Family

Abstract

According to history a perfect picture of a traditional family would be a man providing for the house while the wife is at home caring the children and the house. However society has changed that perfect picture. Now days, families come in all different kind of structure. Some examples of nontraditional families may be single parents, grand parenting, same-sex parenting, blended families and step families. Nontraditional families’ structure has effects on the outcome of children.   Each family structure has an effect of the child well-being, behavior problems, education attainment and living situation. Family structure is very important and it shows strong patterns as it relates to child gender and race .Children in nontraditional families are considered to have disparities more notable is because of instability of family structure formation. Additionally the economic status is a very important aspect on determining what types of consequences the child will grow up with.



For the duration of the past few decades there have been numerous changes to family structure. According to Feldman, “ With an increase in the number of parents who both work outside homes, a soaring divorce rate, and a rise in single-parent families, the environment faced by children passing through middle childhoods in the 21st century is very different from that faced by prior generations” (Feldman, 2011).   Family structures within nontraditional home family have similar characteristics that affect a child growing up (Ono & Sanders, 2010).   According to the International Journal of Childbirth Education, “defining the term nontraditional family may elicit many different responses depending on the age, gender or geographical location” (Lantz, 2012). One of the reason children in nontraditional families are consider to have disparities more notable is because of instability of family structure formation (Ono & Sanders, 2010).   Another reason is because of the instability...