A Study on the Changes of American Family Structure英语毕业论文.doc

A Study on the Changes of American Family StructureAbstractThis paper is an analysis on the American family structure that has undergone enormous changes since the Second World War Nuclear family the traditional family which was prevalent in 1950s no longer predominated in the United States Instead the numbers of new patterns such as single parent family unmarried cohabit family childless family and blended family of American family structure increased continuously At the same time divorce rate increased to a great extent birth rate decreased noticeably and also cohabitation rate has been climbing up This paper hold that these changes are closely related to the ongoing social and economic development and people concept and values and the American family is toward diversification of family forms in which none of them predominates in the future rather than a single standard formThis paper aims to provide a general description of the changes in American family pattern since the Second World War especially with an emphasis on the changes in nuclear family and the causes of the changesKey words： American nuclear family family patterns causes of the changes内容摘要本文分析了二战以来美国家庭模式经历的巨大变化五十年代传统的核心家庭模式不在占主导地位而单亲家庭未婚同居家庭丁克家庭及混合家庭的数却在不断上升同时离婚率大幅度上升人口出生率明显下降未婚同居率也一直在攀升本文认为这些变化与社会经济的不断发展及人们不断不变化的价值观念等密切相关也认为美国家庭模式倾向于走向多样化而并非一种模式占主导的趋势本文旨在描述二战以来美国家庭模式变化的总体情况重点描述核心家庭的变化情况并分析其变化的原因关键词：美国核心家庭 家庭模式家庭变化成因ContentAbstract English iAbstract Chinese ii Introduction12 Definition of family13 Changes of American family structure231 A changing nuclear family2 com Marriage and divorce2 com The changes in marital and non-marital fertility3 com Cohabitation3 32 Patterns of American family structure4 com Married couples with children5 com Married couples without children5 com Single-parent family5 com Blended family64 Causes of family structure changes7 41 Economic development in American society7 42 Feminist movement and familychanges8 43 Increasing labor force participation by women9 44 Peoples changing concept and values105 Conclusion12Works cited13Introduction In recent years applied researchers have become increasingly interested in the changes of American family patterns However few studies are satisfactory to interpret these causes of the changes The present paper is a comprehensive analysis on the causes of American family structureIn the latter half of the twentieth century a diverse range of family patters has replaced the nuclear family which was once predominant in the 1950sHowever it began to decline since the Second World War and dramatic changes occurred to American family life thereafter Divorce is much more common There are also a number of increasing people who are to marry and often living with a partner before marriage Thus a growing number of children are bore to mothers who are not married And more and more women are beginning to bear full responsibility for their family This has led to some people even predict that nuclear family is in the process of disappearingIndeed under these social economic and cultural circumstances changes on American family have been under way since the Second World War The main trend of American family will become more various rather than a single standard form in the future as the objective causes The purpose of this paper is to provide a general description of the changes in American family since the Second World War and emphasizing especially the changes in nuclear family and analyze the causes of the changes2 Definition of family A family is defined as consisting of two or more persons related by blood marriage or adoption living in the same household AS 619 But to understand families and the specific relations they represent we must recognize that the term family is socially constructed that is the meaning of family changes in response to a wide variety of social and cultural conditions To reflect this understanding we often refer to families in the plural Multiple meanings of family are reflected in the historical and cross-cultural record For example in ancient Greece family referred to the household economy including the land house and servants In medieval Europe peasants who lived on feudal estates were considered part of the lords family and he was called their father even though they were not related to him by blood In some cultures non-kid adults are treated as family members and act as co-parents toward children Similarly in contemporary Native American families the terms used to describe family relationships are more meaningful than narrow English usage would imply a grandmother may actually be a childs aunt or grandaunt and cousin may have various meaning not necessarily based on birth and marriage However sometimes we also make generalizations about families by referring to the family as a social institutionmany expectations and activities embedded in a larger number of social economic legal political and cultural practices In this paper it places the term family as a social institution in the latter half of the 20th century in the United States3 Changes of American family A careful look at what did and did not happen to America families in the postwar period would behelpful for us to avoid any misleading notions about the trends and to examine its underlying causes Viqi 20 31 A changing nuclear family A nuclear family in which father acted as breadwinner and mother as homemaker consists of a conjugal couple and their children In the 1950s it was very prevalent But now it has evolved The paper shows the changes on the marriage divorce and birthrate in American family since the 1950scom Marriage and divorce One of the key changes in American family is that marriage rates have fallen significantly since 1950 despite a small ascent from 1960 to 1970 It went up moderately in 1980 and then went down in the following years As the marriage rate went down the divorce rose with its peak in the late 1970s The rising trend in the divorces has been going on for a long time since the 1950s and we see a slow drop-off in the 1980s and 1990s During the 1980s and early 1990s five of ten marriages ended in divorce In the coming decade we can expect continual high levels of divorce perhaps dipping down a bit so that four of ten marriages will dissolve Another significant change in family union formation process has been the postponement in marriage since the Baby Boom Above shows the median age at marriage among American women and men over the past century As the above shows for women age at marriage hovered around 21-22 years between 1890 and 1950 declined significantly during the Baby Boom and began rising thereafter reaching slightly over 25 years old in 2000 Patterns for men are somewhat different with a general decline in age at marriage between 1890 and the Baby Boom Like women however age at marriage for men began rising after the Baby Boom and in the year 2000 was higher than at any time in the past centurycom The shift in marital and non-marital fertility Between 1960 and 1990 marital fertility ratesbirths to married women between the ages of 15 and 44declined sharply while non-marital fertility ratesbirths to unmarried women of similar agesincreased gradually Together these married and non-married trends represented a reduction in overall fertility while increasing the proportion of children born outside of marriage Beginning in the mid-1970s marital fertility rates stopped declining non-marital fertility rates begin to rise and the age at first marriage continued to rise After 1975 the rise in the illegitimacy ratio was due to increase in non-marital fertility as well as to increase in the number of women at risk of having a non-marital birth Changes in marital and non-marital fertility altered family life in two major ways they reduced the prevalence of parenthood overall and they increased the proportion of families headed by single mothers com Cohabitation At the same time marriage is being postponed unmarried cohabitation has increased Chart 3 shows the number of opposite-sex cohabiting couple households In 1960 the number was estimated at less than half a million at the 2000 Census there were nearly 5 million such households Cohabitation that is living with someone in a sexual union without a formal marriage has become increasingly common Three million households in 1991 had cohabiting couples nearly 60 percent of who were under age 35 Cohabitation has increased six folds since 1970when only 500000 households had cohabiting couples Only opposite-sex couples are counted in these figures so these data underestimate the extent of cohabitation in the United States today Ahlburg 27 About one-third of all cohabiting opposite-sex couples in 1991 had children under age 15 present in their homes but far more cohabiting couples are parents Where once non-marital birth was a relatively minor phenomenon it has now reached considerable proportions By one estimate almost half of cohabiting couples have children either living with them or living elsewhere with a custodial parent Cohabitation is often seen as prelude to marriage Only 5 percent of women ages 15 to 44 were cohabiting with a male partner in 1988 and one-third had done so at some time in the past One-quarter of white women one-quarter of Hispanic women and nearly one-third of black women had lived with their first husband before marriage Among single persons who plan to cohabit in the future more than 80 percent said that cohabiting allows couples to make sure they are compatible before getting married At least one of the partners expects the arrangements to result in marriage in 90 percent of cohabitations Respondents may be overly optimistic however 55 percent of first cohabiting unions of white women and 42 percent of those of black women resulted in marriage Bumpass 487 It is important to note that the rise in cohabitation has helped to offset much of the fall in marriage rates If we expand our notion of marriage to include legal marriage and cohabitation there has been little decline in the institution of marriage in the United States32 Variants of family structure The new family system we are now seeing differs from the older one in several ways With the increase in premarital sex cohabitation and non- marital birth a good deal of what used to be reserved for legal marriage is now taking place outside of it These illegalized sexual and parental activities are not chaotic but exhibit a pattern that has social significance Cohabitation could actually be perceived as conventional marriage Cohabitation then should be seen as new variants of family structure rather than phenomena that have nothing to do with a family system At the same time we should bear in mind that the conventional nuclear family is still here Many households still have a father mother and minor children living together although this makes up only about one fourth of all householdsa significant drop from 1970 As the above shows the family structure in the United States is becoming more complicated because there are different kinds of families and household types existing at the same time For example since 1970 the rate of households composed of married couples with children has decreased whereas rate of households composed of single persons and single parents has increasedcom Married couples with children Twoparent families declined substantially in the period 1960 to 1998 from 91 percent to 73 percent Not all of the 73 percent of family households with children in 1998 had two biological parents in the household Using data that allow identification of biological relationships we can estimates that 12 percent of children who live in two-parent families are actually not living with both biological parents and thin that only 88 percent of the two-parent family households with children include both biological parents and 64 percent of family households with children are intact two-parent families The trend suggests the decrease of the two-parent family com Married couples without children As it shows married couples without children has become the most common type of household with the stable proportion of all households from 1970 to 2000 And that forty-two percent of all families in 1991 consisted of married couples without children Among married couples without children in 1991 about 15 percent of the women were under age 35 suggesting a possible delay in childbearing Indeed over half of all married women younger than 35 who were childless in 1990 reported that they expect to have a child at some point in the future com Single-parent families The one-parent family is usually described as an "incomplete" nuclear family and there is a general assumption that it is socially undesirable However with the rising divorce rate this family type has also become increasingly common in the white middle class Chart 4 shows that single parent household keeps increasing through 1970 to 2000 although there is stagnation in the 1990s Women were five times more likely than men to be raising a family alone in 1991 and African-Americans were almost three times more likely than whites to be single parents Single-parent families represented with children one in three Hispanic families with children and one in six white families with children Changing patterns of marriage divorce remarriage and the rise in births to unmarried women have contributed to the growth of single-parent families Demographer Larry Bumpass writes About half of todays young children will spend some time in a single-parent family most as a consequence of divorce Furthermore this is not just simply a transitional phase between a first and second marriage The majority will reside in a mother-only family for the remainder of their childhood Randall 485 com Blended family The family form created in a remarriage that involves one or more children from the previous marriage of either spouse is called a reconstituted family or a blended family Each has lost a spouse through divorce or death One or both of them have children from their previous marriage They form a new stepfamily that includes children from one or both of their first households Because of constant flow in and out between divorce and marriage in the modern US society there is going to be a fair number of people in single parent families or families of remarriage In the United States remarriage has been the traditional answer to many of the problems faced by single parents Remarriage improves the financial situation of a divorced mother and provides another adult to share the household tasks and responsibilities In