...Destruction of the Family Throughout history, societies that valued traditional marriage and sexual abstinence were able to remain fundamentally strong and have flourished. Once a society decides to abandon these simple principles, destruction inevitably follows. J. Unwin (1934) wrote, “In human records, there is no instance of a society retaining its energy after a complete new generation has inherited a tradition which does not insist on prenuptial and postnuptial continence” (Unwin, 1934, p. 174). In today’s society, family and marriage are not defined by the traditional definition handed down through several millennia of history; rather the definition has been warped, and a new unstable version of the family has been accepted by our society. Traditional marriage is by its nature, the foundation of the family. The family is the building block of society, and marriage is the basis of the family. The devaluation of the conventional family, and more specifically, the destruction of traditional marriage by divorce, can have no other outcome but the destruction of our society. There are many reasons to evaluate why we have arrived at this state in our society: the growth of consumerism and commercialism, influence of Hollywood over our lives, the decline of religiosity in the United States, the decline of the social order and neighborhood relationships. All of these reasons are legitimate causes for the decay of our society. However, only one cause has wielded its destructive...
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...mind is single mom. When you think of single mothers, people always feel that the person is on welfare and not able to take care of her children or herself. That is really a misconception. Sometimes the mother may have chosen to have a child and raise it by herself. The spouse could have passed away and the mother chooses to not remarry. There is numerous reason why a woman chooses to be a single parent. I myself encounter this when I had my first child growing up in the church and with my own family and friends. I wasn’t allowed to sing in the choir, people constantly talked about you behind your back. I felt that it was all because my parents had divorced, but both of them were still active in our lives. “There’s no question that single-mother families struggle in ways that two-parent families don't. Unmarried women juggling jobs and children are apt to have less money, less time and fewer emotional resources to devote to their kids” (Banks, 2012). The big picture is that there are single mothers that are not on welfare and have a wonderful support system. “The label "single mother" doesn't recognize that. Its fallout swirls around all of us raising children without fathers, like the dust cloud that followed Pig Pen around in those old "Peanuts" comics” (Banks, 2012). The terms are straightforward Single: not married, widowed, divorced or never married and Mother: female parent. I feel that people should stop prejudging you just because you are a single mother. Women have...
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...Society has viewed single mothers as an issue that only affects women of poverty. When a social issue of many races and cultures. It is portrayed that single mothers are African American or Latino. There are single mothers in all areas of the social ladder. Single motherhood happens for numerous reasons. When you think of reasons the first that comes to mind is divorce. Although this is one of the main reasons, it is one of many. Single women dating sometimes experience an unexpected pregnancy, and because of religious beliefs abortion is not an option, or they just chose to have the baby. Many Single mother homes struggle economically, because of the rise in cost of living, and one income households. These single mothers usually live under poverty level, ad struggle to pay their bills. These parents usually relay on some type of government assistance to survive. Many of these women don't have a healthy social life for themselves. This is because they tend to put all of their free time into their children, to try to compensate for the time spent at work. Those who choose to date have a difficult time, because they have to be careful of whom they introduce to their kids. This makes their love life almost nonexistent. These mothers experience high levels of stress trying to manage work and family life. Although the mother gives love to the child and interact as a family, she can sometimes feel alone, because of lack...
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...hadn’t always made smart decision with my life. I was petrified of having to raise her all alone, how could I with no money or strong support system. The moment I saw her sweet little face, I knew I would do everything I could to make sure she had a good life and I would be the mother she deserved. Society and Single Mothers Despite the fact most Americans have become accustom with couples of the same-sex or couples raising children who are unmarried, they still see single mothers as disadvantageous to society, in accordance to a new poll of society’s thoughts with regards to the nation's rising number of nontraditional family units. And more than two eras after the hit TV show “Murphy Brown” triggered a public commotion when she had a baby out of; a lot of people continue to frown when it comes to the choice of single motherhood. The traditional way of life in our society when I was coming up was, boy meets girl, boy courts girl, and they get married and then have children. So one can understand the discouragements I felt when I had my own child non-traditionally. However this day and age our country is slowly pulling away from the “Norm” as we call and pressing towards the new “norm” of single parenthood endured by both men and women. The new millennium brought about a...
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...daughter, whom he has raised alone since soon after her birth, I figured I better answer seriously. I responded “Whenever she’s comfortable.” As usual he replied “Ok, Just thought I’d ask.” You see my friend is one of the many men that have challenged the stereotype that has been placed upon them of being absentee or dead beat fathers once their relationship ends with the mothers. This is proving to no longer be status quo. You see I have several male friends who are raising their children, mostly girls, alone. Thus we now have a growing number of “absentee or deadbeat” mothers in our society. According to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau, there is a significant rise in the number of single fathers raising kids. Specifically, the census data shows that the rise in families led by single fathers has outpaced the rise in single-mother families for the first time since 1970. Today, there is an increase of 14 percent of single-dad households. The number of single-mother households only increased by roughly 3.2 percent in the past 10 years. Gone are the days of family court automatically granting custody to the mother just because “That’s the way it’s always been.” Fathers are now challenging and exercising their parental rights. They are now demanding the opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of their children. The reasons for fathers being granted custody vary from things as bad as child neglect and abandonment, to...
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...Women today are expected to be loving mothers, domesticated wives, educated career women and still obliged to provide for their families. However, with the demand and focus for highly regarded, high paying careers being dominated by men within society women are unable to break free and prove their capabilities as successful working class individuals as easily as their male counterparts. The obstacles that many women face today limit working women’s ability to enhance their current skills and make it extremely difficult for them to excel in the workforce. With the expectation to balance and multitask work as well as the domestic responsibilities, the same skills that allow women to take on so much are in fact the same factors that hold them back from any advancement within the labour market. According to Krahn, Lowe and Hughes, authors of Work, Industry and Canadian Society (2008), women find themselves seeking refuge in employment facilities with “little economic security and little opportunity for advancement; furthermore the work is often unpleasant, boring and sometimes physically taxing” (p.187). It often forces the female population to strictly seek jobs in the service sector assigned to them based on gender alone. Women have been stereotyped into being domesticated labourers due to the double standard. Women in Canada also face the problem of earning significantly less than their male counterparts. Editors of Dividing the Domestic: men, women, and household work in...
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...English Composition II 14 November 2011 Bill is a 38 year old man whom most of his adult life has been spent in and out of prison. He is very articulate and appears to be quite intelligent. We sat down to talk, and I asked him what had happened in his life that had led him to a life of trouble? He stares at the floor, sighs and then begins to talk. “I didn’t have a father to guide me” he exclaims. His father had abandoned him and his teen mother when he was just months old. Bill’s mother had to quit school and go to work to support him. He jumped from babysitter to babysitter throughout his childhood. His mother was forced to work two jobs and was absent most of the time. There has been occasions when his mother was without work and they ended up on welfare. With his father not in the picture and his mother at work most of the time, he found himself seeking refuge with the wrong crowd of people. He got involved with drugs, and started selling them to support his habit, and ended up dropping out of school. Bill practically grew up alone, with no guidance, discipline or supervision. He has a son, whom was born out of wedlock, and has no contact with him. In spite of his apparent intelligence and with no formal education, he is not able to get a decent job. He works here-and-there doing manual labor, but he is going nowhere. He considers himself a failure and suffers from depression. Bill has tried to locate his father to ask him why he did not want him, and...
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...Abstract In the 1960’s, “The Cleavers” of” Leave it To Beaver” were a representation of how the family structure was throughout society. Made up of father who worked, a mother who stayed at home to raise the children and family dinners every night. Today in 2012, the family dynamic has changed dramatically. There are several factors that can be attributed to these changes and these changes could continue to change society for future generations. However, perhaps from researching the past and how we got here, we can find ways to strengthen families in the future. Family Changes Since 1960 the family dynamic has changed. Over these mere 52 years families have gone from having both parents in the home, usually with a father who works and a mother who stayed at home to raise the children. Today, many families are broken; children are shuffled between the mother’s home and the father’s home every other weekend. With this broken foundation the family structure itself is becoming weaker, thus creating a difference in society today compared to when our parents and grandparents were being raised. As previously mentioned, the Cleavers made up the traditional family in the 1960’s. This dynamic accounts for less that 15% of families today in the United States (Mintz, N.D). Another drastic change we have seen since 1960 is the divorce rate that has doubled since 1966. Another difference that has grown dramatically since as early as 1970 is the number of homes where couples...
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...English 102-26 Community Analysis Essay RD The Myth of Single Mothers We propose changes, transformations, evolutions and revolutions and yet neglect to realize our own mistakes, where we should start and therefore find the proper ways to make these changes come true. In today’s world there are a large number of women who have decided to take on motherhood without the support of their partner either because they have taken that decision for themselves or they had no other option. Whatever the case is, now when we see single mothers taking care of their children, we should see them as women worthy of admiration and not make them feel as they have failed or like they should feel ashamed of their situation. Furthermore, the journey of raising a child alone is synonymous of courage, sacrifice, love, and lots of effort when there is not parental or child support from the father of the child. However, and without actually replacing the father figure of the child, the family of the single woman is for her and her child a unique and fundamental support for both (mother / child) that will make them feel somehow protected and in turn help the child to feel that he belongs and is a member of a family unit . First of all, when I referred to the life of single mothers as a myth what I mean is those ideas that we do ourselves or society makes it soak into our minds in the form of mainly negative thoughts created by those who wrongly criticize women's decision...
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... The Age of Unwed Mothers Is Teen Pregnancy the Problem? Institute for American Values This report comes from the Marriage Project of the Institute for American Values. Maggie Gallagher, the principal investigator, is an affiliate scholar at the Institute and the director of its Marriage Project. The Institute is grateful to Amara Bachu, Douglas J. Besharov, Norval Glenn, Dana Mack, Steven L. Nock, and Maris Vinovskis for their scholarly and editorial suggestions, and to the William H. Donner Foundation for its generous financial support of this initiative. The contributions of other supporters are also greatly appreciated. On the cover: Maternity (1950) by Milton Avery. Oil on canvas, 32 X 46 inches. Collection of Sally M. Avery. ©1999, Milton Avery Trust/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, NY. © 1999, Institute for American Values. All rights reserved. No reproduction of the materials contained herein is permitted without the written permission of the Institute for American Values. ISBN 0-9659841-5-X Institute for American Values 1841 Broadway, Suite 211 New York, NY 10023 Tel: (212) 246-3942 Fax: (212) 541-6665 info@americanvalues.org www.americanvalues.org The Age of Unwed Mothers Is Teen Pregnancy the Problem? Executive Summary Why have three decades of intensive national effort to reduce teen pregnancy not been more successful? Largely because for three decades, we have framed the problem falsely. What we have called our “teen pregnancy” crisis...
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...do not have garner support from the society as traditionally, men are meant to be the one working to support the family. However, with men switching roles with women whereas the women become the pillar of support for the family it is gradually becoming acknowledged by the society as there is now more and more numbers of successful househusbands. Househusbands are outsiders due to the law and the traditional thinking of the government and the problem of finance. According to Pereira, 2005. The only obstacle between the father staying at home and taking care of the child is their financial situation. The financial woes are their greatest source of concern rather than them being tied down to the responsibilities of a child. However, there is now a 33% of men willing to work part-time and take care of their children. The weekend Australia (2013: 13-14) reported that there is a slow rise in the number of single fatherhood however many fathers are not willing by the lack of support and being regarded as a disgrace for men to be in this kind of positions. This is caused by the traditional thinking that men are the main family breadwinners whereas the women are the caretakers of the children. Influenced by such thinking, the government only has laws placed in favour of the women and does not support men being the caretaker of the child. According to the weekend Australia (2013: 13-14), in 2006, the Howard government changed the law for the single parents allowing both parents to take...
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...Despite having done so much for her boy children whom she loves dearly, my mother still questions where she went wrong in the upbringing of two of them, which could have led to the unacceptable paths which they have chosen. She was sitting as she usually did, whenever the chance permitted on Saturday mornings; hunched over the large galvanised wash pan filled with white linen, most of which was our school shirts, blouses and socks. She loved to wash whites, and to this day that trait has remained with her. She cries out from time to time from the excruciating pain which would rush through her hands, and into her fingers. A pain probably resulting from the length of time she spends not only rubbing white clothing after lathering them with blue soap, but the long hours washing for her large family. Perhaps it could have been from years before when she would use the cutlass to chop cane, then have to pile and load them to be sent off to the factory. Maybe the farming and reaping of potatoes and yams, where she would have to pull the weed or doubled grass from between their sprouts.Was it the washing, ironing and cleaning of many homes in order to gain a living in order to pay my exorbitant school fees? I hated these days for being the older of only two daughters, I always had to be part of this predicament. Some Saturdays before sunrise, and until late evening after the sun had set, we would be labouring over laundry. Although poor, she ensured that her children were always sent...
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...Arnold Jimenez History 110 2014/11/21 Professor Radzikowski Gender Inequalities Our society is plagued with many inequalities, these inequalities range from education to wealth, yet I believe one of the most prominent forms of inequality today is aimed towards gender. Gender inequality refers to unequal treatment or negative perceptions of individuals based on their gender. As of 2012, the World Economic Forum ranks the United States 22nd in terms of gender equality out of 135 countries. America often employs Gender stratification causing the ranking of the sexes in such a way that women are unequal in power, resources, prestige, or presumed worth. For my essay I shall explain the three most prominent forms of gender inequality: Childhood, society and professionalism. Gender inequalities have large-scale consequences for society, as long as we continue to perpetuate gender inequalities men and women will never be considered equal. In the 1800’s during America’s farm economy, women enjoyed and lived equally with men on a family. Farm men and women typically did different jobs men did heavy field labor, woodwork, repairs and worked with large edge tools. In contrast women preformed food preservation and clothing preparation, a farm family could not survive without the skilled labor of both men and women, and in this sense men and women's contribution to the economy of the family farm was equal. Furthermore children were raised and nurtured by both men and women, there were...
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...the problems that the society faces today. I agree with this statement because in the early 60’s, our fathers worked and or mothers stayed home with the children. Since then, more mothers have been forced to join the workforce to ensure the funding for the family is met. 1 In the early 1960’s, fathers were to be the bread winners, so to speak, and the mothers were to be the caretakers of the children and the home. Today, society has forced mothers to join the workforce just to make ends meet. Some of the families are dealing with single parents trying to make a living and take care of a family while others are being left home alone while both parents make a living. In today’s society, some mothers make a better living than the fathers do, which in turn causes friction and sometimes ends up in divorce. Parents are having to keep their children busy that they are not able to spend the quality time with their children as they used to. I think that more families are becoming different rather than weaker. The main thing is that is important is that the family members develop more of their own personality. More parents are forced to compromise with their children rather than punishing them like when I was growing up. I do agree that our families are strengthening in todays society because we have more...
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...Marriage is a moral contract between two individuals that choose to share and live their lives by specific beliefs and ideals. A once cherished practice, marriage is progressively losing the meaning and values behind it due to state legal practices. The need to abolish marriage as a legal contract, from a symbolic interactionist perspective, can best be determined by studying the societal changes displayed by today’s high rates of divorce, increased rates of children being born and raised by single parents and state and federal benefits marring the sanctity of marriage. If we remove state mandated control and deregulate marriage, we can in turn strengthen and encourage marriage based on a couples own perspectives and strengthen the quality of family. Early Americans viewed marriage as the staple to a quality family. Men and women found compatible mates they could spend the rest of their lives with, for reasons of love and procreation. They viewed marriage as forever and worked hard to keep their marriages strong. The symbolism behind a strong marriage meant a strong quality family unit. Today, with the tax benefits associated with marriage, it is more of a social contract that is not based on moral obligations, but financial benefits. The Federal tax benefits they give to married couples provide incentive for individuals to get married. This incentive takes the focus away from personal and moral beliefs and persuades an individual to focus on financial reasoning. For example...
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