What Impact Will These New Family Structures Have on the Next Generation? Determine Your Position on This Issue. Do Some Research as You Attempt to Fine-Tune and Develop Your Position. Establish a Clear Thesis, and

Question: There is no doubt that family structure in the United States is changing. With single-parent households and blended families becoming more and more common, definitions of what constitutes "family" have continued to evolve. What impact will these new family structures have on the next generation? Determine your position on this issue. Do some research as you attempt to fine-tune and develop your position. Establish a clear thesis, and support it with a paper of about 800 words. Combine personal knowledge with research in your argument.

It’s Friday evening and my brother and I are waiting for our father to pick us up for a visit. Our parents are divorced and we live with our mother and stepfather; a blended family. My Dad arrives and we greet him with a hug, then say bye to our mother and stepfather and two half brothers. Many families, like my family, in today’s society are blended or single parent households. This growing trend affects the definition of what constitutes family. Because of this trend, the United States is now the world's leader in fatherless families (U.S. Census Bureau, 1996), and nearly 40% of children in our country will go to bed each night without their biological father in the home (Blankenhorn, Fatherless America 1995). What will be the impact of the non-traditional family on the next generation?

One way I think the evolving family type will affect the next generation is the way they view marriage and having children. Some people may view marriage and having a family as being as simple as dating. A strong religious values system used to anchor people into marriage and families. As religious beliefs become more and more relaxed, so do the values, they instilled. Four of five states that lead the nation in divorces are in the Bible belt (Barna Report 2000). Non-Christians have a better chance of staying together than Christians. Without the religious anchor, more and more people may just live together and have children out of...