Today’s Family
Heather Miller
Le Cordon Bleu

Abstract
When people envision family life in America they have pictures of the television shows of long ago that show dad, mom and two well-groomed and well-behaved children. Mom stayed at home baking pies, while dad toiled away at a white-collar job and the kids played in the street with the other neighbor children. Everyone had a cookie cutter live, and lived in their cookie cutter houses. Flash-forward to present day and no longer do people turn to the family life of fifty years ago as the norm, those types of relationships are a thing of the distant past.

In any marriage or relationship there are gender roles, and social norms define them as a male and female role and no matter what type of relationship or marriage it is you are able to find these roles. The male role is still the one that is expected to be the bread winner, do household repairs and take care of yard work. While the female role is still expected to cook, clean and care of the children whether they have a job or not. Men who are the parent that takes on the female role in a household while their wife takes on the role of bread winner, are thought to be lesser of a man because he is allowing the wife to do the work. This is the issue of social norms people can feel as though they have failed if they are unable to accomplish them. If you look at relationships that do not fall into nuclear families, you can see there is still defined roles. Step-parenting, different styles of cohabiting, adoption, same-sex unions have someone that completes the role. If people in relationships would focus on what works with them instead of concerning themselves with the biased social norms then things could be much easier (Brinkerhoff, Weitz, & Ortega, 2011).
In America about half of all marriages end in divorce leaving a quarter of American families as