Children In Two Parent Families example essay topic

Being from a two parent home, I, myself have not had to deal with the pressures of having only one parent. On the other hand, though, there are a few of my friends that have only a father or a mother, for various reasons. I have seen through them the differences in my family to theirs. All throughout growing up, many children, like myself, grew up watching the perfect American families like the Cosby family, the Cleavers, and the Partridges.

Hollywood skewed the view of many people then, and now, more than ever, they are doing it again. The traditional American family had a loving, providing father, a beautiful, sweet mother, and loving, obeying children. As a communitarian myself, I would like to see the traditional American family be brought back to just that, a tradition. Over the past forty or so years, the American family that we have come to know is no longer the happy, hardworking Cosby family. In the early 1960's, nearly 90 percent of all children lived with both of their biological parents until they reached adulthood. In 1994 Peter Cunningham wrote an essay entitled "The Changing American Family: Implications for Children's Health Insurance Coverage and the Use of Ambulatory Care Services".

In it he stated that the new era of families and family life is now brought to us, courtesy of Hollywood, in the shape of countless single parent television shows and movies, and today less than half of children grow up with both natural parents (Cunningham). This has shifted what was considered normal and has put added pressure on the mothers. Mothers now must be everything that they used to be, plus be the proverbial father figure in their children's life. Because of the regressing amount of fathers in today's America, it is no wonder that divorce rates are going out of the roof.

Regression is very common in the world of politics and economics. Over the past three or so years, America's economy has slowly regressed each year and is falling dangerously again. Regression has also taken hold of America's family values. Divorce has sky rocketed, and single mothers are now being considered normal. More and more people throughout America are asking for equality in every aspect of life and in Iris Marion Young essay entitled "Is Single Parenthood a Problem?" , she states that "If there is any serious commitment to equality in the United States, it must include an equal respect for people's reproductive choices" (473). Miss Young may want to rethink her choice.

As early as ten years ago, being a woman and having a child before you were married was considered unacceptable and irresponsible. What was normal ten years is now a thing of the past. Now, in the 21st century, not paying child support and not collecting your welfare check is considered the irresponsible thing. Single mothers are always going to be around, and people should not hate them for what they did or for the decision that they made (Young 472), but in no way should Americans start condoning single motherhood as normal. The fact remains that no child should have to grow up with only one parent in their lives. Many of the single mothers in America are very young and will never have the support of a husband or father figure.

In his essay, Cunningham wrote that the average family income of children with single mothers was less than half the family income of children in two-parent families (Cunningham). Incomes obviously took a major downfall going from two-parent homes to one-parent homes, but during the Clinton administration, then First Lady, Hillary Clinton, wrote a book entitled "It Takes a Village", which belittled men and led people to believe that they were merely there for procreation. I believe it represents the new paradigm of feminist and socialist thinking. At its face, there is nothing controversial about the idea that it takes more than parents to raise a child. Grandparents, friends, pastors, teachers, and many others in the community all have a role in the lives of our children.

In her book, Mrs. Clinton does acknowledge that parents bear the first and primary responsibility for their sons and daughters, but in many of her views, the male figure is absent. Parenting is constantly changing for men and women. Men may feel that they have few models for fathering today. There may be a number of models from the past that can be integrated into different functions of parenting.

A coach may have modeled clear communication patterns. A teacher may have modeled teaching skills. Building a new father image involves integrating old and new child rearing behaviors. If this is absent from a child's life, it can be very harmful to the development of any young child.

In 1960, about 7 million U.S. children lived in homes without a father. That figure now stands at nearly 23 million (Cunningham). The absence of a father often leads children to become more violent and more sexually promiscuous than children in two-parent families and are more likely to drop out of school, suffer emotional problems or commit suicide as adolescents. Father absence may not be the sole cause of each of these social ills, but it certainly makes each one worse. Some people like Iris Young like to think other ways, but as evidence suggests, improving the well-being of our children, and ultimately our nation, depends upon us finding ways to bring fathers back into the home.

Cunningham, Peter. "The Changing American Family: Implications for Children's Health Insurance Coverage and the Use of Ambulatory Care Services". Critical Health Issues for Children and Youth 4.3 (1994)... Young, Iris Marion. "Is Single Parenthood a Problem?" .

Conversations. 5th ed. Ed. Jack Seller. New York: Longman, 2003.467-474.