In today’s society, it seems as though a lot of our traditions as a society have taken a back seat to modern and tough times. I remember when it was a rare thing to know a blended familiy. For the most part people were married to the mothers and fathers of their children. But now with only 50% of marriages succeeding, the other 50% that did not are eventually moving on and forming relationships with others who are in the same boat as them. This changes the family dynamic in many ways. This has caused certain changes in our family structure in this nation. Now we are seeing more blended families, and also same sex families.
With these new types of families, such as blended and same sex families, there has also been a change in our ways that we now see the “Traditional Family “make up. People are now finding themselves having to be more accepting of other people, such as a blended family in which one of the partners may have bi-racial children, and the other has not. There has to be acceptance of the children and respect of their culture. Also with blended families, there has to be a change in the mindset of the parents when it comes to the values and morals that they want to instill in their children while raising them together.
These types of situation have caused a change on how society as a whole looks at the family structure. It is not the traditional as it used to be, so our way of how we think a family should be made up also has changed. Our culture has been altered a number of ways. I came from a blended family, and I remember when I was younger, I went to school under my step-fathers last name until I graduated from high school, because my parents didn’t want us kids who were brothers and sisters having different names, because my mom thought it would be embarrassing to us.
But now , it is not surprising to see a group of brothers and sisters who have different last names, because they are from a blended family, it is quite normal now, as opposed to back then when I was in school. This just goes to show you that society is now more accepting of situation like these. I think those children, who grow up in a family setting, blended or not, have a better chance in succeeding, then those who are raised in single parent settings. It is good to have the tow parents there to help raise the children together.
With this being said, I think that this also has been one of the changes on our culture when it comes to blended families and changes in the family structure. Blended families, help lower the rate of children being raised in single parent homes. I know that I can only speak from example, there will be some challenges, and society is a little accepting of certain types of family structures outside of the traditional, but there is a way to go before all is totally accepting.
