Fete Lifestyle Magazine September 2017 Family Issue | Page 52

emember when all you saw on television and in the movies was a depiction of family that consisted almost exclusively of a father that worked all day then came home to a wife that greeted him at the door with a kiss and smile and dinner ready on the table? The family consisted of 2+ kids and the Mrs. that worked all day in the home cooking, cleaning, and otherwise making sure everything was just so. Well, today roles are less defined. No longer are men the sole breadwinners of the family. No longer are women limited to homemaking and motherhood. In fact, today there is no “traditional” nuclear family as the majority. There are more single-parent households than ever, more same-sex couples (whether married or not, parenting or not), more couples that may or may not be parents and cohabiting out of wedlock.

As recently as 1960, almost 80 percent of women in their early 30s were married with children and hadn’t finished college. That figure has changed and now represents less than a third of the total. As women have become more educated and with the increase in job equality, things have shifted. Women no longer feel they must get married to survive and they are more able to leave an abusive or unfulfilling marriage, as is evidenced by an increase in divorce rates since the 1950s male breadwinner/female homemaker traditional model. On the other hand, while government subsidies have helped some groups gain independence while they get on their feet, an increase in incarceration rates and low education performance has increased poverty, resulting in an increase in poor single-parent mothers, especially in inner cities.

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