Typical American Family Essay

The “typical American family” has been a social construct for several centuries in the United States, consisting of a father, mother, and children of the same ancestry. A family can be defined as, “a basic social unit consisting of parents and their children, considered as a group, whether dwelling together or not.” In We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, a book by Karen Joy Fowler, the structure of the Cooke family demonstrates that the concept of the “typical American family” is outdated and must be looked at differently with heavy emphasis on generation outlook. The purpose of this essay is to explore the ways in which Karen Joy Fowler uses the Cooke lineage to redefine and expand on how the concept of a “typical American family” needs to not be constrained, by arguing that within each generation of the Cooke family (grandparents, parents, and children), there is a significantly different outlook on what a typical family looks like and how it is constructed. …show more content…
The first part will focus on analyzing how Grandma Donna, Rosemary’s grandma, cares for her family, which effectively showcases her perfect vision of a family. The second part will center around Rosemary’s parents and their vision of how a family is constructed, compared to the ideals Grandma Donna holds. The third part will dive into the youngest generation, consisting of Rosemary, her brother Lowell, and her twin sister Fern, and analyze how their specific outlooks on what a family should be breaks the walls of traditional familial boundaries. The fourth and final part of this essay will examine how this change in family construct is represented in the present, and how society is working on expanding their understanding on what a family can