The American Family

What is the American Family? Well, when I think about the American Family I think about my 10th grade health class and the “atomic family”. A perfect couple, husband works at the bank and wife is home vacuuming and doing laundry; and they have the two most perfect children. Of course, one is a boy and the other is a girl. The funny thing about this mental image is that it is so out dated. In my opinion today’s American Family is not a cookie cutter thing.

Today, we are starting to make progress in becoming a more open minded society. The woman no longer has to stay home to take care of the children and clean the house. She can go out and get a job if she wants to. In fact, unless her husband has an extremely good job it is almost necessary these days for the woman to be bringing in some sort of income as well. In some cases the woman is making more money than the man is.

The shift in what the perception of an American Family is today does not just stem from woman’s ability to go out and get a job. This shift away from the atomic family could stem from any number of things. It could be from having children before you even get married, if you even get married, or even have children at all. Maybe it is because of the high rate of divorce; making it more and more common for second and third marriages, and children having multiple sets of parents and siblings. Perhaps, it stems from the acceptance of inter-racial relationships or the more controversial same-sex relationships.

According to Wikipedia.com, the U.S. bureau of Census has defined the term family as "two or more persons related by birth, marriage, or adoption, who reside together.” This is a pretty loose definition of family it really only pertains to the legal definition of family. The word family however, has more to do with emotional ties than legalities. What defines whether a person is family to me is more that whether I share similar DNA and more that a piece of paper that links two people together. Family is someone who can tell you when you’re wrong. It is someone who shares similar values and can respect your view point. Family is