction of cultural diversity are still more devastating. The computer and technology revolution of the past twenty years have given executives even more reason to disrupt and destroy cultural diversity, attempting to “ do what is best for each society and the world ,” (Rasing, 56) without, in fact, considering how these revisions affect each society and family values. Cultural and Family values are becoming intermingled and thus the future blueprint of family values remains uncertain.

Family values, therefore seems to assume that diversity of various cultures alongside differing values and beliefs created chaos, and by discarding of these differences, they will no longer exist, and everybody will be able to get along. However, this assumption has created a horrible consequence. Villages, rural communities, and their age-old traditions and customs all around the globe are being discarded and removed in a large scale destruction of tradition and this is not applicable to developing countries alone, it has affected the US family values too. The globalizing market therefore forces the destruction and removal of tradition and history, removing cultures that have been present for thousands of years. Regardless of this fact, the spread of consumer monoculture appears to be never ending and under such parameters it is only logical to believe that family values would keep changing in times to come.

Becker, Penny. “ Work, Family and Involvement for Men and Women ”. Journal for the Scientific Study 40.4, (2007): 707-722.

Darling, Carol. “Understanding stress and quality of life”. Stress and Health 20.5, (2004): 261-277.

Grasmick, Harold. “The Effects of Religious Fundamentalism and Religiosity on Preference for Traditional Family Norms”. Sociological Inquiry 60.4, (2007): 352 – 369.

Meyer, Burt. “Globalization and Identity: Dialectics of Flow and Closure”. Development and Change 29.4, (2005): 601-16.

Rasing, Ted. Modernity on a Shoestring: Dimensions of Globalization, Consumption and Development in Africa and Beyond . Leiden/London: EIDOS, 2006.

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Modern Families: Intimate and Personal Relationships Essay

Introduction

Gender and Family Analysis

Cost of Living

Communication

Article contents

Introduction

Family: Theoretical Perspectives

Family Communication Patterns Theory

Dyadic Power

The Role of Culture in Parenting Socialization of Values

Intercultural Families: Adding Cultural Differences to Interparental Communication

An Example of Intercultural Parenting: The Thai Family

The Case of Hispanic/Latino Families in the United States

Culture and Family Communication: the “so what?” Question

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Acknowledgments

What Is The Importance Of Family In Modern Society?

Its definition may evolve, but family may remain essential

Benefits of a healthy family

Helps you meet your basic needs

Allows you to belong to something

Offers a built-in support system

Contributes to health

Provides support when someone is ill

Offers community benefits

Educates children

All families may struggle sometimes

Seeking help

Benefits of online therapy

Effectiveness of online therapy

What is the importance of family in our life?

What is the importance of family to a person?

What are 10 important aspects of family in your life?

Why are family relationships among the most important we will ever have?

What is the most important value in your relationship as a family?

What is important in life, family or love?

Is having a family the most important thing?

Why is family more important than happiness?

What is the importance of family unity?

What brings unity to the family?

Late modern perspectives on the family

Anthony Giddens: Choice and Equality

Ulrich Beck: The ‘Risk Society’ and The Negotiated Family

Evaluating Late Modern Perspectives on the Family

The dual earner household is the norm

Older people not wanting to get married….

Young people feel social pressure to get married

Negotiated families

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