Are families adapting or declining - Research Paper Example

Moreover, the living spaces that developed close to factories and other worksites were expensive and could not be expanded as had previously been done in the rural setting. It came to be that when people lives around others who were strangers to them, their families became a refuge for them from the strange new environment in which they lived (Lasch 168). Despite the lack of any significant industrial growth in developing countries, the development of mass media, education and other services had a hand in the creation of modern families.

An example of this is in some African countries where there has been a movement towards abandoning the traditional practice of polygamy and this is being replaced by monogamy due to the strengthening of marital bonds. Furthermore, the strengthening of the bond between the parent and the child over any other familial relationships has ensured that the nuclear family has developed and this is also due to the fact that emphasis is being put on what the parents owe to their children instead of what the latter owe to their parents (Coontz 9).

The modern family has also seen a decrease in the number of children born within it and this can be described because of the declining death rates among children. The declining child death rates also leads to a decline in the birth rates, because parents are now more secure because they know that there are enough resources available today to ensure that their children survive. Another reason for this is the fact that the economic conditions of today do not allow parents to have more than a few children at a time because they cannot afford to have more even if they wanted to.

This results in not only fewer children, but it also means that there are fewer ties to the extended family and this in turn means that in subsequent generations, there will be fewer uncles, aunts and cousins than in previous generations. Therefore, it can be said that the current economic factors as well as the small number of children being born are not sufficient to sustain the type of extended family that existed before in our society (Cherlin 19). When it comes to the matter of whether the modern family is doing better than how the institutional family did, then the answer would be yes.

This is mainly due to the changes that have been brought about by the modern lifestyle and these include an increase in the family’s income, a decrease in the mortality rates, an increase in life expectancy, a high nutritional status, more educational opportunities, among many others. Modern families are therefore better off with these changes than they were without them despite the fact that the institutional or extended family is collapsing. The demise of the extended family is a consequence of its members trying to adapt to the modern way of life and it is a fact that its decline and eventual fall is inevitable.

It can be claimed that the modern family has come because of the commoditization of the family life. In order for the economy to remain profitable, ways have been devised to ensure that almost everything, especially human activity, has been turned into a commodity or a form of commodity. This commoditization of life has increased the rift between family members because some activities that used to be done exclusively within families have now