A nuclear family is the media perfect family which is a breadwinner (husband) who is responsible for all the income and a career-free wife who cares and looks after her house and children, who are happily married, with children of their own. Who are taught the right norms and values. However in our post-modern society looking at facts and statistics, it shows that our community have a family diversity, ranging from nuclear families to single-person families.
We can argue that Britain’s families are no longer nuclear as our society appears to show the range of families. There are many different families in our society: nuclear families are usually families the media promote and could be called the ‘cereal packet family’, however the number of nuclear families have been decreasing since pre-modern society; extended families are common between Asian families , they are when different generations live together(grandparents, uncles and aunts);single-parent families have steadily been increasing through out the years, these are families which consist of a parent living alone with their children; reconstituted families are when people have had children with ex-partners however live with their new partner and all of their children, otherwise known as step-families; single-person families, are when someone decides to live alone, a lot of students after university choose to do this as they feel it to be the best option for them; lastly, homosexual families are when a homosexual couple decide to have a child, through adoption or IVF . The most growing family in today’s society is the single-parent family which was very rare before, nearly 5-7% of our society is taken by this family. Sociologists, Rhona and Robert Rapport, identified five different types of family diversity on the way families are organised also Eversley and Bonnerjea both noted how the area you lived in affected the family you were most likely to come from, these two identifications show how our society is has a very diverse family range. Ballard and Barrow looked at south-Asian and west-Indian families, they both looked at how their families were and how they were structured, south-Asians are very close and tight bonded and on the other hand, west-Indian families being very distant and not relying on certain family members.
However, sociologist Robert Chester looked at Britain’s families and argues that Britain’s families are still nuclear or every individual has at some point in the life been part of a nuclear family, he called this a ‘snap-shot moment’. Furthermore, Berghes and Brown surveyed people and asked how they would like to live and majority of them said they would like to be in a stable relationship with children of their own. This shows that everyone may not have had a married mother and father however they have experienced having a father and mother present at the same time, during ones life.
Families are everlastingly changing. They have been since the pre-modern society as they changed from extended to nuclear and now there is a diversity of families. Since the world war two, families have changed because women have been given rights and equality also, people have the choice of what sort of family they would like to have and are not restricted. In conclusion, even though the argument is heavy sided towards agreeing, it shows that although families are changing a person has to have gone through a ‘snap-shot’ of a nuclear family.