Wednesday, 30 November 2011

What Is The Traditional Family Today?

By Bruce Jopples


What is the traditional family? When someone thinks of the latter phrase, a picture of parents and their children probably appear in their mind. However, over the years, this picture has come to change, reflecting different types of families and structural units. It's easier to understand what exactly it is when looking back over history.

First of all, a family unit is the basic group of parents that are raising their children until they reach adulthood. This as known as a conjugal unit. It also consists of grandparents and other aunts and uncles, and of course the list goes on and on. However, the immediate relatives are what is considered the center: Father, Mother and children.

This original structure was kept in the minds of men for thousands of years. Through the ages one things has remained the same: families. They are comprised of one father, one mother and their children that have not yet reached adulthood. It's the parent's primary focus to raise their children in the morals, virtues and religious beliefs that they believe in. It's also their place to have a hand in education and to love and care for their children in times of need.

In every sense, tradition simply means that something has been done a certain way for so many years and the tradition has not yet been broken. When it comes to familial situations, tradition refers to the unit of two parents and their children, by extension their grandparents and aunts and uncles. Still, the immediate relatives are the center: Mother and Father, then their children.

When the original unit is changed, usually it is the child who suffers. Society has become much more accepting of other types of familial structures, including single parenthood, same-sex marriages, foster homes and adoption. With such drastic changes in households everywhere, it's no surprise that people's views and virtues shift a little bit, too.

Society had become more accepting of greater tweaks to the original unit. Single parents, foster homes, same-sex marriages and adoptions are all becoming the seemingly new normal way of life. While many argue that it is important to hold onto the foundation of marriages, which forms the basis of any familial unit, others say that it does not matter, so long as two groups express love for each other.

Regardless of society's present evolution, the original unit is still the most common form around the world. It is simply the combination of mother and father raising their children until those children are old enough to raise their own kids, and thus the circle continues on and on.




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