essay about a nuclear family

Essay on Nuclear Family

Family is regarded as the basic unit of society. It consists of a father, mother, grandparents and children all living together under one roof. Family forms an essential part of our life. It is the first institution of the children and thus inculcates the moral values in them so that they may grow up to become good citizens of the society. There is the existence of several types of families in the society like Joint family, Nuclear family, single-parent family, etc. Every type of family has its own merits and demerits.

10 Lines Essay on Nuclear Family

1) A nuclear family is one which consists of a mother, father and their children.

2) Nuclear family is a small family, also referred to as a conjugal or elementary family.

3) The concept of the nuclear family originated from England in 13 th century.

4) A nuclear family consists of only two generations.

5) The trend of nuclear families gained popularity in the 20 th century.

6) In a nuclear family, all the members are free to make their own decisions.

7) Privacy of members is well protected in this type of family.

8) However, children are deprived of the love of their grandparents.

9) Nuclear families are free from unnecessary quarrels and disagreements.

10) Urbanization and modernization are the main causes of increase in nuclear families.

Long Essay on Nuclear Family in English

These days the concept of the nuclear family is rising in society and so I have elaborated a long essay on the merits and demerits of the nuclear family. I hope that it might be an aid to students of all classes i.e. 1-12th in writing an essay, assignment, and project on this topic.

1800 Words Essay – Essentials, Merits and Demerits of Nuclear Family

Introduction

We cannot imagine our life without our families. It is the one that makes us feel secure, helps us in making decisions during difficulties and celebrates our joy and festivals. Many of us might be a part of extended families while many of us would belong to nuclear families. India is a nation where a joint family system has been common but nowadays it is being replaced by the concept of the nuclear family in most of the urban areas. We will be discussing below the concept of the nuclear family, its rising trend in India and its advantages and disadvantages.

What is meant by a Nuclear Family?

The nuclear family is stated as a small family that consists of father, mother, and children. It is also called an elementary family or conjugal family. The number of people in the nuclear family is very less as compared to the number of members of a joint family. The children after marriage leave their families and settle with their wife and children. In other words, a married couple with their biological children or adopted children lives together as a small family called a nuclear family. 

In a nuclear family, mother and father are only the head of the family. These families do not have any elder members like that of extended families. Thus the married couples are free to make decisions according to their own will. They live an independent life with any number of children.

Concept of Nuclear Family

The concept of the nuclear family is considered to have originated in the 13th century in England. This concept emerged in England after proto-industrialization. There was no concept of extended families having people of many generations living together. They adopted the concept of shifting into single families after marriage.

However, the term and trend of the nuclear family became popular in the 20th century. This family structure trend became more popular in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. Later the trend of nuclear families started decreasing in America and people shifted to other types of family structures.

The Reason for calling it a “Nuclear Family”

The term nuclear family came into existence in the 20th century. Some sources state that the term originated in 1924 and 1925. This age was termed as the atomic age and thus the term nuclear has its connection with the noun ‘Nucleus’. The term nucleus means the core or center of something. Therefore, in the same context, a nuclear family means a family whose all members are part of one common core. This gives it the name nuclear family.

The Framework of the Nuclear Families

Nuclear family, unlike joint families, consists of members of two generations i.e. the one in which they are born and the second in which they marry. The other generation is not possible until and unless they marry their children in some other families. The nuclear family is basically formed of two types of nuclear families to exist in one single family.

• Family of Orientation- The family in which an individual is born and raised.
• Family of Procreation- The family formed after the individuals are married to a girl or boy who    belongs to another family.

Rising of the Concept of Nuclear Family in India

A nuclear family is a very simple structured family that consists of a small number of people as compared to the Joint family.  The term family when discussed in India it commonly refers to the Traditional or Joint family. The joint family has been a part of Indian culture and tradition from ancient times. Nowadays, the trend of nuclear families is rising in the urban areas of India.

This is happening at a fast pace in the cities. The children do not want to live under the supervision of their elders after their marriage. They want to live an independent life with full privacy and without any type of disturbance. The factors like modernization and urbanization are promoting the people to practice the concept of nuclear families in the cities rather than being a part of traditional families.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Nuclear Family

There are several types of family structures prevalent in society and the nuclear family is one among them. Some of the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear family enlisted below:

• Freedom to Make Decisions- The members of a nuclear family are free to make any decision they want. They can decide everything by themselves without any interference of their elders. This is not possible in a joint family as there are elder members in the family and they advise the younger ones in their decision-making.
• Development of Good Attributes- The development of different attributes in the children happens in a better way in nuclear families. Thus, this contributes to the good personality development of the children. Moreover, the children in nuclear families are close to their parents and thus can discuss every problem they are facing in an easier way.
• Improved Status of Women- The women in the nuclear families get more time to after themselves and their children. They are not under pressure to work according to the elders of the family. They are free to do whatever they want. Husbands and wives get quality time to spend with each other in nuclear families that are not possible every time in joint families.
• Loving and Peaceful Atmosphere- There are fewer members in a nuclear family than an extended family. Nuclear families with fewer people have very less chances of misunderstanding and conflicts. There is the existence of peace and harmony among the members and that is essential for living a happy family life.
• Sole Responsibilities- The responsibilities in a nuclear family are on the parents, unlike the joint family. The parents are individually responsible for the income and every need of the children as they are only the head of the family.
• Savings and Family Planning is Possible- The income of the house in the nuclear families is not shared among all like the joint families. It is safe in the hands of the parents and they can save it for the future of their children. Moreover, the number of children in nuclear families is limited as the parents can opt for family planning.

Disadvantages

• Children are Devoid of Love from their Grandparents- The children in nuclear families are not able to get the love and affection of their grandparents. Children living in joint families are well-mannered and know well to tackle several difficulties easily.
• No Elders to Guide in Difficulties- The nuclear families lack elders and experienced people and thus there is no one to guide the members during the time of difficulty. The parents themselves have to make decisions about everything and that is very difficult sometimes.
• Financial Loss- The breaking of joint families in the nuclear families results in the division of property or land into different small parts. Every brother gets a small piece of land and thus the yield is also reduced. They have to employ laborers for carrying out all the agricultural work and thus paying for the same is a kind of financial loss.
• Insecurity in Children- The children in nuclear families are devoid of love and care of their parents if both mother and father are working. They are raised and fed by the maids in the houses. This lack of love and time by the parents inculcates the feeling of insecurity and loneliness in the children. This causes many of them to be addicted to bad habits also.
• Lack of Moral and Social Values- The children in the nuclear family many times lack social attributes and become undisciplined. They become habitual of living in freedom and do not like mixing with other family members.
• Widows are Neglected- The widows in nuclear families do not get proper attention and care and they feel as if they are neglected. The children in such cases feel socially and emotionally insecure. This is not the case of widows in joint families. The widow gets good support from the other members of the family and thus forgets every pain gradually and starts living a normal life.

Nuclear Family v/s Joint Family

A joint family is one that consists of people up to three generations living together under the same roof while a nuclear family in contrast is small and simple with very only mother, father and children. There is the existence of mainly two types of family structures in India namely joint and nuclear families. The joint family also referred to as the traditional family has been in existence since ancient times in India. Earlier the people in India were confined to the villages and they were involved in the occupation of agriculture. Thus, they preferred to live together and the male members of the family were involved in the same family business. The concept of the nuclear family is however not a new concept but the structure of this kind of family was more prevalent in the western culture. It has become common in India at present because of modernization and changes in the lifestyle of people.

Is Nuclear Family A Perfect Family?

Every type of family structure present in society has its own benefits and drawbacks. Some of us desire to be a part of a nuclear family while others are a joint family and alternatives. It is wrong to say that the nuclear family is a perfect family. It depends upon the individual what he or she desires. There are conflicts, love, problems, etc in every type of family. It is we the members of the family who make the atmosphere of the family a peaceful and loving one.

According to me, both joint and nuclear families are good structures of families in society. I have always been a part of a nuclear family so I have a habit to dwell in the nuclear family but I had always felt the absence of my grandparents and other relatives too. The enjoyment of any type of celebration or festival in joint families is very interesting rather than the nuclear families. Therefore, being a part of the nuclear family I always have missed the warmth and love of a joint family. We can be part of nuclear families but remain in touch with our other family members and develop the habit of visiting our grandparents at a fixed interval of time.

The type of family that we desire to have is our individual choice. The nuclear family trend is rising but the importance of joint families is always felt. The love and care of different members in the joint family is really amazing. Moreover, the presence of grandparents in the joint families is a boon for the children as they teach them good values and morals. Children are also very close to their grandparents because of the love and affection they receive from them.

I hope this information would be helpful for you to know about the merits and demerits of Nuclear Family in a very convenient way.

FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions on Merits and Demerits of Nuclear Family

Ans. The word nuclear family came into existence in the thirteenth century.

Ans. The word family has been derived from the Latin word ‘Famulus’ that means servant.

Ans. The term ‘Nuclear family’ was coined by George P. Murdock, an anthropologist.

Ans. The love between the family members is stated as Storge(empathy bond).

Ans. Argentina is a country in the world that has the prevalent concept of nuclear families.

Related Posts

Essay on digital india, cashless india essay, essay on child is father of the man, essay on causes, effects and prevention of corona virus, essay on dr. sarvepalli radhakrishnan, durga puja essay, essay on summer vacation, essay on my plans for summer vacation, essay on holiday.

The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake

The family structure we’ve held up as the cultural ideal for the past half century has been a catastrophe for many. It’s time to figure out better ways to live together.

T he scene is one many of us have somewhere in our family history: Dozens of people celebrating Thanksgiving or some other holiday around a makeshift stretch of family tables—siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, great-aunts. The grandparents are telling the old family stories for the 37th time. “It was the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen in your life,” says one, remembering his first day in America. “There were lights everywhere … It was a celebration of light! I thought they were for me.”

The oldsters start squabbling about whose memory is better. “It was cold that day,” one says about some faraway memory. “What are you talking about? It was May, late May,” says another. The young children sit wide-eyed, absorbing family lore and trying to piece together the plotline of the generations.

After the meal, there are piles of plates in the sink, squads of children conspiring mischievously in the basement. Groups of young parents huddle in a hallway, making plans. The old men nap on couches, waiting for dessert. It’s the extended family in all its tangled, loving, exhausting glory.

This particular family is the one depicted in Barry Levinson’s 1990 film, Avalon , based on his own childhood in Baltimore. Five brothers came to America from Eastern Europe around the time of World War I and built a wallpaper business. For a while they did everything together, like in the old country. But as the movie goes along, the extended family begins to split apart. Some members move to the suburbs for more privacy and space. One leaves for a job in a different state. The big blowup comes over something that seems trivial but isn’t: The eldest of the brothers arrives late to a Thanksgiving dinner to find that the family has begun the meal without him.

“You cut the turkey without me?” he cries. “Your own flesh and blood! … You cut the turkey?” The pace of life is speeding up. Convenience, privacy, and mobility are more important than family loyalty. “The idea that they would eat before the brother arrived was a sign of disrespect,” Levinson told me recently when I asked him about that scene. “That was the real crack in the family. When you violate the protocol, the whole family structure begins to collapse.”

As the years go by in the movie, the extended family plays a smaller and smaller role. By the 1960s, there’s no extended family at Thanksgiving. It’s just a young father and mother and their son and daughter, eating turkey off trays in front of the television. In the final scene, the main character is living alone in a nursing home, wondering what happened. “In the end, you spend everything you’ve ever saved, sell everything you’ve ever owned, just to exist in a place like this.”

“In my childhood,” Levinson told me, “you’d gather around the grandparents and they would tell the family stories … Now individuals sit around the TV, watching other families’ stories.” The main theme of Avalon , he said, is “the decentralization of the family. And that has continued even further today. Once, families at least gathered around the television. Now each person has their own screen.”

This is the story of our times—the story of the family, once a dense cluster of many siblings and extended kin, fragmenting into ever smaller and more fragile forms. The initial result of that fragmentation, the nuclear family, didn’t seem so bad. But then, because the nuclear family is so brittle, the fragmentation continued. In many sectors of society, nuclear families fragmented into single-parent families, single-parent families into chaotic families or no families.

If you want to summarize the changes in family structure over the past century, the truest thing to say is this: We’ve made life freer for individuals and more unstable for families. We’ve made life better for adults but worse for children. We’ve moved from big, interconnected, and extended families, which helped protect the most vulnerable people in society from the shocks of life, to smaller, detached nuclear families (a married couple and their children), which give the most privileged people in society room to maximize their talents and expand their options. The shift from bigger and interconnected extended families to smaller and detached nuclear families ultimately led to a familial system that liberates the rich and ravages the working-class and the poor.

Annie Lowrey: The great affordability crisis breaking America

This article is about that process, and the devastation it has wrought—and about how Americans are now groping to build new kinds of family and find better ways to live.

The Era of Extended Clans

Through the early parts of American history, most people lived in what, by today’s standards, were big, sprawling households. In 1800, three-quarters of American workers were farmers. Most of the other quarter worked in small family businesses, like dry-goods stores. People needed a lot of labor to run these enterprises. It was not uncommon for married couples to have seven or eight children. In addition, there might be stray aunts, uncles, and cousins, as well as unrelated servants, apprentices, and farmhands. (On some southern farms, of course, enslaved African Americans were also an integral part of production and work life.)

Steven Ruggles, a professor of history and population studies at the University of Minnesota, calls these “corporate families”—social units organized around a family business. According to Ruggles, in 1800, 90 percent of American families were corporate families. Until 1850, roughly three-quarters of Americans older than 65 lived with their kids and grandkids. Nuclear families existed, but they were surrounded by extended or corporate families.

Read: What number of kids makes parents happiest?

Extended families have two great strengths. The first is resilience. An extended family is one or more families in a supporting web. Your spouse and children come first, but there are also cousins, in-laws, grandparents—a complex web of relationships among, say, seven, 10, or 20 people. If a mother dies, siblings, uncles, aunts, and grandparents are there to step in. If a relationship between a father and a child ruptures, others can fill the breach. Extended families have more people to share the unexpected burdens—when a kid gets sick in the middle of the day or when an adult unexpectedly loses a job.

A detached nuclear family, by contrast, is an intense set of relationships among, say, four people. If one relationship breaks, there are no shock absorbers. In a nuclear family, the end of the marriage means the end of the family as it was previously understood.

The second great strength of extended families is their socializing force. Multiple adults teach children right from wrong, how to behave toward others, how to be kind. Over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, industrialization and cultural change began to threaten traditional ways of life. Many people in Britain and the United States doubled down on the extended family in order to create a moral haven in a heartless world. According to Ruggles, the prevalence of extended families living together roughly doubled from 1750 to 1900 , and this way of life was more common than at any time before or since.

During the Victorian era, the idea of “hearth and home” became a cultural ideal. The home “is a sacred place, a vestal temple, a temple of the hearth watched over by Household Gods, before whose faces none may come but those whom they can receive with love,” the great Victorian social critic John Ruskin wrote. This shift was led by the upper-middle class, which was coming to see the family less as an economic unit and more as an emotional and moral unit, a rectory for the formation of hearts and souls.

But while extended families have strengths, they can also be exhausting and stifling. They allow little privacy; you are forced to be in daily intimate contact with people you didn’t choose. There’s more stability but less mobility. Family bonds are thicker, but individual choice is diminished. You have less space to make your own way in life. In the Victorian era, families were patriarchal, favoring men in general and first-born sons in particular.

As factories opened in the big U.S. cities, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, young men and women left their extended families to chase the American dream. These young people married as soon as they could. A young man on a farm might wait until 26 to get married; in the lonely city, men married at 22 or 23. From 1890 to 1960, the average age of first marriage dropped by 3.6 years for men and 2.2 years for women.

From September 2019: Daniel Markovits on how life became an endless, terrible competition

The families they started were nuclear families. The decline of multigenerational cohabiting families exactly mirrors the decline in farm employment. Children were no longer raised to assume economic roles—they were raised so that at adolescence they could fly from the nest, become independent, and seek partners of their own. They were raised not for embeddedness but for autonomy. By the 1920s, the nuclear family with a male breadwinner had replaced the corporate family as the dominant family form. By 1960, 77.5 percent of all children were living with their two parents, who were married, and apart from their extended family.

The Short, Happy Life of the Nuclear Family

For a time, it all seemed to work. From 1950 to 1965, divorce rates dropped, fertility rates rose, and the American nuclear family seemed to be in wonderful shape. And most people seemed prosperous and happy. In these years, a kind of cult formed around this type of family—what McCall’s , the leading women’s magazine of the day, called “togetherness.” Healthy people lived in two-parent families. In a 1957 survey , more than half of the respondents said that unmarried people were “sick,” “immoral,” or “neurotic.”

During this period, a certain family ideal became engraved in our minds: a married couple with 2.5 kids. When we think of the American family, many of us still revert to this ideal. When we have debates about how to strengthen the family, we are thinking of the two-parent nuclear family, with one or two kids, probably living in some detached family home on some suburban street. We take it as the norm, even though this wasn’t the way most humans lived during the tens of thousands of years before 1950, and it isn’t the way most humans have lived during the 55 years since 1965.

Today, only a minority of American households are traditional two-parent nuclear families and only one-third of American individuals live in this kind of family. That 1950–65 window was not normal. It was a freakish historical moment when all of society conspired, wittingly and not, to obscure the essential fragility of the nuclear family.

For one thing, most women were relegated to the home. Many corporations, well into the mid-20th century, barred married women from employment: Companies would hire single women, but if those women got married, they would have to quit. Demeaning and disempowering treatment of women was rampant. Women spent enormous numbers of hours trapped inside the home under the headship of their husband, raising children.

For another thing, nuclear families in this era were much more connected to other nuclear families than they are today—constituting a “ modified extended family ,” as the sociologist Eugene Litwak calls it, “a coalition of nuclear families in a state of mutual dependence.” Even as late as the 1950s, before television and air-conditioning had fully caught on, people continued to live on one another’s front porches and were part of one another’s lives. Friends felt free to discipline one another’s children.

In his book The Lost City , the journalist Alan Ehrenhalt describes life in mid-century Chicago and its suburbs:

To be a young homeowner in a suburb like Elmhurst in the 1950s was to participate in a communal enterprise that only the most determined loner could escape: barbecues, coffee klatches, volleyball games, baby-sitting co-ops and constant bartering of household goods, child rearing by the nearest parents who happened to be around, neighbors wandering through the door at any hour without knocking—all these were devices by which young adults who had been set down in a wilderness of tract homes made a community. It was a life lived in public.

Finally, conditions in the wider society were ideal for family stability. The postwar period was a high-water mark of church attendance, unionization, social trust, and mass prosperity—all things that correlate with family cohesion. A man could relatively easily find a job that would allow him to be the breadwinner for a single-income family. By 1961, the median American man age 25 to 29 was earning nearly 400 percent more than his father had earned at about the same age.

In short, the period from 1950 to 1965 demonstrated that a stable society can be built around nuclear families—so long as women are relegated to the household, nuclear families are so intertwined that they are basically extended families by another name, and every economic and sociological condition in society is working together to support the institution.

Video: How the Nuclear Family Broke Down

Disintegration

But these conditions did not last. The constellation of forces that had briefly shored up the nuclear family began to fall away, and the sheltered family of the 1950s was supplanted by the stressed family of every decade since. Some of the strains were economic. Starting in the mid-’70s, young men’s wages declined, putting pressure on working-class families in particular. The major strains were cultural. Society became more individualistic and more self-oriented. People put greater value on privacy and autonomy. A rising feminist movement helped endow women with greater freedom to live and work as they chose.

Read: Gen-X women are caught in a generational tug-of-war

A study of women’s magazines by the sociologists Francesca Cancian and Steven L. Gordon found that from 1900 to 1979, themes of putting family before self dominated in the 1950s: “Love means self-sacrifice and compromise.” In the 1960s and ’70s, putting self before family was prominent: “Love means self-expression and individuality.” Men absorbed these cultural themes, too. The master trend in Baby Boomer culture generally was liberation—“Free Bird,” “Born to Run,” “Ramblin’ Man.”

Eli Finkel, a psychologist and marriage scholar at Northwestern University, has argued that since the 1960s, the dominant family culture has been the “self-expressive marriage.” “Americans,” he has written , “now look to marriage increasingly for self-discovery, self-esteem and personal growth.” Marriage, according to the sociologists Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas , “is no longer primarily about childbearing and childrearing. Now marriage is primarily about adult fulfillment.”

Read: An interview with Eli Finkel on how we expect too much from our romantic partners

This cultural shift was very good for some adults, but it was not so good for families generally. Fewer relatives are around in times of stress to help a couple work through them. If you married for love, staying together made less sense when the love died. This attenuation of marital ties may have begun during the late 1800s: The number of divorces increased about fifteenfold from 1870 to 1920, and then climbed more or less continuously through the first several decades of the nuclear-family era. As the intellectual historian Christopher Lasch noted in the late 1970s , the American family didn’t start coming apart in the 1960s; it had been “coming apart for more than 100 years.”

Americans today have less family than ever before. From 1970 to 2012, the share of households consisting of married couples with kids has been cut in half. In 1960, according to census data, just 13 percent of all households were single-person households. In 2018, that figure was 28 percent. In 1850, 75 percent of Americans older than 65 lived with relatives; by 1990, only 18 percent did.

Over the past two generations, people have spent less and less time in marriage—they are marrying later, if at all, and divorcing more. In 1950, 27 percent of marriages ended in divorce; today, about 45 percent do. In 1960, 72 percent of American adults were married. In 2017, nearly half of American adults were single. According to a 2014 report from the Urban Institute, roughly 90 percent of Baby Boomer women and 80 percent of Gen X women married by age 40, while only about 70 percent of late-Millennial women were expected to do so—the lowest rate in U.S. history. And while more than four-fifths of American adults in a 2019 Pew Research Center survey said that getting married is not essential to living a fulfilling life, it’s not just the institution of marriage they’re eschewing: In 2004, 33 percent of Americans ages 18 to 34 were living without a romantic partner, according to the General Social Survey; by 2018, that number was up to 51 percent.

Over the past two generations, families have also gotten a lot smaller. The general American birth rate is half of what it was in 1960. In 2012, most American family households had no children. There are more American homes with pets than with kids. In 1970, about 20 percent of households had five or more people. As of 2012, only 9.6 percent did.

Over the past two generations, the physical space separating nuclear families has widened. Before, sisters-in-law shouted greetings across the street at each other from their porches. Kids would dash from home to home and eat out of whoever’s fridge was closest by. But lawns have grown more expansive and porch life has declined, creating a buffer of space that separates the house and family from anyone else. As Mandy Len Catron recently noted in The Atlantic , married people are less likely to visit parents and siblings, and less inclined to help them do chores or offer emotional support. A code of family self-sufficiency prevails: Mom, Dad, and the kids are on their own, with a barrier around their island home.

Finally, over the past two generations, families have grown more unequal. America now has two entirely different family regimes. Among the highly educated, family patterns are almost as stable as they were in the 1950s; among the less fortunate, family life is often utter chaos. There’s a reason for that divide: Affluent people have the resources to effectively buy extended family, in order to shore themselves up. Think of all the child-rearing labor affluent parents now buy that used to be done by extended kin: babysitting, professional child care, tutoring, coaching, therapy, expensive after-school programs. (For that matter, think of how the affluent can hire therapists and life coaches for themselves, as replacement for kin or close friends.) These expensive tools and services not only support children’s development and help prepare them to compete in the meritocracy; by reducing stress and time commitments for parents, they preserve the amity of marriage. Affluent conservatives often pat themselves on the back for having stable nuclear families. They preach that everybody else should build stable families too. But then they ignore one of the main reasons their own families are stable: They can afford to purchase the support that extended family used to provide—and that the people they preach at, further down the income scale, cannot.

Read: ‘Intensive’ parenting is a strategy for an age of inequality

In 1970, the family structures of the rich and poor did not differ that greatly. Now there is a chasm between them. As of 2005, 85 percent of children born to upper-middle-class families were living with both biological parents when the mom was 40. Among working-class families, only 30 percent were. According to a 2012 report from the National Center for Health Statistics, college-educated women ages 22 to 44 have a 78 percent chance of having their first marriage last at least 20 years. Women in the same age range with a high-school degree or less have only about a 40 percent chance. Among Americans ages 18 to 55, only 26 percent of the poor and 39 percent of the working class are currently married. In her book Generation Unbound , Isabel Sawhill, an economist at the Brookings Institution, cited research indicating that differences in family structure have “increased income inequality by 25 percent.” If the U.S. returned to the marriage rates of 1970, child poverty would be 20 percent lower. As Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University, once put it, “It is the privileged Americans who are marrying, and marrying helps them stay privileged.”

When you put everything together, we’re likely living through the most rapid change in family structure in human history. The causes are economic, cultural, and institutional all at once. People who grow up in a nuclear family tend to have a more individualistic mind-set than people who grow up in a multigenerational extended clan. People with an individualistic mind-set tend to be less willing to sacrifice self for the sake of the family, and the result is more family disruption. People who grow up in disrupted families have more trouble getting the education they need to have prosperous careers. People who don’t have prosperous careers have trouble building stable families, because of financial challenges and other stressors. The children in those families become more isolated and more traumatized.

Read: The working-to-afford-child-care conundrum

Many people growing up in this era have no secure base from which to launch themselves and no well-defined pathway to adulthood. For those who have the human capital to explore, fall down, and have their fall cushioned, that means great freedom and opportunity—and for those who lack those resources, it tends to mean great confusion, drift, and pain.

Over the past 50 years, federal and state governments have tried to mitigate the deleterious effects of these trends. They’ve tried to increase marriage rates, push down divorce rates, boost fertility, and all the rest. The focus has always been on strengthening the nuclear family, not the extended family. Occasionally, a discrete program will yield some positive results, but the widening of family inequality continues unabated.

The people who suffer the most from the decline in family support are the vulnerable—especially children. In 1960, roughly 5 percent of children were born to unmarried women. Now about 40 percent are. The Pew Research Center reported that 11 percent of children lived apart from their father in 1960. In 2010, 27 percent did. Now about half of American children will spend their childhood with both biological parents. Twenty percent of young adults have no contact at all with their father (though in some cases that’s because the father is deceased). American children are more likely to live in a single-parent household than children from any other country.

Read: The divorce gap

We all know stable and loving single-parent families. But on average, children of single parents or unmarried cohabiting parents tend to have worse health outcomes, worse mental-health outcomes, less academic success, more behavioral problems, and higher truancy rates than do children living with their two married biological parents. According to work by Richard V. Reeves , a co-director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution, if you are born into poverty and raised by your married parents, you have an 80 percent chance of climbing out of it. If you are born into poverty and raised by an unmarried mother, you have a 50 percent chance of remaining stuck.

It’s not just the lack of relationships that hurts children; it’s the churn. According to a 2003 study that Andrew Cherlin cites , 12 percent of American kids had lived in at least three “parental partnerships” before they turned 15. The transition moments, when mom’s old partner moves out or her new partner moves in, are the hardest on kids, Cherlin shows.

While children are the vulnerable group most obviously affected by recent changes in family structure, they are not the only one.

Consider single men. Extended families provided men with the fortifying influences of male bonding and female companionship. Today many American males spend the first 20 years of their life without a father and the next 15 without a spouse. Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute has spent a good chunk of her career examining the wreckage caused by the decline of the American family , and cites evidence showing that, in the absence of the connection and meaning that family provides, unmarried men are less healthy—alcohol and drug abuse are common—earn less, and die sooner than married men.

For women, the nuclear-family structure imposes different pressures. Though women have benefited greatly from the loosening of traditional family structures—they have more freedom to choose the lives they want—many mothers who decide to raise their young children without extended family nearby find that they have chosen a lifestyle that is brutally hard and isolating. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that women still spend significantly more time on housework and child care than men do, according to recent data. Thus, the reality we see around us: stressed, tired mothers trying to balance work and parenting, and having to reschedule work when family life gets messy.

Read: The loneliness of early parenthood

Without extended families, older Americans have also suffered. According to the AARP, 35 percent of Americans over 45 say they are chronically lonely . Many older people are now “elder orphans,” with no close relatives or friends to take care of them. In 2015, The New York Times ran an article called “ The Lonely Death of George Bell ,” about a family-less 72-year-old man who died alone and rotted in his Queens apartment for so long that by the time police found him, his body was unrecognizable.

Finally, because groups that have endured greater levels of discrimination tend to have more fragile families, African Americans have suffered disproportionately in the era of the detached nuclear family. Nearly half of black families are led by an unmarried single woman, compared with less than one-sixth of white families. (The high rate of black incarceration guarantees a shortage of available men to be husbands or caretakers of children.) According to census data from 2010, 25 percent of black women over 35 have never been married, compared with 8 percent of white women. Two-thirds of African American children lived in single-parent families in 2018, compared with a quarter of white children. Black single-parent families are most concentrated in precisely those parts of the country in which slavery was most prevalent. Research by John Iceland, a professor of sociology and demography at Penn State, suggests that the differences between white and black family structure explain 30 percent of the affluence gap between the two groups.

In 2004, the journalist and urbanist Jane Jacobs published her final book , an assessment of North American society called Dark Age Ahead . At the core of her argument was the idea that families are “rigged to fail.” The structures that once supported the family no longer exist, she wrote. Jacobs was too pessimistic about many things, but for millions of people, the shift from big and/or extended families to detached nuclear families has indeed been a disaster.

As the social structures that support the family have decayed, the debate about it has taken on a mythical quality. Social conservatives insist that we can bring the nuclear family back. But the conditions that made for stable nuclear families in the 1950s are never returning. Conservatives have nothing to say to the kid whose dad has split, whose mom has had three other kids with different dads; “go live in a nuclear family” is really not relevant advice. If only a minority of households are traditional nuclear families, that means the majority are something else: single parents, never-married parents, blended families, grandparent-headed families, serial partnerships, and so on. Conservative ideas have not caught up with this reality.

Read: How politics in Trump’s America divides families

Progressives, meanwhile, still talk like self-expressive individualists of the 1970s: People should have the freedom to pick whatever family form works for them. And, of course, they should. But many of the new family forms do not work well for most people—and while progressive elites say that all family structures are fine, their own behavior suggests that they believe otherwise. As the sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox has pointed out, highly educated progressives may talk a tolerant game on family structure when speaking about society at large, but they have extremely strict expectations for their own families. When Wilcox asked his University of Virginia students if they thought having a child out of wedlock was wrong, 62 percent said it was not wrong. When he asked the students how their own parents would feel if they themselves had a child out of wedlock, 97 percent said their parents would “freak out.” In a recent survey by the Institute for Family Studies, college-educated Californians ages 18 to 50 were less likely than those who hadn’t graduated from college to say that having a baby out of wedlock is wrong. But they were more likely to say that personally they did not approve of having a baby out of wedlock.

In other words, while social conservatives have a philosophy of family life they can’t operationalize, because it no longer is relevant, progressives have no philosophy of family life at all, because they don’t want to seem judgmental. The sexual revolution has come and gone, and it’s left us with no governing norms of family life, no guiding values, no articulated ideals. On this most central issue, our shared culture often has nothing relevant to say—and so for decades things have been falling apart.

Read: Why is it hard for liberals to talk about ‘family values’?

The good news is that human beings adapt, even if politics are slow to do so. When one family form stops working, people cast about for something new—sometimes finding it in something very old.

Redefining Kinship

In the beginning was the band. For tens of thousands of years, people commonly lived in small bands of, say, 25 people, which linked up with perhaps 20 other bands to form a tribe. People in the band went out foraging for food and brought it back to share. They hunted together, fought wars together, made clothing for one another, looked after one another’s kids. In every realm of life, they relied on their extended family and wider kin.

Except they didn’t define kin the way we do today. We think of kin as those biologically related to us. But throughout most of human history, kinship was something you could create.

Anthropologists have been arguing for decades about what exactly kinship is. Studying traditional societies, they have found wide varieties of created kinship among different cultures. For the Ilongot people of the Philippines, people who migrated somewhere together are kin. For the New Guineans of the Nebilyer Valley, kinship is created by sharing grease —the life force found in mother’s milk or sweet potatoes. The Chuukese people in Micronesia have a saying: “My sibling from the same canoe”; if two people survive a dangerous trial at sea, then they become kin. On the Alaskan North Slope, the Inupiat name their children after dead people, and those children are considered members of their namesake’s family.

In other words, for vast stretches of human history people lived in extended families consisting of not just people they were related to but people they chose to cooperate with. An international research team recently did a genetic analysis of people who were buried together —and therefore presumably lived together—34,000 years ago in what is now Russia. They found that the people who were buried together were not closely related to one another. In a study of 32 present-day foraging societies , primary kin—parents, siblings, and children—usually made up less than 10 percent of a residential band. Extended families in traditional societies may or may not have been genetically close, but they were probably emotionally closer than most of us can imagine. In a beautiful essay on kinship, Marshall Sahlins, an anthropologist at the University of Chicago, says that kin in many such societies share a “mutuality of being.” The late religion scholar J. Prytz-Johansen wrote that kinship is experienced as an “inner solidarity” of souls. The late South African anthropologist Monica Wilson described kinsmen as “mystically dependent” on one another. Kinsmen belong to one another, Sahlins writes, because they see themselves as “members of one another.”

Back in the 17th and 18th centuries, when European Protestants came to North America, their relatively individualistic culture existed alongside Native Americans’ very communal culture. In his book Tribe , Sebastian Junger describes what happened next: While European settlers kept defecting to go live with Native American families, almost no Native Americans ever defected to go live with European families. Europeans occasionally captured Native Americans and forced them to come live with them. They taught them English and educated them in Western ways. But almost every time they were able, the indigenous Americans fled. European settlers were sometimes captured by Native Americans during wars and brought to live in Native communities. They rarely tried to run away. This bothered the Europeans. They had the superior civilization, so why were people voting with their feet to go live in another way?

When you read such accounts, you can’t help but wonder whether our civilization has somehow made a gigantic mistake.

We can’t go back, of course. Western individualists are no longer the kind of people who live in prehistoric bands. We may even no longer be the kind of people who were featured in the early scenes of Avalon . We value privacy and individual freedom too much.

Our culture is oddly stuck. We want stability and rootedness, but also mobility, dynamic capitalism, and the liberty to adopt the lifestyle we choose. We want close families, but not the legal, cultural, and sociological constraints that made them possible. We’ve seen the wreckage left behind by the collapse of the detached nuclear family. We’ve seen the rise of opioid addiction, of suicide, of depression, of inequality—all products, in part, of a family structure that is too fragile, and a society that is too detached, disconnected, and distrustful. And yet we can’t quite return to a more collective world. The words the historians Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg wrote in 1988 are even truer today: “Many Americans are groping for a new paradigm of American family life, but in the meantime a profound sense of confusion and ambivalence reigns.”

From Nuclear Families to Forged Families

Yet recent signs suggest at least the possibility that a new family paradigm is emerging. Many of the statistics I’ve cited are dire. But they describe the past—what got us to where we are now. In reaction to family chaos, accumulating evidence suggests, the prioritization of family is beginning to make a comeback. Americans are experimenting with new forms of kinship and extended family in search of stability.

Usually behavior changes before we realize that a new cultural paradigm has emerged. Imagine hundreds of millions of tiny arrows. In times of social transformation, they shift direction—a few at first, and then a lot. Nobody notices for a while, but then eventually people begin to recognize that a new pattern, and a new set of values, has emerged.

That may be happening now—in part out of necessity but in part by choice. Since the 1970s, and especially since the 2008 recession, economic pressures have pushed Americans toward greater reliance on family. Starting around 2012, the share of children living with married parents began to inch up. And college students have more contact with their parents than they did a generation ago. We tend to deride this as helicopter parenting or a failure to launch, and it has its excesses. But the educational process is longer and more expensive these days, so it makes sense that young adults rely on their parents for longer than they used to.

In 1980, only 12 percent of Americans lived in multigenerational households. But the financial crisis of 2008 prompted a sharp rise in multigenerational homes. Today 20 percent of Americans— 64 million people, an all-time high —live in multigenerational homes.

The revival of the extended family has largely been driven by young adults moving back home. In 2014, 35 percent of American men ages 18 to 34 lived with their parents . In time this shift might show itself to be mostly healthy, impelled not just by economic necessity but by beneficent social impulses ; polling data suggest that many young people are already looking ahead to helping their parents in old age.

Another chunk of the revival is attributable to seniors moving in with their children. The percentage of seniors who live alone peaked around 1990. Now more than a fifth of Americans 65 and over live in multigenerational homes. This doesn’t count the large share of seniors who are moving to be close to their grandkids but not into the same household.

Immigrants and people of color—many of whom face greater economic and social stress—are more likely to live in extended-family households. More than 20 percent of Asians, black people, and Latinos live in multigenerational households, compared with 16 percent of white people. As America becomes more diverse, extended families are becoming more common.

African Americans have always relied on extended family more than white Americans do. “Despite the forces working to separate us—slavery, Jim Crow, forced migration, the prison system, gentrification—we have maintained an incredible commitment to each other,” Mia Birdsong, the author of the forthcoming book How We Show Up , told me recently. “The reality is, black families are expansive, fluid, and brilliantly rely on the support, knowledge, and capacity of ‘the village’ to take care of each other. Here’s an illustration: The white researcher/social worker/whatever sees a child moving between their mother’s house, their grandparents’ house, and their uncle’s house and sees that as ‘instability.’ But what’s actually happening is the family (extended and chosen) is leveraging all of its resources to raise that child.”

Read: Why black families struggle to build wealth

The black extended family survived even under slavery, and all the forced family separations that involved. Family was essential in the Jim Crow South and in the inner cities of the North, as a way to cope with the stresses of mass migration and limited opportunities, and with structural racism. But government policy sometimes made it more difficult for this family form to thrive. I began my career as a police reporter in Chicago, writing about public-housing projects like Cabrini-Green. Guided by social-science research, politicians tore down neighborhoods of rickety low-rise buildings—uprooting the complex webs of social connection those buildings supported, despite high rates of violence and crime—and put up big apartment buildings. The result was a horror: violent crime, gangs taking over the elevators, the erosion of family and neighborly life. Fortunately, those buildings have since been torn down themselves, replaced by mixed-income communities that are more amenable to the profusion of family forms.

The return of multigenerational living arrangements is already changing the built landscape. A 2016 survey by a real-estate consulting firm found that 44 percent of home buyers were looking for a home that would accommodate their elderly parents, and 42 percent wanted one that would accommodate their returning adult children. Home builders have responded by putting up houses that are what the construction firm Lennar calls “two homes under one roof.” These houses are carefully built so that family members can spend time together while also preserving their privacy. Many of these homes have a shared mudroom, laundry room, and common area. But the “in-law suite,” the place for aging parents, has its own entrance, kitchenette, and dining area. The “Millennial suite,” the place for boomeranging adult children, has its own driveway and entrance too. These developments, of course, cater to those who can afford houses in the first place—but they speak to a common realization: Family members of different generations need to do more to support one another.

The most interesting extended families are those that stretch across kinship lines. The past several years have seen the rise of new living arrangements that bring nonbiological kin into family or familylike relationships. On the website CoAbode , single mothers can find other single mothers interested in sharing a home. All across the country, you can find co-housing projects, in which groups of adults live as members of an extended family, with separate sleeping quarters and shared communal areas. Common , a real-estate-development company that launched in 2015, operates more than 25 co-housing communities, in six cities, where young singles can live this way. Common also recently teamed up with another developer, Tishman Speyer, to launch Kin , a co-housing community for young parents. Each young family has its own living quarters, but the facilities also have shared play spaces, child-care services, and family-oriented events and outings.

Read: The hot new Millennial housing trend is a repeat of the Middle Ages

These experiments, and others like them, suggest that while people still want flexibility and some privacy, they are casting about for more communal ways of living, guided by a still-developing set of values. At a co-housing community in Oakland, California, called Temescal Commons , the 23 members, ranging in age from 1 to 83, live in a complex with nine housing units. This is not some rich Bay Area hipster commune. The apartments are small, and the residents are middle- and working-class. They have a shared courtyard and a shared industrial-size kitchen where residents prepare a communal dinner on Thursday and Sunday nights. Upkeep is a shared responsibility. The adults babysit one another’s children, and members borrow sugar and milk from one another. The older parents counsel the younger ones. When members of this extended family have suffered bouts of unemployment or major health crises, the whole clan has rallied together.

Courtney E. Martin, a writer who focuses on how people are redefining the American dream, is a Temescal Commons resident. “I really love that our kids grow up with different versions of adulthood all around, especially different versions of masculinity,” she told me. “We consider all of our kids all of our kids.” Martin has a 3-year-old daughter, Stella, who has a special bond with a young man in his 20s that never would have taken root outside this extended-family structure. “Stella makes him laugh, and David feels awesome that this 3-year-old adores him,” Martin said. This is the kind of magic, she concluded, that wealth can’t buy. You can only have it through time and commitment, by joining an extended family. This kind of community would fall apart if residents moved in and out. But at least in this case, they don’t.

Read: The extended family of my two open adoptions

As Martin was talking, I was struck by one crucial difference between the old extended families like those in Avalon and the new ones of today: the role of women. The extended family in Avalon thrived because all the women in the family were locked in the kitchen, feeding 25 people at a time. In 2008, a team of American and Japanese researchers found that women in multigenerational households in Japan were at greater risk of heart disease than women living with spouses only, likely because of stress. But today’s extended-family living arrangements have much more diverse gender roles.

And yet in at least one respect, the new families Americans are forming would look familiar to our hunter-gatherer ancestors from eons ago. That’s because they are chosen families—they transcend traditional kinship lines.

The modern chosen-family movement came to prominence in San Francisco in the 1980s among gay men and lesbians, many of whom had become estranged from their biological families and had only one another for support in coping with the trauma of the AIDS crisis. In her book, Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship , the anthropologist Kath Weston writes, “The families I saw gay men and lesbians creating in the Bay Area tended to have extremely fluid boundaries, not unlike kinship organization among sectors of the African-American, American Indian, and white working class.”

She continues:

Like their heterosexual counterparts, most gay men and lesbians insisted that family members are people who are “there for you,” people you can count on emotionally and materially. “They take care of me,” said one man, “I take care of them.”

These groups are what Daniel Burns, a political scientist at the University of Dallas, calls “forged families.” Tragedy and suffering have pushed people together in a way that goes deeper than just a convenient living arrangement. They become, as the anthropologists say, “fictive kin.”

Over the past several decades, the decline of the nuclear family has created an epidemic of trauma—millions have been set adrift because what should have been the most loving and secure relationship in their life broke. Slowly, but with increasing frequency, these drifting individuals are coming together to create forged families. These forged families have a feeling of determined commitment. The members of your chosen family are the people who will show up for you no matter what. On Pinterest you can find placards to hang on the kitchen wall where forged families gather: “Family isn’t always blood. It’s the people in your life who want you in theirs; the ones who accept you for who you are. The ones who would do anything to see you smile & who love you no matter what.”

Two years ago , I started something called Weave: The Social Fabric Project . Weave exists to support and draw attention to people and organizations around the country who are building community. Over time, my colleagues and I have realized that one thing most of the Weavers have in common is this: They provide the kind of care to nonkin that many of us provide only to kin—the kind of support that used to be provided by the extended family.

Lisa Fitzpatrick, who was a health-care executive in New Orleans, is a Weaver . One day she was sitting in the passenger seat of a car when she noticed two young boys, 10 or 11, lifting something heavy. It was a gun. They used it to shoot her in the face. It was a gang-initiation ritual. When she recovered, she realized that she was just collateral damage. The real victims were the young boys who had to shoot somebody to get into a family, their gang.

She quit her job and began working with gang members. She opened her home to young kids who might otherwise join gangs. One Saturday afternoon, 35 kids were hanging around her house. She asked them why they were spending a lovely day at the home of a middle-aged woman. They replied, “You were the first person who ever opened the door.”

In Salt Lake City, an organization called the Other Side Academy provides serious felons with an extended family. Many of the men and women who are admitted into the program have been allowed to leave prison, where they were generally serving long sentences, but must live in a group home and work at shared businesses, a moving company and a thrift store. The goal is to transform the character of each family member. During the day they work as movers or cashiers. Then they dine together and gather several evenings a week for something called “Games”: They call one another out for any small moral failure—being sloppy with a move; not treating another family member with respect; being passive-aggressive, selfish, or avoidant.

Games is not polite. The residents scream at one another in order to break through the layers of armor that have built up in prison. Imagine two gigantic men covered in tattoos screaming “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” At the session I attended, I thought they would come to blows. But after the anger, there’s a kind of closeness that didn’t exist before. Men and women who have never had a loving family suddenly have “relatives” who hold them accountable and demand a standard of moral excellence. Extreme integrity becomes a way of belonging to the clan. The Other Side Academy provides unwanted people with an opportunity to give care, and creates out of that care a ferocious forged family.

I could tell you hundreds of stories like this, about organizations that bring traumatized vets into extended-family settings, or nursing homes that house preschools so that senior citizens and young children can go through life together. In Baltimore, a nonprofit called Thread surrounds underperforming students with volunteers, some of whom are called “grandparents.” In Chicago, Becoming a Man helps disadvantaged youth form family-type bonds with one another. In Washington, D.C., I recently met a group of middle-aged female scientists—one a celebrated cellular biologist at the National Institutes of Health, another an astrophysicist—who live together in a Catholic lay community, pooling their resources and sharing their lives. The variety of forged families in America today is endless.

You may be part of a forged family yourself. I am. In 2015, I was invited to the house of a couple named Kathy and David, who had created an extended-family-like group in D.C. called All Our Kids , or AOK-DC. Some years earlier, Kathy and David had had a kid in D.C. Public Schools who had a friend named James, who often had nothing to eat and no place to stay, so they suggested that he stay with them. That kid had a friend in similar circumstances, and those friends had friends. By the time I joined them, roughly 25 kids were having dinner every Thursday night, and several of them were sleeping in the basement.

I joined the community and never left—they became my chosen family. We have dinner together on Thursday nights, celebrate holidays together, and vacation together. The kids call Kathy and David Mom and Dad. In the early days, the adults in our clan served as parental figures for the young people—replacing their broken cellphones, supporting them when depression struck, raising money for their college tuition. When a young woman in our group needed a new kidney, David gave her one of his.

We had our primary biological families, which came first, but we also had this family. Now the young people in this forged family are in their 20s and need us less. David and Kathy have left Washington, but they stay in constant contact. The dinners still happen. We still see one another and look after one another. The years of eating together and going through life together have created a bond. If a crisis hit anyone, we’d all show up. The experience has convinced me that everybody should have membership in a forged family with people completely unlike themselves.

Ever since I started working on this article, a chart has been haunting me . It plots the percentage of people living alone in a country against that nation’s GDP. There’s a strong correlation. Nations where a fifth of the people live alone, like Denmark and Finland, are a lot richer than nations where almost no one lives alone, like the ones in Latin America or Africa. Rich nations have smaller households than poor nations. The average German lives in a household with 2.7 people. The average Gambian lives in a household with 13.8 people.

That chart suggests two things, especially in the American context. First, the market wants us to live alone or with just a few people. That way we are mobile, unattached, and uncommitted, able to devote an enormous number of hours to our jobs. Second, when people who are raised in developed countries get money, they buy privacy.

For the privileged, this sort of works. The arrangement enables the affluent to dedicate more hours to work and email, unencumbered by family commitments. They can afford to hire people who will do the work that extended family used to do. But a lingering sadness lurks, an awareness that life is emotionally vacant when family and close friends aren’t physically present, when neighbors aren’t geographically or metaphorically close enough for you to lean on them, or for them to lean on you. Today’s crisis of connection flows from the impoverishment of family life.

I often ask African friends who have immigrated to America what most struck them when they arrived. Their answer is always a variation on a theme—the loneliness. It’s the empty suburban street in the middle of the day, maybe with a lone mother pushing a baby carriage on the sidewalk but nobody else around.

For those who are not privileged, the era of the isolated nuclear family has been a catastrophe. It’s led to broken families or no families; to merry-go-round families that leave children traumatized and isolated; to senior citizens dying alone in a room. All forms of inequality are cruel, but family inequality may be the cruelest. It damages the heart. Eventually family inequality even undermines the economy the nuclear family was meant to serve: Children who grow up in chaos have trouble becoming skilled, stable, and socially mobile employees later on.

Recommended Reading

The Gay Guide to Wedded Bliss

Family Reunions: Not Just for Grandparents

The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration

When hyper-individualism kicked into gear in the 1960s, people experimented with new ways of living that embraced individualistic values. Today we are crawling out from the wreckage of that hyper-individualism—which left many families detached and unsupported—and people are experimenting with more connected ways of living, with new shapes and varieties of extended families. Government support can help nurture this experimentation, particularly for the working-class and the poor, with things like child tax credits, coaching programs to improve parenting skills in struggling families, subsidized early education, and expanded parental leave. While the most important shifts will be cultural, and driven by individual choices, family life is under so much social stress and economic pressure in the poorer reaches of American society that no recovery is likely without some government action.

The two-parent family, meanwhile, is not about to go extinct. For many people, especially those with financial and social resources, it is a great way to live and raise children. But a new and more communal ethos is emerging, one that is consistent with 21st-century reality and 21st-century values.

When we discuss the problems confronting the country, we don’t talk about family enough. It feels too judgmental. Too uncomfortable. Maybe even too religious. But the blunt fact is that the nuclear family has been crumbling in slow motion for decades, and many of our other problems—with education, mental health, addiction, the quality of the labor force—stem from that crumbling. We’ve left behind the nuclear-family paradigm of 1955. For most people it’s not coming back. Americans are hungering to live in extended and forged families, in ways that are new and ancient at the same time. This is a significant opportunity, a chance to thicken and broaden family relationships, a chance to allow more adults and children to live and grow under the loving gaze of a dozen pairs of eyes, and be caught, when they fall, by a dozen pairs of arms. For decades we have been eating at smaller and smaller tables, with fewer and fewer kin.

It’s time to find ways to bring back the big tables.

This article appears in the March 2020 print edition with the headline “The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake.” When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic .

Modernizing The Nuclear Family: Adapting To Changing Times

The concept of a "nuclear family" might have been a staple of society for centuries. However, in the present day, the traditional family structure has evolved to include multiple definitions of "family." To understand the difference between modern families and a nuclear family, it can be helpful to explore the different types of family structures that are more prevalent and accepted in the modern day.

What is a nuclear family? 

The term "nuclear" refers to the core of the family, which could be comprised of the parents and children, as opposed to extended family members like grandparents, aunts, and uncles. 

The changing face of the nuclear family

In the 20th and 21st centuries, the traditional nuclear family structure has undergone significant changes. There has been a rise in single-parent, blended, and same-sex parent families and families who adopt or foster children. These changes have challenged the conventional definition of the "ideal"  family in modern society  and may lead to a more diverse and inclusive understanding of what a family is. Below are a few types of families that fit outside of the nuclear definition. 

Single-parent families

Single-parent families , where one parent raises children independently, have become more common in recent years. Divorce, loss, or wanting to raise children alone may contribute to this family dynamic. Single-parent families may face some challenges, including financial stress and a lack of support from a partner. However, many single parents successfully raise well-adjusted children. Single parents can be as loving and supportive as two parents may be to their children. 

Blended families

Blended families, also known as stepfamilies, are families where one or both parents have children from previous relationships. These families could be complex, as they often involve bringing together children from different backgrounds and coping with the challenges of past relationships and new family conflicts.

Same-sex parent families

Same-sex parent families , where two people of the same sex raise children together, are often more visible and accepted in the 21st century. These families might face challenges, including discrimination and a lack of legal recognition in some areas. Despite this, same-sex parent families can be as successful, strong, and loving as other family formats. 

Adoptive and foster families

Two parents may not always have children biologically. Some people choose to adopt a child or foster children to offer them a safe and loving home.

What are the benefits of modernizing the nuclear family?

Modernizing the nuclear family to include a broader range of family structures could benefit society. Changing the definition of a family can be more inclusive and accepting. Additionally, by acknowledging the unique challenges faced by single-parent, blended, and same-sex parent families, society could work to provide the support and resources for these families to thrive. Below are a few benefits of this process. 

Increased inclusiveness

By recognizing and accepting a more comprehensive range of family structures, individuals may create a more inclusive society that values and supports all families. Inclusivity can reduce stigma and discrimination against families that do not fit the traditional mold and foster a greater sense of community and belonging for all families.

Better support for diverse families

By acknowledging the unique challenges faced by single-parent, blended, and same-sex parent families, society could work to provide the support and resources for these families to thrive. These resources might include financial assistance, counseling services, and support groups specifically designed for these family structures.

Improved outcomes for children

Some children may benefit from the normalization of diverse family structures because it could reduce the chance of bullying or spreading stigma that could occur at school from other children. Inclusivity could promote improved outcomes for children, such as higher academic success and more positive social skills due to growing up in a supportive and accepting environment.

Challenges of modernizing the nuclear family

While modernizing the nuclear family could have benefits, there may be challenges to address in this area. For example, a lack of resources and legal recognition in some areas and the potential difficulty of blending two separate families into one can present unique difficulties. Below are a few challenges to keep in mind. 

Resistance to change

In communities, change can be difficult for some to accept. Some people might cling to traditional ideas about what a family should look like and resist accepting new and different types of families. In these cases, it could be beneficial to recognize these differing opinions while working to educate and raise awareness about the benefits of modernizing the nuclear family.

Lack of legal recognition and support

In some areas, diverse family structures might not have the same legal recognition and support as traditional two-parent families. For example, families might struggle with connection to marriage, adoption, and parental rights. LGBTQ+ couples may sometimes struggle to prove the parentage of their children, with one parent having to adopt the child and spend thousands of dollars to be their parent legally.  

How society can adapt to these changes

As the face of the nuclear family changes, society may also adapt to these changes. Providing support and resources for diverse families and working to reduce stigma and discrimination against families that do not fit the traditional mold is one step forward. By working together to create a more inclusive and accepting society, individuals may ensure positive outcomes for all families, regardless of their structure.

Finding mental health support 

Therapy can be crucial in modernizing the nuclear family by addressing the challenges faced by diverse family structures and supporting these individuals in their relationships and social connections. However, therapy may feel out of reach for some families due to finances or scheduling. 

Online therapy through a platform like BetterHelp is one way for families to find support affordably and conveniently. By providing a safe and supportive space to discuss and process emotions, a therapist can help family members navigate the complexities of blending two families, adjusting to single parenthood, or living with discrimination and stigma as a same-sex parent family. You can reduce costs and the commute often associated with in-person therapy on an online platform. 

The study Narrative Therapy With Blended Families highlights the value of online therapy for blended families. Blended families can face complex relationships and unique stressors, and therapy can assist in addressing these challenges. The study focuses explicitly on narrative therapy for blended families, exploring how rewriting a narrative can help family members cope with challenges. By working with a therapist, blended families may strengthen their relationships, improve communication, and build resilience. 

If you're a family member of any type, it may be helpful to contact a therapist to discuss family dynamics and impressions. Anyone can visit a mental healthcare provider; you don't need a diagnosed mental illness to receive support. Consider reaching out to a provider online or in your area to gain further insight into this process.

What happens when a person lives in a nuclear family?

While every family tends to be unique, living in a healthy nuclear family may provide children with consistency and stability as they grow up. This can be very important for proper child development. 

If children are raised in a healthy way within a nuclear family, they may grow up to have a secure attachment style and a lower chance of developing various mental health disorders. They may also do better in school and display positive behavior. In general, a person’s family forms much of their basis for their relationships throughout their lives.

How many members should be in a nuclear family?

A nuclear family (sometimes referred to as an elementary family or cereal packet family) usually consists of two parents and their dependent children living in their own household. This differs from single-parent households because there are typically two parents in a nuclear family.

What are any two common concerns of a nuclear family?

Nuclear families may have concerns regarding financial stability and parenting strategies.

What are the disadvantages of living in a nuclear family?

It’s possible that those living in a nuclear family may not spend as much time with their extended families. In addition, if both parents work, the task of finding and affording childcare can be difficult.

Can a nuclear family have more than two children?

A nuclear family may have any number of children. Such children may be biological or adopted, as adoptive parents can also form nuclear families.

What are the roles and responsibilities of a nuclear family?

In many nuclear families, the father tends to take on the role of provider, while the mother takes on the role of caretaker. While it can be important to note this isn’t always the case, these may be the traditional roles in nuclear families.

The nuclear family, consisting of parents and children, likely existed before the Industrial Revolution, but this type of family tends to be more common in industrialized societies. A nuclear family is usually considered to be a primary social group or social organization. Nuclear families are often part of the middle class, but they can also be in the upper and lower classes.

Can a nuclear family have one parent?

A nuclear family is typically defined as two parents and their biological children. However, the definition of a nuclear family has recently changed to include adopted children as well.

Are nuclear families more stable?

Some nuclear families may be more stable than other types of families. When a nuclear family is headed by a loving married couple, children may be raised in a very stable environment. Still, that isn’t to say that other family arrangements cannot be stable or that all nuclear families are stable.

What are the benefits of a nuclear family?

A nuclear family may have more financial stability, strong support systems for children, and consistent daily routines. Family members may be closely related in an emotional sense, potentially providing plenty of support in daily life.

Are nuclear families healthier?

Research and family studies suggest that family cohesion tends to be a more significant factor in health than family structure. This may mean that having healthy relationships within families tends to be more important than having a specific type of family, such as a nuclear family.

• How To De-Escalate And Decrease Family Conflict Medically reviewed by Julie Dodson , MA
• What Is The Birth Order Theory? Medically reviewed by Melissa Guarnaccia , LCSW
• Relationships and Relations

Essay on Nuclear Family

Students are often asked to write an essay on Nuclear Family in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Nuclear Family

Introduction.

A nuclear family is a family unit that consists of two parents and their children. It is often contrasted with extended families, which include other relatives.

Benefits of a Nuclear Family

Nuclear families often provide a stable environment for children. They can focus on their individual needs, fostering personal growth.

Challenges of a Nuclear Family

However, nuclear families can face issues. For instance, when both parents work, childcare can be a challenge.

Despite its challenges, a nuclear family can provide a nurturing environment for children. It plays a crucial role in shaping a child’s personality and values.

Also check:

• 10 Lines on Nuclear Family
• Paragraph on Nuclear Family

250 Words Essay on Nuclear Family

The nuclear family, often perceived as the traditional family unit, typically consists of two parents and their offspring. This model, prevalent in Western societies, has been a fundamental social unit for centuries.

Evolution of the Nuclear Family

The nuclear family emerged as a dominant structure in response to societal changes. Industrialization necessitated mobility, leading to families moving away from extended kinship networks. The consequent geographical and psychological distance resulted in the creation of self-contained, independent units.

Advantages of the Nuclear Family

The nuclear family offers several advantages. It encourages self-reliance and independence, as decisions are made without external interference. It also fosters closer parent-child relationships, ensuring children receive focused attention and care.

Challenges of the Nuclear Family

However, the nuclear family is not without its challenges. The absence of a broader support network can lead to isolation and increased pressure on parents. Furthermore, societal changes such as increasing divorce rates and single parenthood challenge the traditional nuclear family structure.

Emerging Alternatives

In response to these challenges, alternative family structures are gaining recognition. These include single-parent families, cohabiting couples, and blended families. These structures, while differing from the traditional nuclear family, still provide nurturing environments for children to grow and thrive.

In conclusion, while the nuclear family has been a fundamental social unit, it is not the only valid family structure. Society’s evolving needs and values necessitate a broader understanding and acceptance of diverse family forms. The essence of a family lies not in its structure, but in the love, support, and care it provides.

500 Words Essay on Nuclear Family

The nuclear family, often referred to as the “traditional” family unit, consists of two parents and their children, living together under one roof. This family structure is seen as the cornerstone of society in many cultures, and it has been the subject of extensive study and debate among sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists.

The Evolution of the Nuclear Family

Historically, the nuclear family emerged as a social construct in response to the changing socio-economic conditions of the Industrial Revolution. The move from agrarian societies, where extended families often lived together to pool resources, to urban industrialized societies necessitated a more compact, mobile family unit. The nuclear family became the ideal, offering a balance of economic efficiency and emotional intimacy.

One of the primary advantages of the nuclear family is the level of autonomy it provides. Parents have the freedom to raise their children according to their values and beliefs without interference from extended family members. This autonomy can foster a strong bond between parents and children, leading to a more cohesive family unit.

Children in nuclear families often benefit from more focused attention and resources from their parents, which can contribute to their personal and academic development. Moreover, the nuclear family can provide a stable environment for children, which is essential for their emotional and psychological well-being.

Challenges Faced by the Nuclear Family

Despite its advantages, the nuclear family is not without its challenges. The isolation from the extended family can sometimes lead to a lack of support in times of crisis. Additionally, the nuclear family structure places a significant burden on parents, as they are solely responsible for the financial, emotional, and developmental needs of their children.

Furthermore, the traditional nuclear family model can perpetuate gender roles, with women often bearing the brunt of domestic duties and childcare, limiting their opportunities for career advancement.

The Nuclear Family in the 21st Century

In the 21st century, the concept of the nuclear family is evolving. With the rise of diverse family structures, such as single-parent families, same-sex families, and blended families, the definition of a “normal” family is becoming more inclusive.

These changes reflect the evolving societal norms and values, as well as the legal recognition of different family structures. Despite these changes, the nuclear family continues to be a significant social unit, valued for its potential to provide a nurturing and stable environment for raising children.

In conclusion, the nuclear family, while not without its challenges, remains an integral part of many societies. Its evolution reflects the changing socio-economic conditions and cultural norms. As society continues to evolve, so too will the concept of the nuclear family, adapting to meet the diverse needs of individuals and communities. Regardless of its form, the family remains at the heart of human social structures, providing support, love, and a sense of belonging to its members.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Joint Family
• Essay on Importance of Family
• Essay on Ideal Family

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

clock This article was published more than  4 years ago

Opinion An unlikely cause of our bitterness: The nuclear family

When the history of our era is written, scholars will search for larger causes to explain its bitterness and contradictions, despite so much wealth. Was it globalization? Populism? Economic inequality? Polarization? Greed? To this list you can now add an unlikely candidate: the nuclear family.

In a powerful essay for the Atlantic — “ The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake ” — New York Times columnist David Brooks argues that the family structure we’ve held up as the cultural ideal for the past half century has been a catastrophe for many.

By “nuclear family,” he means a married mother and father and some kids. The alternative arrangement was “the extended family,” which included not only Mom, Dad and the children but also close relatives — cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents — as well as family friends.

The great defect of the nuclear family, Brooks asserts, is that if there’s a crisis — a death, divorce, job loss, poor school grades — there’s no backup team. Children are most vulnerable to these disruptions and often are left to fend for themselves. There’s a downward spiral. “In many sectors of society,” Brooks writes, “nuclear families fragmented into single-parent families, [and] single-parent families into chaotic families or no families.”

People could increasingly go their own way. The advent of the birth-control pill encouraged people to have sex outside of marriage. Women’s entrance into the labor market made it easier for them to support themselves. Modern appliances (washing machines, dryers) made housework simpler.

As Brooks sees it, almost everyone loses under this system. The affluent can best cope with it, because they can usually afford what’s needed (day care, tutors) to support their children. Otherwise, the picture is bleak.

Children have it worst. Brooks cites an avalanche of statistics. In 1960, about 5 percent of children were born to unmarried women. Now that’s about 40 percent. In 1960, about 11 percent of children lived apart from their fathers; in 2010, the figure was 27 percent.

But adult men and women also have their share of troubles. There’s a vicious circle at work, notes Brooks: “People who grow up in disrupted families have more trouble getting the education they need to have prosperous careers. People who don’t have prosperous careers have trouble building stable families. . . . The children in those families become more isolated and more traumatized.”

Brooks says he wrote the article to stimulate experiments that aim to stabilize family life using the extended family — not the nuclear family — as the model. Granted, the problem may not be as big as Brooks imagines. Estimates by the Census Bureau and others indicate that about 60 percent of Americans live in the state where they were born. Presumably, many of these people stayed put because they valued nearby family ties.

Still, whatever the figures, there’s little doubt that reversing the breakdown of families, and its consequences, is one of the urgent tasks of social policy in the 21st century. We have been struggling unsuccessfully with it since the “ Moynihan Report ” in 1965. (Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who later became a U.S. senator, warned that the breakdown of black marriage rates would have a devastating effect on African Americans’ well-being.) The report proved highly controversial, and some branded Moynihan a racist.

But even if we could magically eliminate all considerations of class and race, it’s not clear that a workable model would emerge. The conditions needed to broach a debate over family policies strike at the heart of Americans’ political and cultural conflicts. Brooks put it this way:

“We value privacy and individual freedom too much. Our culture is oddly stuck. We want stability and rootedness, but also mobility, dynamic capitalism, and the liberty to adopt the lifestyle we choose.”

Brooks finds both liberals and conservatives unequal to the task of dealing candidly with family breakdown. “Social conservatives insist that we can bring the nuclear family back. But the conditions that made for stable nuclear families in the 1950s are never returning. Conservatives have nothing to say to the kid whose dad has split, whose mom has had three other kids with different dads; ‘go live in a nuclear family’ is really not relevant advice. . . . the majority [of households] are something else: single parents, never-married parents, blended families, grandparent-headed families.” He’s just as tough on progressives. They “still talk like self-expressive individualists of the 1970s: People should have the freedom to pick whatever family form works for them . . . . But many of the new family forms do not work well for most people.”

The larger issue is how we judge our times. We are constantly deluged with economic studies and statistics, implying that economic outcomes are the only ones that matter. The reality is that any national scorecard of well-being must take a much broader view. How well families do in preparing children for adulthood and how well they transmit important values is a much higher standard for success.

Read more from Robert Samuelson’s archive .

David Von Drehle: Politics has become the raw embodiment of joylessness

David Byler: Conservatives already won the culture war. They just don’t know it.

Catherine Rampell: Ivanka Trump claims her father’s administration is ‘pro-family.’ That’s rich.

ReviseSociology

A level sociology revision – education, families, research methods, crime and deviance and more!

The Functionalist Perspective on the Family

Functionalists focus on the positive functions of the nuclear family, such as secondary socialisation and the stabilisation of adult personalities.

Table of Contents

Last Updated on October 4, 2023 by Karl Thompson

Functionalists see the family as one of the essential building blocks for stable societies. They tend to to see the nuclear family as the ideal family for industrial societies and argue that it performs positive functions such as as socialising children and providing emotional security for parents.

There are two main Functionalist theorists of the family: George Peter Murdock and Talcott Parsons.

Murdock argued that the nuclear family was universal and that it performed four essential functions: stabilising the sex drive, reproduction, socialisation of the young and economic production. (Obviously this has been widely criticised!)

Parsons developed the Functional Fit Theory: In pre-industrial society families used to be extended, but with industrialisation families became nuclear because they fitted industrial society better.

The Functionalist Perspective on the Family: Overview

This post covers:

• The Functionalist view of society
• George Peter Murdock’s theory of the universal nuclear family
• Talcott Parsons’ Functional Fit Theory
• The possible positive functions of the family today
• Evaluations and criticisms of the Functionalist view of the family from other perspectives.

The Functionalist View of Society

Functionalists regard society as a system made up of different parts which depend on each other. Different institutions perform specific functions within a society to keep society going, in the same way as the different organs of a human body perform different functions in order to maintain the whole.

Functionalists see the family as a particularly important institution because it as the ‘basic building block’ of society which performs the crucial functions of socialising the young and meeting the emotional needs of its members. Stable families underpin social order and economic stability.

Before you go any further you might like to read this more in depth post ‘ Introduction to Functionalism ‘ post which covers the key ideas of Functionalism.

George Peter Murdock – Four essential functions of the nuclear family

George Murdock was an American Anthropologist who looked at 200 different societies and argued that the nuclear family was a universal feature of all human societies. In other words, the nuclear family is in all societies!

Murdock suggested there were ‘four essential functions’ of the nuclear family:

1. Stable satisfaction of the sex drive – within monogamous relationships, which prevents sexual jealousy. 2. The biological reproduction of the next generation – without which society cannot continue. 3. Socialisation of the young – teaching basic norms and values 4. Meeting its members economic needs – producing food and shelter for example.

Criticisms of Murdock

• Feminist Sociologists argue that arguing that the family is essential is ideological because traditional family structures typically disadvantage women.
• It is feasible that other institutions could perform the functions above.
• Anthropological research has shown that there are some cultures which don’t appear to have ‘families’ – the Nayar for example.

Talcott Parsons –  Functional Fit Theory

Parsons has a historical perspective on the evolution of the nuclear family. His functional fit theory is that as society changes, the type of family that ‘fits’ that society, and the functions it performs change. Over the last 200 years, society has moved from pre-industrial to industrial – and the main family type has changed from the extended family to the nuclear family. The nuclear family fits the more complex industrial society better, but it performs a reduced number of functions.

The extended family consisted of parents, children, grandparents and aunts and uncles living under one roof, or in a collection of houses very close to eachother. Such a large family unit ‘fitted’ pre-industrial society as the family was entirely responsible for the education of children, producing food and caring for the sick – basically it did everything for all its members.

In contrast to pre-industrial society, in industrial society (from the 1800s in the UK) the isolated “nuclear family” consisting of only parents and children becomees the norm. This type of family ‘fits’ industrial societies because it required a mobile workforce. The extended family was too difficult to move when families needed to move to find work to meet the requirements of a rapidly changing and growing economy. Furthermore, there was also less need for the extended family as more and more functions, such as health and education, gradually came to be carried out by the state.

I really like this brief explanation of Parson’s Functional Fit Theory:

Two irreducible functions of the family

According to Parsons, although the nuclear family performs reduced functions, it is still the only institution that can perform two core functions in society – Primary Socialisation and the Stabilisation of Adult Personalities.

Primary Socialisation

The nuclear family is still responsible for teaching children the norms and values of society known as Primary Socialisation.

An important part of socialisation according to Functionalists is ‘gender role socialisation. If primary socialisation is done correctly then boys learn to adopt the ‘instrumental role’ (also known as the ‘breadwinner role) – they go on to go out to work and earns money. Girls learn to adopt the ‘expressive role’ – doing all the ‘caring work’, housework and bringing up the children.

The stabilisation of adult personalities

The stabilisation of adult personalities refers to the emotional security which is achieved within a marital relationship between two adults. According to Parsons working life in Industrial society is stressful and the family is a place where the working man can return and be ‘de-stressed’ by his wife, which reduces conflict in society. This is also known as the ‘warm bath theory’.

Criticisms of Functional Fit Theory

• It’s too ‘neat’ – social change doesn’t happen in such an orderly manner:
• Laslett found that church records show only 10% of households contained extended kin before the industrial revolution. This suggests the family was already nuclear before industrialisation.
• Young and Wilmott found that Extended Kin networks were still strong in East London as late as the 1970s.

The Positive Functions of the Family: A summary

Functionalists identify a number of positive functions of the nuclear family, below is a summary of some of these and a few more.

• The reproduction of the next generation – Functionalists see the nuclear family as the ‘fundamental unit of society’ responsible for carrying that society on by biological reproduction
• Related to the above point one of the main functions is primary socialisation – teaching children the basic norms and values of society.
• This kind of overlaps with the above, but even during secondary socialisation, the family is expected to help educated children alongside the school.
• The family provides psychological security and security, especially for men one might say (as with the ‘warm bath theory’.)
• A further positive function is elderly care, with many families still taking on this responsibility.
• Murdock argued that monogamous relationships provide for a stable satisfaction of the sex drive – most people today still see committed sexual relationships as best.

Criticisms of the Functionalist perspective on the family

It is really important to be able to criticise the perspectives. Evaluation is worth around half of the marks in the exam!

Downplaying Conflict

Both Murdock and Parsons paint a very rosy picture of family life, presenting it as a harmonious and integrated institution. However, they downplay conflict in the family, particularly the ‘darker side’ of family life, such as violence against women and child abuse.

Being out of Date

Parson’s view of the instrumental and expressive roles of men and women is very old-fashioned. It may have held some truth in the 1950s but today, with the majority of women in paid work, and the blurring of gender roles, it seems that both partners are more likely to take on both expressive and instrumental roles

Ignoring the exploitation of women

Functionalists tend to ignore the way women suffer from the sexual division of labour in the family. Even today, women still end up being the primary child carers in 90% of families, and suffer the burden of extra work that this responsibility carries compared to their male partners. Gender roles are socially constructed and usually involve the oppression of women. There are no biological reasons for the functionalist’s view of separation of roles into male breadwinner & female homemaker. These roles lead to the disadvantages being experienced by women.

Functionalism is too deterministic

This means it ignores the fact that children actively create their own personalities. An individual’s personality isn’t pre-determined at birth or something they have no control in. Functionalism incorrectly assumes an almost robotic adoption of society’s values via our parents; clearly there are many examples where this isn’t the case.

A Level Sociology Families and Households Revision Bundle

If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my A-Level Sociology Families and Households Revision Bundle :

The bundle contains the following:

• 50 pages of revision notes covering all of the sub-topics within families and households
• mind maps in pdf and png format – 9 in total, covering perspectives on the family
• short answer exam practice questions and exemplar answers – 3 examples of the 10 mark, ‘outline and explain’ question.
•  9 essays/ essay plans spanning all the topics within the families and households topic.

Signposting and Related Posts

The Functionalist perspective on the family is usually the very first topic taught within the the families and households module.

It is usually followed and critiqued by the Marxist perspective on the family and Feminist Perspectives on the family.

References and Sources for Further Reading

Haralambos and Holborn (2013) – Sociology Themes and Perspectives, Eighth Edition, Collins. ISBN-10: 0007597479

Chapman et al (2015) A Level Sociology Student Book One, Including AS Level [Fourth Edition], Collins. ISBN-10: 0007597479

Robb Webb et al (2015) AQA A Level Sociology Book 1, Napier Press. ISBN-10: 0954007913

Share this:

• Share on Tumblr

29 thoughts on “The Functionalist Perspective on the Family”

Thank you. it was very helpful and easy to understand and not boring at all.

Great stuff, much appreciated

I have use this work to get my marks thanks

Hi yes absolutely!

Yes absolutely – it’s a historical perspective!

This may sound like a stupid question but is all of this information up to date for the 2019-2020 exams?

This may sound like a stupid question but is this up to date for 2019-2020 exams?

You’re welcome!

clear information, thank you so much

thank you very much for this informative piece!

Absolutely banging mate!

YOU. ARE. A. LEGEND! Thank you so much, honestly, this is amazing.

You’re welcome, glad you found it useful!

very helpful!thanks!:)

Such an informative article

so useful thank you!!

Hello! So, in the spotlight of this perspective what would functionalists say about single parent families?

Very useful notes.

You are welcome!

Yes they are very good notes for my revision for my gcse and my mocks

GOOD NOTES THEY ARE VERY UNDERSTANDABLE

Very understanding idea

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Discover more from ReviseSociology

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

Nuclear Family and British Social Breakdown Essay

Introduction.

One of the biggest concerns of the contemporary British society is the issue society breakdown. This matter has attained the attention of not just sociologists and anthropologists but the general public as well. Many factors have been attributed to this social problem. Different theories have been fronted to explain the origin, causes and effects of this challenge.

As they say numbers do not lie. According to statistics, the probability of kids in the Great Britain not been raised by both parents is the greatest in the region, except of Belgium, Latvia and Estonia. As we speak only less than two thirds of children under the age of 14 are living in the same household with their biological parents. This research was carried out by Organization for Economic Development and Co-operation (OEDC).

The figures indicates that 68.9 per cent of kids under 14 live with both natural parents in United Kingdom while 70.7 of the same age bracket live with both parents in the United States, and 79.5 in France. These statistics form the basis of our critical discussion. In this paper we examine and explain the importance of nuclear family and its functions in British society. The paper goes ahead to elucidate whether the decline of nuclear family contributes to the wider British social breakdown.

Contrast and exploration of the nature and functions of the nuclear family with other family types or structures

Comparatively nuclear family demonstrates a couple of similarities and contrasts with other family structures. A brief description of nuclear family is that it be defined as a family that is composed of two sets of family members, parents and children, living together in the same home.

Interaction within family is usually unlimited and usually very personal. This can be depicted by the close conduct experienced from time to time such as sharing household utilities and facilities. Family members in a nuclear family are generally freer with each other and forms closer ties as compared to other types of family structure.

The core function of nuclear is basically supporting each other psychologically, socially, and economically. This comes handy when it comes to transacting vital undertakings such as inheritance of property where every member is expected to receive a share. In comparison to other family structures this exercise is less complex. In extended families such issues as inheritance can be termed as nightmare, this is probably because of the larger numbers.

Extended family is the other major type of family structure. It can be described as a family with more than parents and offspring. Sociologist have moved forward and tried to classify extended family as follows. First is the vertical extended family. This branch is made up of three or more sets such as grandparents, parents and children.

Secondly, the horizontal extended family. This family consists of cousins, aunts, and uncles. The last branch is modified extended, commonly referred as Michael Gordon, after his outstanding contribution. This branch is essentially made up of two or more nuclear families living separately.

One common distinguishing factor between nuclear and extended family is the level of sets representation in each of them. It is also clear that numbers do vary. Rarely will you find nuclear families with fewer people than extended family or vice verse. In terms of relationships, extended families have “weaker” relations as compared to nuclear family. In terms of functions the two differ a bit. In nuclear family the focus is primarily on the “immediate” members but in extended the focus spreads out to meet the needs of everyone in the household.

The other fast developing structure of family is single-parent family. As the name insinuates, it is composed of a single parent and children. From statistics, they are more female single parents as compared to male parents. Sometimes this family type is referred as a broken nuclear because often it is a result of broken nuclear family. Single-parent family can be contrasted with nuclear by the fact that in nuclear family both parents work together for the good of the children while in single-parent family only one parent is involved.

Advantages and disadvantages of nuclear family compared to other types of family unit

The nuclear family bears many advantages and as expected some downside also. To start off is the strength of privacy. Matters conducted within a nuclear family are more likely to be secret, confidential and private. Privacy is a key factor searched by most people because it brings the element of integrity and creation of personal space.

Financial stability is another most sought after factor in marriage and society. Nuclear family provides the most conducive environment for financial stability. Both parents are able to save, plan, and provide for the children. This makes the burden bearable for the parents and protects the children from unnecessary lack.

Another noticeable advantage of nuclear family is freedom, comfort and avoidance of stress. Nuclear family creates that environment that is more likely to be free from stress and strain. In a way, members find their way to enjoy their life without much interference from other “external” forces.

The disadvantage of nuclear family includes lack of support from the larger society in case of eventualities such as tragedy or death. More often, nuclear family tends to be “clogged” to itself and members might lack the “external” touch. This is might contribute to lack of social skills.

Possible influences of the ‘breakdown’ of society

The state of society breakdown can be contributed to many factors. For the purpose of this paper we shall discuss the following factors: Changes of family structure, career development and feminism. Changes in family structure can be attributed to the increasing threat of society breakdown. It is noticed that a fragmented family will yield to a fragmented society.

This is a source of concern to our society. The traditional family has been interfered with and now what we are witnessing is new forms of marriages and families. These new development have resulted to the sad reality of escalating rate of divorces. Notably since 1960, there has been a tremendous increase in divorces occurrences in the Great Britain.

Actually between 1961 and 1969 the number doubled and the same increase was recorded in 1972. The trend has continued to expand touching its peak at 1993 at 180,000. According to experts, some couples are more prone to suffer divorce. The group that married young and had children before the marriage or practiced cohabitation. The other vulnerable group is partners who have been married or gone through another divorce.

Career development is the other main contributor of society breakdown. Marriages and families generally demand a lot of time and resources. In the same tone, career development is taxing and consumes a lot of time. The strength and wisdom to balance the two has lead many people to choose forsaking marriage and family at the expense of developing their careers.

Holistically looking at it, at the end of the day it is the society that is hurt because this means compromise in other aspects. In such a case it is easier to cohabitate than to manage a family. It is easier and more prestigious to work towards job promotion than to sacrifice finances for the sake of family.

The other could be associated with broken society is the aspect of feminism. From the onset I must clarify that this aspect is not entirely wrong but only some parts which are misplaced. As we know it is the responsibility of women to be “homemaker” in the family. This is a noble task that requires a lot of humility and patience.

However, what are we seeing in the society? Women who are so agitated for their right such that they cannot simply be homemakers. The theory of feminism has good intentions but if addressed with wisdom then I am afraid it ends up doing more harm than good. A family needs both a man and a woman. The man is the head and woman supporting him. And together they form a nuclear family.

Restoration of nuclear family

Nuclear family is the most ideal family structure for restoration of the broken society. From the above discussion it is clear that the strengths outweigh the weaknesses. Restoration of nuclear family is a very possible mission. This could be achieved through carrying out programs encouraging especially the young people the significance of family and nuclear in this matter. This program could incorporate “success stories”, couples, families that have successful lived to enjoy the fruits of nuclear family.

From the above discussion it clear that decline in nuclear family is leading to the wider broken society in the current British society. In summary nuclear family plays a very strategic and vital role to the well being the society. This can be demonstrated by how much we, as the society, stand to gain if this family structure shall be restored. The following are the main contributors of the society ‘breakdown’ they include Changes of family structure, career development and feminism.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2019, May 25). Nuclear Family and British Social Breakdown. https://ivypanda.com/essays/nuclear-family/

"Nuclear Family and British Social Breakdown." IvyPanda , 25 May 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/nuclear-family/.

IvyPanda . (2019) 'Nuclear Family and British Social Breakdown'. 25 May.

IvyPanda . 2019. "Nuclear Family and British Social Breakdown." May 25, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/nuclear-family/.

1. IvyPanda . "Nuclear Family and British Social Breakdown." May 25, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/nuclear-family/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Nuclear Family and British Social Breakdown." May 25, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/nuclear-family/.

• Single-Parent Families
• The Relationship Between Single-Parent Households and Poverty
• The Mothers Who Are Not Single: Striving to Avoid Poverty in Single-Parent Families
• Poverty in American Single-Parent Families
• Sociological Perspective in Everyday Life
• Beyond the Nuclear Family
• Breakdown of the Periodic Table
• Managerial Communication Breakdown
• Parental Involvement in Education
• Family Formations, Breakdowns and Re-formations
• Has the Internet Positively or Negatively Impacted Human Society? Argumentative Essay
• The Sociology of Religion Aspects
• Introduction to Sociology of Religion: When Religion Defines the Moods in Community
• The Sociological Study of Religion
• About the Sociology of Religion

Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Sociological Theories — Talcott Parson’s nuclear family argument

Talcott Parson’s Nuclear Family Argument

• Categories: Society

About this sample

Words: 508 |

Published: Dec 12, 2018

Words: 508 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr. Karlyna PhD

Verified writer

• Expert in: Sociology

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 1096 words

3 pages / 1468 words

4 pages / 1744 words

4 pages / 1747 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Sociological Theories

In conclusion, the similarities between Locke and Hobbes in their beliefs about the social contract theory, human nature, property rights, and limited government underscore the foundational principles of modern political [...]

Macrosystems play a vital role in shaping the lives of individuals and communities. These broad, overarching systems encompass cultural, socioeconomic, political, educational, and healthcare aspects that influence the behaviors, [...]

Dorothy Allison's essay "A Question of Class" delves into the complexities of social class and its impact on individuals' lives. The essay explores the ways in which class influences one's identity, opportunities, and [...]

Bandura's social learning theory proposes that behavior change is achieved through observation, imitation, and modeling. The theory suggests that learning is influenced by role models, attitudes, and anticipated outcomes. It [...]

Labeling theory says that individuals come to recognize and carry on in manners that reflect how others label them. This theory is connected to the human science of wrongdoing and aberrance. Naming and regarding somebody as [...]

The art gallery I chose is called the Silo gallery, it is the largest purpose built in central Texas. It features 3D sculptures and different art forms by a dozen of brilliant artists. The Silo gallery was built by Ralph and [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

• Skip to main content
• Skip to secondary menu
• Skip to primary sidebar
• Skip to footer

ImportantIndia.com

Indian History, Festivals, Essays, Paragraphs, Speeches.

Nuclear Family: Essay on Advantages and Disadvantages of Nuclear Family

Category: Essays and Paragraphs On October 23, 2018 By Aparna

A nuclear family is a family containing 2-5 members. It is a small group which consists of a wife and husband and their immature children which forms a part of the community. After marriage, children leave their parents and their home and establish a new household. Nuclear families are quite common in today’s times. It is an autonomous family which is free from any control by the elders. Youth love their independence in recent times, and so the proportion of nuclear families is gradually increasing especially in cities.

• With nuclear families, there is a lot of scope for personality development . Children become more close to parents and can discuss their thoughts frankly and freely.
• In nuclear families, women get more time to look after their children and also to manage her house according to her ideas. Elders do not interfere in household matters, and the husband can also give more attention to his wife.
• Nuclear families tend to do more family planning , and all members bear expenses and responsibilities together.
• There are fewer people so less misunderstanding and so they have a harmonious atmosphere and peaceful life.
• Parents are responsible for their children and both husband and wife shares responsibilities mutually.
• Savings and financial planning can be done effectively.
• All family members can enjoy an independent lifestyle .

Disadvantages

• As the family gets divided, the land also gets subdivided, and the yield is lesser. Also, many times due to lack of labor people have to employ outsiders. This causes economic loss to the members of the nuclear family to a great extent.
• As both wife and husband have to take up economic responsibilities, children are often neglected or left with servants. Children develop a feeling of loneliness and emotional insecurity as well as anxiety and depression. If the earning member dies or becomes incapable of earning, then there is no other person to support the family. Also, there is no support in time of emergencies or accident or sickness.
• In this independent unit, there is a lot of freedom, and so children tend to develop bad qualities by imitating their inmates. This leads to an indisciplined lifestyle . Also, they become unsocial and cannot get mixed with other family members.
• Loneliness is a major drawback of this type of families, and there is no help or support in case of emergencies. Also, there is no one to talk to in the free time.
• In nuclear families old, divorced and widows are neglected as no one has the time to take care of them. This makes them feel insecure, and children also become emotionally, socially and educationally maladjusted. This leads to frequent conflicts .

Although nuclear families have their set of advantages and independence , still it lacks the love and warmth of the traditional joint families. Children do not get the upbringing and culture from their elders, and they may end up being too undisciplined and spoilt. It is a personal choice to decide the type of family they want.

• History of Mughal Empire
• Modern History of India
• Important India
• Indian Geography
• Report an Article
• Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy, and Copyrights.

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar

Student Essays

Essays-Paragraphs-Speeches

Essay on Nuclear Family | Benefits of Nuclear Family Essay

Leave a Comment

Nuclear family is the system of family setup wherein a couple and their dependent children live together. It is also known as conjugal family or elementary family. Read the Following Essay on Nuclear Family, its meaning, concept, Importance, few advantages and disadvantages of Nucelar Family

Essay on Nuclear Family | Concept & Importance | Advantages of Nuclear Family

A nuclear family has its own share of advantages and disadvantages. Advantages may include financial stability, strong emotional bonds, better raising of children, etc. On the other hand, disadvantages may include less social interaction, lack of support during tough times, etc.

>>>> Read Also : ” Essay On Relationship & Its Importance in Life “

Importance and Benefits of Nuclear Family:

Nuclear families have many advantages. One of the main advantages is that they provide stability to the children. Nuclear families typically have less divorce and fewer problems than other family types. This means that children can feel more secure and have a better chance of growing up in a stable environment.

Another advantage of nuclear families is that they allow children to form strong emotional bonds with their parents. In a nuclear family, the parents are typically more involved in their children’s lives than in other family types. This allows for a stronger parent-child relationship and can lead to a better upbringing of the children.

Nuclear families also have financial advantages. In most cases, the parents in a nuclear family are both working, which allows for more financial stability. Additionally, the cost of raising children is typically lower in a nuclear family than in other family types.

Despite the many advantages of nuclear families, they also have some disadvantages. One disadvantage is that nuclear families can be less social Nuclear families also tend to be more close-knit and have stronger emotional bonds than other family types. This is both good and bad. On the one hand, it allows for more support during tough times. On the other hand, it can also lead to a lack of diversity and can make it difficult for family members to leave the family if they want to.

>>> Read Also : “Paragraph On My Grandmother ”

Nuclear families have both advantages and disadvantages. However, the advantages typically outweigh the disadvantages. Nuclear families provide stability, strong emotional bonds, and a better financial situation for children. Additionally, nuclear families typically have less divorce and fewer problems than other family types. Overall, nuclear families are a positive force in society.

Related Posts:

Reader Interactions

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Bruce Drysdale 5th-grade student advances to national finals in DAR's essay contest

Bruce Drysdale fifth grader Lia Martinonis has advanced to the national finals in the Daughters of the American Revolution 2024 Essay Contest, and each time her essay has advanced, her family has celebrated with a cake.

She is anxiously hoping for more cake. Martinonis is one of eight fifth-grade finalists in the nation, and so far, she's won three awards for her essay — one at the local level, one at the state level and the latest for the Southeastern Division.

"I am unbelievably proud. I have felt both shocked and pleased each time I learned that I had won," she said.

And there's prize money involved: $1,000 for first place, $500 for second place and $250 for third place. The winners will be recognized at the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution Continental Congress, which is being held June 26-30 in Washington, D.C.

The topic for the contest was “Stars and Stripes Forever.” Essay writers were asked to imagine they were a newspaper reporter for The Philadelphia Times on May 14, 1897, and the newspaper's editor asked them to attend and report on the first public performance of John Philip Sousa’s new march, “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” The students were to tell about Sousa’s life and the story behind the song.

Lia was with her family on April 20 in Durham to receive the state award, her mother, Andrea, said.

"This essay contest has been an incredible experience for Lia. My daughter aspires to be a writer when she grows up," Andrea Martinonis said. "This opportunity has given her the confidence to pursue that dream. Lia researched the essay subject, learned about American history, honed her writing skills, and read her speech to a large audience at the initial award ceremony. 

"As an educator, I couldn't be more pleased that DAR sponsors this contest, encouraging students to write essays and learn about our nation's past. As a parent, I am thrilled that my daughter chooses to spend her free time reading and writing and that her interests and skills are being recognized."

More: North Henderson student one of four grand prize winners in national essay contest

Lia said her teacher, April Summey, assigned the essay contest to her class.

"I remember being frustrated when drafting my essay, but now I am so glad my hard work paid off. I still cannot believe this is all happening," Lia Martinonis said.  

This part of her essay describes Sousa talking about composing his new march:

"...Sousa said that he composed the song in his head on his return to America as he grieved the death of his beloved band manager, David Blakely. Sousa said, “In a kind of dreamy way, I used to think over old days at Washington when I was leader of the Marine Band…when we played at all public functions, and I could see the Stars and Stripes flying from the flagstaff.” He also stated, “And that flag of ours became glorified… And to my imagination it seemed to be the biggest, grandest flag in the world, and I could not get back under it quick enough.”

More: Apple Valley Middle student one of four grand prize winners in national contest

Summey called Lia a phenomenal, gifted student who "always goes above and beyond."

"She thrives on a challenge and is an avid learner. Her contagious curiosity shines brightly as she lights up upon acquiring new knowledge," Summey said. "Every year, my fifth grade students work on the DAR essay. They are given a prompt and required to read multiple primary and secondary sources about the topic in order to prepare. I am very passionate about the contest, because it helps students learn history and get excited about it." 

Dean Hensley is the news editor for the Hendersonville Times-News. Email him with tips, questions and comments at [email protected]. Please help support this kind of local journalism with a subscription to the Hendersonville Times-News.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

When It’s Time for an Aging Driver to Hit the Brakes

The “car key conversation” can be painful for families to navigate. Experts say there are ways to have it with empathy and care.

By Catherine Pearson

Sherrie Waugh has been yelled at, insulted and wept upon in the course of her job administering driving tests. Typically these extreme reactions happen when she is forced to render an upsetting verdict: It’s time to hang up the car keys.

Ms. Waugh, a certified driving rehabilitation specialist with The Brain Center, a private neuropsychology practice in Indiana, often works with older drivers, putting them through an assessment that measures things like visual skills, reaction time and processing speed.

“I had one gentleman, who had early onset dementia, who was just sitting here crying,” Ms. Waugh said. “His wife was out in the car and she was crying. And we all came back, and we were all crying. Because it’s so hard.”

Decisions about when an older person (or someone whose physical or mental circumstances make operating a vehicle dangerous) should stop driving are often agonizing. They can rock the driver’s sense of independence and identity, and add to the responsibilities that many family caregivers shoulder.

“It’s a major, major loss for older people,” said Lauren Massimo, an assistant professor at Penn Nursing. “It’s been described to me as dehumanizing.”

But it is important to raise concerns as soon as you have them, experts said, and there are ways to make the car key conversation less painful for older drivers and their loved ones.

Get a good look at the problem.

Before you ask a partner or parent to give up driving, do your research, experts say. Ms. Waugh, for instance, is surprised by the number of caregivers she sees who raise concerns about older drivers they haven’t actually driven with recently.

“If they need to pick up something at the grocery store, hop in the car,” she said. Take note: Are they missing traffic lights or safety signs? Are they struggling to maintain the speed limit or stay in their lane? Are they becoming confused about directions, particularly on familiar routes? Those are all signs that their driving skills may be waning.

And beware of ageism, especially when figuring out how to approach the conversation.

“It’s really not about their age,” said Marvell Adams Jr., the chief executive officer of the nonprofit Caregiver Action Network. “It’s about changes in their ability, which can happen to anyone.”

Mr. Adams suggested this opening gambit for a talk: “‘Hey, you know, I noticed it looks like your tires are getting beat up. Are you hitting the curb more often?’” His own mother made the decision to stop driving herself, he said, after she hit the gas pedal instead of the brake.

Pin the decision on someone else.

The driving conversation is one of the hardest parts of Dr. Massimo’s job as a health care provider who works with patients with neurodegenerative disease, she said. But she is happy to relieve caregivers of that burden.

“Make the provider the bad guy,” she said.

Many of Ms. Waugh’s clients come to her through referrals from primary care doctors, neurologists or eye doctors, though family members also reach out directly. She charges $175 for a 90-minute clinical assessment, and $200 for a road evaluation — fees that she acknowledged might be prohibitive for some families. (She has not succeeded in getting insurance to reimburse her clients.) But, experts say, professional driving evaluations can offer objectivity and clarity.

Ms. Waugh recently saw an older client who used to teach driver’s education and was miffed that his wife and doctor had been urging him to stop driving. During the evaluation, he struggled to finish short-term memory tests, including a simple maze and a counting exercise. When Ms. Waugh showed him his results, he finally understood that he posed a safety risk to himself and others on the road.

Have solutions ready.

Although giving up driving is rarely easy, services such as grocery delivery and ride-sharing apps can lessen the inconvenience and offer continued autonomy and independence, Mr. Adams said.

Make a plan for how you will help a retired driver get around. In addition to ride-sharing apps, the experts also mentioned public transportation and car pools, as well as friends and family members who might be able to give rides.

Consider risk-reduction strategies, too, Mr. Adams said. Maybe your partner or parent is safe to drive during the day, but not at night and not on the highway.

Even though older drivers and their family members may be loath to do it, look ahead.

“Make this a part of the conversation early,” said Cheryl Greenberg, who coaches seniors and their families on life transitions and planning in North Carolina. “You know, ‘You’re 60 years old and you’re driving just fine, but Mom, what would you do if the time came and you were less comfortable and less able?’”

All of the experts said that it was important to make space for big emotions around these conversations.

“Be empathic,” Dr. Greenberg said. “Don’t just go in and say, ‘Well, now you’re done driving.’ Listen. Ask questions that might help them be centered in the process.”

Catherine Pearson is a Times reporter who writes about families and relationships. More about Catherine Pearson

A Guide to Aging Well

Looking to grow old gracefully we can help..

Researchers are investigating how our biology changes as we grow older — and whether there are ways to stop it .

You need more than strength to age well — you also need power. Here’s how to measure how much power you have  and here’s how to increase yours .

Ignore the hyperbaric chambers and infrared light: These are the evidence-backed secrets to aging well .

Your body’s need for fuel shifts as you get older. Your eating habits should shift , too.

People who think positively about getting older often live longer, healthier lives. These tips can help you reconsider your perspective .

The sun’s rays cause the majority of skin changes as you grow older. Here’s how sunscreen helps prevent the damage .

Joint pain, stiffness and swelling aren’t always inevitable results of aging, experts say. Here’s what you can do to reduce your risk for arthritis .

• International

Israel-Hamas war

University protests

April 18, 2024 - Iran targeted in aerial attack

Kathleen Magramo, Sana Noor Haq, Christian Edwards, Aditi Sangal, Elise Hammond, Amir Vera, Tori B. Powell and Maureen Chowdhury, Adam Renton and Elizabeth Wolfe, CNN

Our live coverage of the attack on Iran has moved here .

Attack was a calculated message to Iran, retired US Army general says

From CNN's Michael Holmes and Elizabeth Wolfe

The attack on Iran early Friday was likely intended as both a retaliatory measure and a cautionary message, a retired US Army Major General told CNN.

For days, Israel has been weighing its response to unprecedented weekend strikes from Iran, which were launched in retaliation for a suspected Israeli strike on its embassy compound in Syria earlier this month.

A US official told CNN that Friday's attack was an Israeli strike. Israel has declined to comment on it.

“Israel must maintain its vigilance” in case Iran decides to respond with another show of force, retired Major General Mark MacCarley said.

By targeting the Iranian province of Isfahan — the site of significant nuclear facilities —Israel was likely warning that it could easily overwhelm Iran's defenses, MacCarley said.

“I think that there was a very deliberate thought process on the part of the Israeli war cabinet," he said.

"Israelis had to retaliate, but at the same time, within that retaliation was a message, and that is, 'Yes, we can get through. Don’t do it again. If you do it again, then all heck will break out.'"

Blast heard near Isfahan was caused by air defense firing at "suspicious object," Iranian official says

From CNN's Adam Pourahmadi and Irene Nasser

A loud blast heard near the Iranian city of Isfahan was caused by "air defense firing at a suspicious object," an Iranian senior military commander said, according to Iran's state-aligned Tasnim news agency.

There was no "damage or incident," said senior military commander Second Brigadier General Mihandoust in Isfahan Province, according to Tasnim.

A US official told CNN that Israel had carried out a strike inside Iran. The Israeli military has not commented.

Iranian state media are reporting that all facilities in the area are secure, including significant nuclear facilities .

Three explosions were heard early Friday near the military base where fighter jets are located in the Isfahan province, Iran's semi-official FARS news agency reported.

Iran's National Cyberspace Center spokesman, Hossein Dalirian, said air defenses shot down three drones and "there are no reports of a missile attack for now."

The Middle East is on edge after a strike on Iran. Here's what we know

From CNN staff

Israel has carried out a strike inside Iran, a US official told CNN on Friday , in a move that threatens to further escalate conflict in the Middle East.

Iran’s air defense systems were activated in several locations after explosions were heard close to the airport and an army base in the province of Isfahan, state media reported early Friday morning.

Israel has not taken responsibility for the attack.

Here's what we know:

• What Iranian reports say: Three blasts were heard near a military base where fighter jets are located in northwest Isfahan, Iran’s semi-official FARS news agency reported. Following the strike, Iranian media reported that all facilities around Isfahan are secure, including significant nuclear facilities in the area. Iran's National Cyberspace Center spokesman, Hossein Dalirian, said air defenses shot down three drones and "there are no reports of a missile attack for now."
• What was the target? That remains unclear, but the US official told CNN the strike's target was not nuclear. According to FARS, a military radar was a possible target. Ghahjaworstan, where an explosion was heard, is located near Isfahan Airport and “the eighth hunting base of the Army Air Force,” FARS reported.
• How did we get here? Tensions remain acute across the Middle East as Israel wages war in Gaza against Palestinian militant group Hamas, an Iranian ally. Meanwhile, a decades-long shadow conflict between Israel and Iran erupted into the open on the weekend when Iran launched an unprecedented attack on Israel that Tehran said was retaliation for a deadly suspected Israeli airstrike on Iran’s consulate in Syria.
• What Israel says: The Israeli military said Friday they "don't have a comment at this time" when asked by CNN about reports of explosions in Iran. Israel's war cabinet has met periodically this week without announcing any definitive action following the Iranian strikes on Israel last weekend.
• What the US says: Israel’s allies, including the United States , have called for restraint from Israel in a bid to prevent a regional war. The US "didn’t green light" an Israeli response, another senior US official told CNN. Prior to Friday's strike, the US expectation was that Israel would not target civilian or nuclear facilities, the second official said.
• What happens next? That also remains unclear. Reports of the explosions came hours after Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told CNN  that if Israel takes any further military action against Iran, its response would be “immediate and at a maximum level.” He added: “If the Israeli regime commits the grave error once again our response will be decisive, definitive and regretful for them.”

Iran lifts flight suspensions put in place following reports of explosions

Iran has lifted flight suspensions put in place after reports of explosions near a military base in Isfahan province, according to the spokesperson of the Civil Aviation Organization.

"We inform you that the operational restrictions imposed on the airports have been removed and the airlines are allowed to carry out scheduled flights," the spokesperson said.

Flights have resumed at Mehrabad Airport and Imam Khomeini International Airport, the two major airports in Iran's capital, Tehran, after being suspended earlier today.

Iran had earlier temporarily suspended all flights heading to the cities of “Tehran, Isfahan and Shiraz, the airports of the West, North West and South West," state-run Mehr TV reported.

Outgoing flights were also briefly canceled.

Iranian state media reports no major disruption to Isfahan's infrastructure

From CNN's Nic Robertson and Elizabeth Wolfe

Following a strike in Iran's Isfahan province, Iranian state media are reporting that all facilities in the area are secure, including significant nuclear facilities, CNN International Diplomatic Editor Nic Robertson reports.

Though a US official told CNN Israel has carried out a strike inside Iran, Israel has not taken responsibility for the attack.

"The overall impression that's being related by the Iranian government and other media outlets in Iran is that whatever events have happened — and they do leave it rather ambiguous — it has not damaged significantly any important facilities near Isfahan," Robertson said.

State media is also reporting that they have not had any enemy aircraft come into Iranian airspace, he added.

Flight en route to Tehran returns to Dubai

From CNN's Sandi Sidhu in Hong Kong 

A flight from Dubai to Tehran was diverted back to the United Arab Emirates on Friday morning after Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport closed. 

A Flydubai spokesperson told CNN that flights from Dubai to Iran had been canceled. 

"Flydubai flight FZ 1929 from Dubai to Tehran on 19 April has returned to Dubai due to the closure of Tehran Airport (IKA). In line with the issued NOTAM, our flights to Iran today have been canceled. The safety of our passengers and crew is our priority," the spokesperson said.

The flight left for Dubai at 4:10 a.m. (8:10 p.m. ET) and arrived back in Dubai at 5:51 a.m. (9:51 a.m. ET). 

US Secretary of Defense spoke with Israeli Defense Minister earlier Thursday before Israel attacked Iran

From CNN's Mary Kay Mallonee

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke with Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant earlier Thursday about “regional threats and Iran’s destabilizing actions in the Middle East,” according to a Pentagon readout.

The call happened before Israel carried out a strike inside Iran . The Pentagon readout does not mention any discussion of Israel’s plans to attack.

Austin also discussed "the importance of increasing and sustaining the flow of humanitarian aid to Gazan civilians, including via the new route from Ashdod Port in Israel," the readout said.

CNN reported Thursday night that Israel had told the US that it would be retaliating against Iran in the coming days, according to a senior US official.

Iran's air defense downs 3 drones, official says, as state media reports no large-scale strikes

From CNN's Adam Pourahmadi and Hamdi Alkhshali

Iranian air defenses shot down three drones Friday, according to a Tehran official, as state media said no large-scale strikes or explosions had been reported following blasts near the central city of Isfahan.

It comes after a US official told CNN Friday that Israel had carried out a strike inside Iran, in a move that threatens to raise regional tensions.

Iran's air defense systems were activated in several regions as a precaution against potential aerial threats, according to state news agency IRNA.

“Following the activation of air defense in some parts of the country to deal with some possible targets, reports indicate that so far, no large-scale strikes or explosions caused by any air threat has been reported,” IRNA said early Friday local time.

Extensive checks in Isfahan, a critical central province with significant nuclear facilities, indicate that all sensitive military and security installations remain secure, with no incidents reported.

Missile defense systems were not activated, IRNA added.

This post has been updated.

Please enable JavaScript for a better experience.