Homework Lance
Blended Families
GCU 220
While I believe every child should ideally have the traditional or nuclear family, the modern life style of many Americans and in general humans doesn’t make this possible. While I am not entirely sure how all of the blended family phenomenon has come about or why it has happened, I know from experience that it can be hard or children. Blending into a family setting that is not typical for a child can be difficult. I am not even sure I know how this is evidenced in the socialization process, except that the law is always changing.
Currently, we are seeing changes on a daily basis for the legality of parenting, adopting and surrogacy. Some states don’t recognize LGBT couples as parents while more and more some are, this a giant evidence of our social system changing from what is and what was acceptable. In the article “The New Nuclear Family” the author mentions that many LGBT or non-traditional nuclear families have a hard time being confident in the legal support of adoption, surrogacy, or other forms of becoming parents. One quote strikes me that these couples could be quite scared in these events “children could be removed from their families. Schools, hospitals, and other institutions could deny nonlegal parents the ability to make decisions about their children:” (The New Nuclear Family).
The changes in our traditional family structure from LGBT couples to married and divorced couple merging families are vast, and I am only familiar with the side of a father leaving early in life to make another family and attempting fit myself on both sides. Our culture and values have changed into acceptance of non-traditional family styles from single mothers and fathers to merged groups and LGBT families adopting children. While wikipedia defines the nuclear family as “A nuclear family or elementary family is a family group consisting of a pair of adults and their children” I feel that many people in the US fall outside of this (wikipedia). The single parent or extended family has changed our social values to accepting family differences, cultures, and change. With each generation, children are forced to recognize more and more variances as trendy family styles. These children need to “blend” into these families and gain additional family members like step parents and step siblings.
The socialization process can be a struggle for young children is they don’t understand why, or what is happening, this is why counseling may be helpful to many young ones changing form a traditional family setting to something less conventional. While I still think that a nuclear family style would be most ideal, I do believe after reading on these subjects that a non-traditional method can be effective if the correct steps are made.
References
(n.d.). Retrieved February 28, 2016, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_family
KHIMM, S. (2015). The New Nuclear Family. New Republic, 8-10.
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