Divorce And The Modern Family

The nuclear family is a type of family that is most cherished by the American public because it stands for traditionalism. This family model is the prototype for how a family should be, yet that’s not how all the families are. In fact, the steady transition from nuclear family to divorced family has gave light to various types of families, including divorced, single-parent, and stepfamilies. With the different kinds of families, new obstacles arise. In addition, new contradicting theories concerning all the diverse families that now make up the world also come into the spotlight. Themes such as divorce, the cause and effects of divorce, and the modern family are discussed in the articles Divorce in Research vs. Divorce in Media by Virginia E. Rutter, The Modern American Stepfamily: …show more content…
I’ve always known people who were apart of stepfamilies and considered these type of families to be like any other, but I never realized until reading the very informative article by Mason that in the eyes of the law, stepfamilies might as well be a bunch of strangers living together. Moreover, despite the stepparent being everything that a parent can be, he or she still cannot even sign a permission slip for their stepchild to go on a fieldtrip. Reading about all these restrictions made me feel sympathy for all the stepparents out there who contribute financially and emotionally to their stepchild’s lives and are not considered true guardians. It opened my eyes to how complex stepfamilies are and generally the complexity who is considered family. I learned that America has yet to move forward from only acknowledging parent-child relationships only when they are biological. This article created great awareness on my part about how much more needs to be done so that we as a society can adjust to the reality of the different families we have and treat them