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Family Structure: A Family Support System

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The structure of a family is considered a family support system involving two married individuals providing care and stability for their biological offspring. However, this two-parent, nuclear family has become less prevalent, and alternative family forms have become more common, The family is created at birth and establishes ties across generations. Those generations, the extended family of aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins, can hold significant emotional and economic roles for the nuclear family. This essay will be one that will critically discuss the factors that have shaped the family structure from the 1970s up to the year 2000. Over time, the traditional structure has had to adapt to very influential changes, including divorce …show more content…

Over the same period, women’s employment has increased, especially for mothers. In contrast, men, especially those with less education, have experienced standing or declining rates of employment. These changes in family structure and employment are interrelated. For example, delays in marriage may reduce fertility, thereby reducing demands for work within the home and facilitating women’s market work. On the other hand, as labor market opportunities for women improve in absolute terms, or relative to men’s women face higher opportunity costs of leaving employment to have additional children, as well as reduced economic incentives to marriage. Decisions to have children outside of marriage may reflect women’s increasing ability to support a family independently, or the short supply of men with family-supporting earnings (H. J. Holzer, …show more content…

It involves cell phones, television, and computers, affecting intimate family life in various, often unpredictable, ways. Alvin Toffler argued in his 1980 chapter on the "Electronic Cottage" that the computer will help to recapture familism and the unity or "feel" of the family farm, as work will be done in the home office, with all members of the family contributing (Toffler, 1980). Few have agreed with the idea of the computer having this positive, familistic effect, any more than believing that the television, with family members sitting side by side, brings families

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