The Modern Nuclear Family Essay Example for Free

The Modern Nuclear Family Essay The nuclear, isolated, or restricted family is not a recent phenomenon, but has existed in many cultures throughout human history. Indeed, the extended family of several generations is found mostly in relatively advanced, stable, and affluent, but not yet industrialized societies. Very primitive and very sophisticated societies seem to prefer the nuclear family model. However, nuclear families can vary in the degree of their isolation and restrictedness. For example, before the Industrial Revolution the Western nuclear family was often embedded in a larger social unit, such as a farm or estate, an aristocratic court, or a village populated by relatives. Many older city neighborhoods also kept kinship ties strong, and thus even very small families remained open to the community. Family visits might be frequent and extended; children might freely circulate and feel at home in several households. On the other hand, we have seen that, beginning in the late 17th century, a trend toward closeness reduced the size of many larger households and changed the relationships between the remaining family members. They became more concerned about each other. They needed each other more. The idyllic home of the bourgeois became an island of serenity in the gathering storm of modernization, a haven secure from the world out there, from aggressiveness, competition, and class warfare. We have also seen how this home sheltered women and protected the children from sexual and other temptations. Other nasty social realities were also kept safely at bay. The family income was no longer earned inside, but rather outside the house. The division of labor between the sexes became more pronounced as men spent more and more time away from their families as wage earners in factories, shops, and offices. Their wives became almost the only companions of their small children whose care and education was now their main responsibility. (Formerly, these tasks had been divided between mothers, grandmothers, nurses, and servants.) Virtually the only middle-class men who still worked at home were doctors and lawyers in private practice. As a rule, however, the bourgeois family saw its head and breadwinner only when he returned from his work at night. This work itself remained an abstraction to both his wife and his children. The removal of productive work from the home into the factories had, of course, important consequences for all family members. It was no longer necessary for any of them to develop strong roots in any particular community or to become attached to a particular house. Instead, they became free to move about, to follow industrial development into new settlements, to go after the jobs wherever they might be. Moreover, family connections became less important, as factory work became ever more rationalized and efficient. Nepotism gave way to hiring and promotion on merit alone. By the same token, the new worker, business man, or bureaucrat no longer had to take care of distant relatives. He now worked exclusively for his own small family and this made him more industrious. He could advance faster, since his income had to support only very few people. Thus, the individual husband and father was no longer weighed down by traditions or extensive social obligations. In addition, the education of his children and the care of his aged or sick parents began to be taken over by the state. In view of these developments, many observers have noted a fit between the nuclear family and industrialism. In other words, small, intimate, and mobile families seem best suited to advance the cause of industrialization and, conversely, industrialization seems to encourage the formation of small families. After all, in modern industrial societies there is a general trend toward equality and personal independence. This, in turn, allows for the free choice of a marriage partner, place of residence, and occupation. In an extended family these freedoms are always restricted, because a wrong choice would affect too many relatives. Thus, people who want to take full advantage of the new possibilities normally marry late and keep their families small. However, this rule also has its exceptions. Sometimes large families are more useful, because they can serve as a back-up unit by providing shelter and aid at crucial moments. This may be especially important for lower-class individuals who try to move up, although the higher classes often also maintain extensive family ties. Thus, even in fully industrialized societies one can find many men and women who appreciate the traditional extended family or at least a large network of relatives. Still, by and large, the closely-knit nuclear family has been dominant in Western societies for the last several generations, and thus it has shaped the general perception of what a family should be: A man and a woman marry for love, have two or three children, live alone by themselves in a family home or apartment, and spend all their free time together. The man leaves for work in the morning, while the woman takes care of the children and the house. She also cooks dinner and ministers to her exhausted husband when he returns at night. Once or twice a year, at Thanksgiving or Christmas, there is a brief, ceremonial get-together with other relatives at Grandmas house, but otherwise everyone keeps his distance and minds his own business. Obviously, according to this ideal model, the family members are relatively isolated from the larger kindred and, indeed, from the rest of the community. However, they are to be compensated for this isolation by a greater emotional warmth inside the nuclear circle. Father, mother, and children are to be the world for each other. A deep mutual love is supposed to keep them together and boost their morale as they compete economically with other small family units. Unfortunately, as many families have discovered, things do not always work out that way. The lack of wider contacts is often perceived as crippling, too much closeness becomes oppressive, and inescapable familiarity breeds contempt. Therefore, almost from the beginning, the modern nuclear family has also been subject to criticism. In Victorian times, when the cult of the home was at its height, this criticism was expressed mainly by great bourgeois writers, such as Flaubert, Ibsen and Strindberg, who denounced the hypocrisy, shallowness, and dullness of middle-class life, and who exposed the suffering and vicious psychological infighting behind the facade of respectability. The family was further criticised on philosophical and political grounds by Friedrich Engels who tied it to the origin and maintenance of private property. Finally, Sigmund Freud provided perhaps the most serious, if indirect, accusation when he described the happy nuclear household as the breeding ground of neurosis and sexual perversion. At any rate, by the late 19th century the disadvantages of the bourgeois family model had also become evident to many average men and women. The emotional hothouse atmosphere of the home began to seem stifling, and what once had been praised as a sanctuary was more and more often condemned as a prison. In the traditional extended family, children had been able to choose between several male and female adult role models; now they had only their parents. Formerly, their early education had been shaped by a number of different people and a variety of influences; now they depended entirely on their own mother and father. Actually, the latter was not even always available. Since he no longer worked inside the house, his children had no clear conception of his social role. Instead, he became simply an abstract provider and disciplinarian, a mysterious and distant authority figure. He was occasionally loved, frequently feared, but rarely understood. At the same time, the wife and mother found herself more restricted than ever before. Her greatly increased maternal duties kept her confined inside her four walls. She could venture outside only for a visit to church or to go shopping. Her world had shrunk, and her functions were narrowly circumscribed. She had to be feminine, motherly, sensitive, proper, and in all matters of importance she had to defer to her husband. It is understandable, therefore, that many Victorian women began to resent the nuclear family and their position in it. Thus, it was a signal of things to come when, in Ibsens A Dolls House, the heroine Nora simply walked out on her husband and children. As time went by, more and more women demanded complete legal equality with men and the freedom to develop their full potential as human beings. They began to struggle for the right to vote and the reform of marriage and divorce laws. They also entered the work force in ever increasing numbers. Finally, during World War I, they proved their capabilities in many formerly inaccessible jobs and thereby further emancipated themselves from the home. {See also The Emancipation of Women.) Recent decades have seen a continuation of this trend. In many families today both husband and wife work outside the house, while the children spend much of their time in a nursery, daycare center, kindergarten, or school. As a result, the emotional ties between family members have become somewhat less constrictive, and a greater tolerance prevails. The influence of peer groups has grown, not only for the children, but also for their mothers. The traditional male and female roles are being reevaluated. The mass media keep everyone in touch with the larger community and its continued transformation. Still, the family circle as such has not widened. Grandparents are rarely part of the household, but live on their own in retirement villages, senior citizen centers, or nursing homes. Unmarried relatives move to a singles hotel or apartment building. Thus, the average American family remains fairly small. Indeed, there are now many fatherless families consisting only of a woman and her children. The one-parent family or core family is usually described as an incomplete nuclear family, and there is a general assumption that it is socially undesirable. The lack of a father figure is seen as detrimental to child development, and hasty generalizations are made about undue female influence. In the U.S. these comments sometimes even have racist overtones, as mother-child families are frequently found in the poor black population. However, with the rising divorce rate, this family type has also become increasingly common in the white middle class. Indeed, at the present time about 1 out of 6 children in America lives with only one parent, and the number of such households may well increase in the future. After all, our welfare regulations and other government policies often have the effect of breaking up families that would otherwise stay together. Our legisiatures have not yet learned how to test new laws through family impact studies which would reveal such unintended consequences in advance. Still, in the meantime it should be remembered that the one-parent family is not necessarily bad. In the years following the two World Wars, millions of women have successfully brought up their children alone, and this impressive example should caution us against superficial judgments. Moreover, upon closer examination, many core families are discovered to maintain close connections to wider kinship groups and thus turn out to be more open and viable than might have been supposed. Finally, we know that there are also many father-child families which have not received sufficient critical attention. It is another question whether the nuclear family itself, even when complete, is still the best available option. Many people today are convinced that small, single households are uneconomical and wasteful, that they are still emotionally unhealthy, that they perpetuate outmoded sterotypical sex roles, and that they produce competitive, egotistical children in an age when universal cooperation seems the only hope of mankind. It is also argued that the modern family no longer has any other function than to provide love and intimacy, and that this is by no means enough to justify its existence. Indeed, since families have been largely relieved of their economic, educational, and protective functions by the state, sexual attachment has become the nearly exclusive basis of marriage, and this basis is notoriously weak. Frequent divorce and remarriage, however, while perhaps practical for the adults, hardly seem in the best interest of the children. Under the circumstances, it is only fitting that a number of thoughtful men and women should continue to search for more stable, new and improved family models.

Premonitions :: essays research papers

Gracie lives in Washington State with her Aunt Shay and cousin Diego. Her father deserted her when she was a young girl, and her mother was killed a year and a half ago. She makes no effort to listen to her â€Å"best friend† Emily, and that’s one of the reasons Gracie feels bad when Emily disappears. Another reason is because Gracie has premonitions. They’ve been with her since before her mother died. She never knows if she is seeing the past, the present, or the future. But she did see Emily. Gracie did not know where or when the premonition took place, but she felt the fear in Emily’s body. No news of Emily’s disappearance goes on for days, but as the days go on, Gracie sees a premonition here and there. A waterfall here, a passing light there, but they make no sense. Gracie goes to a computer camp where Emily was supposed to register. She has a feeling that there is some sort of connection with the camp because another girl disappeared who was a member of it. She sees more premonitions, but all they do is confuse her even more than she already is. One premonition shows her that another girl is going to be kidnapped at a park. Gracie convinces her cousin to take her there. Dora, a girl from the camp, is the girl from her vision. She tells her she is psychic and she has to leave the park before she is kidnapped. Dora leaves, and the head of the camp, Jonah Castle, believes that Gracie is Dora. Gracie plays along and she is led to a boat. She knows that somewhere in her visions, there was a boat. She feels close, and she doesn’t pick up any bad reading from Jonah. When they get to the boat, she runs on to find out that she is being kidnapped. Gracie had not seen Dora in her vision. She has seen herself. Jonah soon comes and explains his way of taking underprivileged children and putting them together in a secluded home. It has every essential a child could want, but the children are taken from their normal lives. Insid e the house, she finds Emily, along with other children. Gracie soon realizes that there is no hope of escaping. And she’s the only one who cares. Gracie quickly becomes a favorite of Jonah.

30 Seconds to Mars Essay

Launched in 1998 by the band’s front man Jared Leto and his older brother, drummer Shannon Leto, 30 Seconds to Mars found success in the 2000’s with their musical mix of post-grunge, scream, and hard rock. The band gained an audience with its self-titled debut, but it was the platinum-selling album â€Å"A Beautiful Lie† that opened the doors in 2005, gaining the band a spot on MTV while making the way for a long road of tours. The bands mates also showed a high appreciation for marketing, which they revisited several years later by using fan’s pictures for their third album, â€Å"This Is War†. Jared Leto enlisted the help of his brother and co-founded 30 Seconds to Mars in 1998. The group made its studio appearance four years later, releasing a self-titled album whose post-grunge sound betrayed an affinity for groups like Chevelle and Incubus. Although it only achieved modest success, the growing 30 Seconds to Mars still laid the foundation for a healthy career. Before all the great hype the band first started in 1998 it wasn’t well known so they expanded their music by coming to America, gold status in multiple foreign countries, and producing several singles, including two Top 10 rock hits. 30 Seconds to Mars heavily toured as a result, sporting a new lineup that included lead guitarist Tomo Miliceivc and bassist Matt Wachter in addition to the two Letos. Wachter threw in the towel in 2007, the band continued to tour around the world for the rest of the year, making several major festivals such as Roskilde and Pinkpop. They also played opening shows for bands like The Used and Linkin Park. The band has gone through a lot in their background for the band itself and the members. Created in 1998 by Jared Leto (vocals and guitar) and his brother, Shannon (drums), 30 Seconds to Mars merely began as a small family project. Things began to speed up quickly, however, and Matt Wachter later joined the band as bassist. After a small revolving door of guitarists (as the band’s first two guitarists, Kevin Drake and Solon Bixler, left the band due to issues primarily related to touring), the three auditioned Tomo Milicevic to round out the band’s roster. Matt Wachter plays keyboards for the band. Jared Leto might be a name that some people have heard before, before the band started he was a major actor. Their music is filled with emotions and are very personal to them (their songs are based on real life experiences) This band is not about fame, money, and any of that stuff. They are all about the music and they sing from their hearts. Jared never used his title as an actor to promote his band and never will. Their unique style of music and heart moving lyrics fills the listeners heart with so much emotion.

Humpty Dumptys Philosophy of Language

In Chapter 6 of Through the Looking Glass Alice meets Humpty Dumpty, who she recognizes immediately since she knows about him from the nursery rhyme. Humpty is a bit irritable, but he turns out to have some thought-provoking notions about language, and philosophers of language have been quoting him ever since. Must a Name Have a Meaning? Humpty begins by asking Alice her name and her business:   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   ‘My name is Alice, but––‘  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   ‘It’s a stupid name enough!’ Humpty Dumpty interrupted impatiently.   ‘What does it mean?’  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   ‘Must a name mean something?’ Alice asked doubtfully.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   ‘Of course it must,’ Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: ‘my name means the shape I am–and a good handsome shape it is too.   With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.’ As in many other respects, the looking glass world, at least as described by Humpty Dumpty, is the inverse of Alice’s everyday world (which is also ours). In the everyday world, names typically have little or no meaning: ‘Alice,’ ‘Emily,’ ‘Jamal,’ ‘Christiano,’ usually do nothing other than denoting an individual. They can certainly have connotations: that’s why there are so many more people called ‘David’ (the heroic king of ancient Israel) than are called ‘Judas’ (the betrayer of Jesus). And we can sometimes infer (though not with perfect certainty) incidental acts about a person from their name: e.g. their sex, their religion (or that of their parents), or their nationality. But names usually tell us little else about their bearers. From the fact that someone is called ‘Grace,’ we can’t infer that they are graceful. Apart from the fact that most proper names are gendered, so parents don’t usually call a boy ‘Josephine’ or a girl ‘William,’ a person can be given pretty much any name from a very long list.   General terms, on the other hand, cannot be applied arbitrarily. The word ‘tree’ can’t be applied to an egg; and the word ‘egg’ can’t mean a tree. That is because words like these, unlike proper names, have a definite meaning. But in Humpty Dumpty’s world, things are the other way round. Proper names must have a meaning, while any ordinary word, as he tells Alice later, means whatever he wants it to mean–that is, he can stick them on things the way we stick names on people. Playing Language Games With Humpty Dumpty Humpty delights in riddles and games. And like many other Lewis Carroll characters, he loves to exploit the difference between the way words are conventionally understood and their literal meaning. Here are a couple of examples.                   ‘Why do you sit out here all alone?’ said Alice†¦..  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   ‘Why, because there’s nobody with me!’ cried Humpty Dumpty.   ‘Did you think I didn’t know the answer to that?’ The joke here stems from the ambiguity of the ‘Why?’ question. Alice means ‘What causes have brought it about that you sit here alone?’ This is the normal way the question is understood. Possible answers might be that Humpty dislikes people, or that his friends and neighbors have all gone away for the day. But he takes the question in a different sense, as asking something like: under what circumstances would we say that you (or anyone) are alone? Since his answer rests on nothing more than the definition of the word ‘alone,’ it is completely uninformative, which is what makes it funny. A second example needs no analysis.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   ‘So here’s a question for you{says Humpty].   How old did you say you were?  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Alice made a short calculation, and said ‘Seven years and six months.’  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   ‘Wrong!’ Humpty Dumpty exclaimed triumphantly.   You never said a word like it.’  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   ‘I thought you meant â€Å"How old are you?†Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ Alice explained.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   ‘If I’d meant that, I’d have said it,’ said Humpty Dumpty. How Do Words Get Their Meaning? The following exchange between Alice and Humpty Dumpty has been cited countless times by philosophers of language:   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   ‘†¦and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents––‘  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   ‘Certainly,’ said Alice.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   ‘And only one for birthday presents, you know.   There’s glory for you!’  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚                  ‘I don’t know what you mean by â€Å"glory†,’ Alice said.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   ‘Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t–till I tell you.   I meant â€Å"there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!†Ã¢â‚¬â„¢Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   ‘But â€Å"glory† doesn’t mean â€Å"a nice knock-down argument†, Alice objected.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   †˜When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.’  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean different things–that’s all.’  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master–that’s all’ In his Philosophical Investigations (published in 1953), Ludwig Wittgenstein argues against the idea of a â€Å"private language.† Language, he maintains, is essentially social, and words get their meanings from the way they are used by communities of language users. If he is right, and most philosophers think he is, then Humpty’s claim that he can decide for himself what words mean, is wrong. Of course, a small group of people, even just two people, could decide to give words novel meanings.   E.g. Two children could invent a code according to which â€Å"sheep† means â€Å"ice cream† and â€Å"fish† means money. But in that case, it is still possible for one of them to misuse a word and for the other speaker to point out the mistake. But if I alone decide what words mean, it becomes impossible to identify mistaken uses. This is Humpty’s situation if words simply mean whatever he wants them to mean. So Alice’s skepticism about Humpty’s ability to decide for himself what words mean is well-founded.   But Humpty’s response is interesting. He says it comes down to ‘which is to be master.’  Presumably, he means: are we to master language, or is language to master us? This is a profound and complex question. On the one hand, language is a human creation: we didn’t find it lying around, ready-made. On the other hand, each of us is born into a linguistic world and a linguistic community which, whether we like it or not, provides us with our basic conceptual categories, and shapes the way we perceive the world.  Language is certainly a tool that we use for our purposes; but it is also, to use a familiar metaphor, like a house in which we live.