Family Diversity Essay

Applying material from the Item and your own knowledge evaluate the view that there is greater diversity of family types and lifestyle today.

Family diversity refers to a broad range of characteristics or dimensions on which families vary, along with recognition that there are a multitude of different family types that function effectively. Families have “evolved” throughout the years especially with the legality of same sex marriage. In 1949, George Peter Murdock defined the family as "a social group characterized by common residence, economic cooperation, and reproduction.” He added that the family "includes adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain a socially approved sexual relationship, and one or more children". But of course this definition is only accurate for one type of family, the nuclear family. Families have since then become more diverse and versatile.

Post-modernists believe that there is much wider range of living opportunities available nowadays due to social and cultural changes. Other theories believe that nuclear family is dominant family type within society; postmodernists disagree with this opinion and have different views. Society is increasingly fragmented, with a broad diversity of subcultures rather than one shared culture. People create their identity from a wide range of choices, such as youth subcultures, sexual preferences and social movements such as environmentalism. Furthermore, new technology such as the internet, email and electronic communication have transformed our lives by dissolving barriers of time and space, transforming patterns of work and leisure and accelerated pace of change making life less predictable. As a result of these social changes, family life has become very diverse and there is no longer one dominant family type (such as the nuclear family). This means that it is no longer possible to make generalisations about society in the same way that modernist theorists such as Parsons or Marx did in the...