Social Problems Essay

The family is a social institution that has been underestimated and placed in a box for generations. In America, telecasting and media has portrayed the typical family to be a Caucasian bread winning father, homemaker wife, and there 2 kids all living under one roof. exclusively according to Eitzners book social Problems, the actualization of how a family looks under one roof is based on economic conditions, and the typical family portrait neer applied to immigrants and racial minorities because these people were denied equal opportunities to earn a family wage, and denied support of such grants as the GI Bill.Extended families as well as extended households grew in the light of immigration and socioeconomic reform. Now there is no longer a single culturally dominant family pattern. The idea of family has to be reconstituted frequently to advert to ever changing personal and occupational circumstances. Some of the social problems that the family institution is dealing with be g ay marriages, multi-generational households, and puerile pregnancy. In this essay, I will in short discuss to each one problem, but also I will develop a program for change.The collective variety of the family in the U. S. has led researchers to study if and how contrasting family systems are linked with different groups of people who then may experience different results. Research has found that non all racial groups participate in each family typeface equally, thus not all family forms are equally available to all people Intellectuals have also found that each type of family (e. g. , married with kids, married with no kids, single-parent with young children, etc. ) is associated with different economic, child, and health outcomes.This may be a stereotype but researchers say that children who grow up with only one of their parents are more likely to drop out of high school, to become teenage and single mothers, and to have trouble finding and guardianship a steady job in youn g adulthood, even after adjusting for differences in parents socioeconomic background (McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994). I will now discuss each of my topics further. Gay marriage is a hot topic right now in America because there are a lot of states deciding whether to legalise homosexual marriages.The debate over legalizing gay marriages is to do with religion its against eitherthing that it says about marriage in the Bible. But it also goes against everything that we are familiar with when it comes to marriage (husband and bride). It is a hot debate as many already know, but, there are far worse things happening in the world today such as Catholic Priest molesting innocent children. The solution, in my opinion, is for gay people to be accorded all the civil rights and social benefits heterosexual people enjoy, without regard for popular public opinion or other peoples religious beliefs.The decline of the traditional family nucleus should only prove that option was only for a few. I have to admit that I come from that type of nucleus. My dad worked and my mom stayed home with me and my sister. Times were very different in the 1970s and 1980s. The economy to day is teaching families how to adjust to bracing trends and new ways of living. We should appreciate the new forms of family and community that are occurring. Since the onset of the financial crisis there has been an increase in the number of multi-generational families.Its the new normal. junior adults live with their parents into their 30s now and approximately 50 million Americans are in multigenerational households, thats a 10% increase from 2007. Economic circumstances, as well as other cultural factors, have no doubt influenced families to start incorporating widowed grandparents, unemployed in-laws and adult children back into a common home. keep on lifes terms has incorporated the return of extended family formations. Another reason for extended families is the current epidemic of teenage pregnan cies.And while the teenage mother is affected by the circumstance, this issue affects the entire family. Issues of trust, financial stress, and decision making are all factors involved. Some research suggests that women who have children at an first age are no worse off than similar women who wait to have children. According to this research, many of the disadvantages set up for young mothers are associate to their own lack of everything during upbringing. This research suggests that it would be unwise to relate all of the problems faced by teen mothers to their youth.But the truth is that other research proves that teen mothers are less likely to finish high school, less likely to ever marry, and more likely to have additional children outside marriage. Thus, an early birth is not just a marker of preexisting problems but it may prove to be a barrier to triumphive upward mobility. I have seen success stories with teenage girls who choose to keep their children. But even if marri ed, these women face much higher rates of poverty and dependence on government assistance than those go down to wait.And early marriages are much more likely to end in divorce. So marriage, while it may be helpful in establishing the family nucleus that is so longed for in Western civilization, is no verified solution. Now I would like to discuss my idea on a program for change in the family. Social inequality will continue to exist without bold action. We need to empower families to take charge of their lives and shift perception of people to understand that families that come from an maverick family nucleus are still valued citizens.Government, business, community, education are all sectors that can benefit from an improvement in circumstance of the institution of family. What is needed is a re-invigoration of the family movement to works towards building stronger, more inclusive communities. Remember that united we stand, and divided we fall. One major setback for America is th e division in every aspect, be it race, social class, gender. I dont want to say I am a communist, but I do understand how a communist society may be the best to incorporate equality for all.