Changing American colonial family - Essay Example

Changing American colonial family In the post-colonial period, the United s family has undergone various changesin their family structure. Numerous societies, present, and past, have depended on male-controlled forms of family government for the disciplining and supervision of their populations. Ever since the 1870s, communal nervousness over the family roles of men has created disagreements outstandingly similar to the ones that rage in present time. Man roles as husbands and fathers came to be known as social problems during the subsequent decade of the civil war.

During this period, the child protectors and family reservations condemned the dissolute, a lazy working-class father who dishonored every aspect of their male decency by beating or deserting their wives and economically abusing or exploiting their children. In response to this, eleven states made non-support and desertion of destitute families a crime and three states introduced whipping post, in which men who beat their wives are subjected to flogging (Ramirez, 242)However, to fight the financial abuse of children, activists pressed for certain laws which included the compulsory school attendance laws, creation of orphan trains and orphanages for accommodating the neglected and abused children and lastly child labor restriction statutes.

In the meantime, campaigns to minimize the rates of divorces in the 1880s were underway. During that period, it was recorded to have the world’s highest number of divorces. Reducing was done through prolonging the waiting periods, creating family courts and minimizing the grounds for divorce, alongside efforts to remove segregated male-only improvements of recreation. After about a century, the way that the issue of men in families was culturally and socially constructed experienced a fundamental redefinition.

Combined with amplified struggles to enhance the male’s remuneration, so as to allow him to support his family devoid of the support of children and wives. Additionally, anxiety about the immigrant father who represented old beliefs and obstruction efforts to Americanize his off-spring was on the rise (Shammas, 110)To enhance integration, self-conscious exertions were made to use schools, peer relationships and settlement houses to aid first-generation children and wives to break free from outdated cultural beliefs which was frequently represented by the foreign language-speaking, unassimilated, bearded adult man.

The majority of the legal responsibilities and rights of the familys head comes from ancient studies of one or another aspect of that right. Contests to the right on the head in his roles as father, master and husband began to take over the political discussions in the mid-nineteenth era. The discussions were mostly founded on the slave emancipation and free labor, but also essential child education and the rights of women (Mintz, 38)The new cultural model was the companionate family where wives and husbands would be lovers and friends and children, and fathers would be friends.

Supporters of this new model claim that in a present civilization, it was imperative that a family founded on masculine hierarchy and authority give way to new family affiliations emphasizing mutual respect, fulfillment, and emotional support. Terrified about the discontentedness among wives and the rate at which men were becoming separated from their families, the promoters of the companionate model motivated families to take courses in family education. Additionally, they stated that a fatherly role in the development was necessary, and, primarily, participation in a number of leisure activities will lead family members to develop love and closeness among themselves.

Therefore, the fate of family administration is a key to an understanding of the evolution and development of public policy in the modern-day United States and most present-day nation states.Work citedMintz, Steven. From Patriarchy to Androgyny and Other Myths: Placing Mens Family Roles in Historical Perspective (2005): 36-43.Ramirez, Susan E. Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, or Chief: Material Wealth as a Basis of Power in Sixteenth-Century Peru (1998): 215-258.Shammas, Carole. "Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture.

" Anglo-American Household Government in Comparative Perspective (2011): 104-144. 21 September 2011. .