What Are the Alternatives to the Western Conception .......

What are the alternatives to the western conception of the nuclear family?.

The west conception of the nuclear family is a one which displays a happy family that consist of two responsible adult and 2.4 children. The Nuclear family was defined by sociologists called George Peter Murdock. Murdock studied 250 societies to come up with this definition. William Goode argued that the worldwide trend is to move towards the western world model of the nuclear family. Although this family type might very popular, their many types of families that differ from the western conception of the nuclear family.

Firstly, theirs the extended family. The extended family is on which contains relative beyond the nuclear family for example grandparent who live together with their children and grand children in the same household. The extended can also be cut down short into the beanpole family which usually consist of people who are generationally related. 150 years ago this family type was seen as the most economical family type and was the norm family class at the time.

In contrast to the western conception of a nuclear family, there is a family that just consist of one parent and one child. This type of family is also know as the single parent family, the single parent family usually results because of the high rates of divorce and separation before divorce. This family class, is viewed wrongly by most societies, but is fairly popular in urban areas and rural places. This type of household is commonly found in black communities in the USA; Elliot Liebow argues these families have blown up due to the economic position of blacks in new world, he claims because of this, more females-headed families exist owing the fact the husband has insufficient funds to play the breadwinner and so he decides to leaves the family.

Another type of family that exist in most society is the reconstituted family type. This family type is the result of a serial monogamy; reconstituted families...