The History of the American Family

The Industrial Revolution was chiefly responsible for the nuclear family structure that we adopt today. The Industrial Revolution saw the decline of an economy based on agriculture. As agriculture declined, it became necessary for married couples to move to cities in the United States in order to earn a wage to support themselves and their children. This forced them to leave behind an extended family, which consisted of grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins for most working class individuals, whom they had been bound to by the land they shared (Scanzoni 2000: 18-19).

Members of the extended family had a great sense of family responsibility and obligation. The family ultimately had control over the individual. This was beneficial in situations where a death of a family member would leave behind children. Traditionally, the oldest daughter was expected to stay unmarried raise her nieces and nephews and take care of her parents in their old age. However, these unmarried aunts began to break away and marry for love (Scanzoni 2000: 18-19).

This very obligation to the family may have signaled the end of the extended family. The 1700s saw a movement toward marrying for love and not money or lineage. The invention of the nuclear family was a revolution that aimed to balance personal freedoms such as these with family responsibility. It was both the movement toward marriage for love combined with the industrial revolution that created the nuclear family. (Scanzoni 2000: 17-22)

The nuclear family consists of a husband, wife, and their children. They were the benchmark of American success. They were thought to need help from none of their extended family, and if they did this help was understood to be only temporary (Scanzoni 2000: 17-22). The nuclear family occasionally required help from their extended family because they were now in wage earning jobs (Ingoldsby and Smith 1995: 53). These jobs were not as stable as the agricultural jobs of the past. For this reason men were very vulnerable to loosing their jobs and becoming financially insecure. However, in the new nuclear family archetype the man was the ultimate breadwinner and if he was not able to single handedly support his family he was a failure. This led to many men who could not provide deserting their families (Scanzoni 2000: 23).

At one point in time mother, father, and children worked in these wage paying jobs, but with the advent of child labor laws, women were forced out of the workplace in order to care for their children. This created two different spheres of work for men and women within the nuclear family (Ingoldsby and Smith 1995: 53). It was thought that in order for men and women to be equal, women must dominate the home. Women were seen as economic contributors to the family through their parenting abilities.

If they could raise children who were economically successful then they would ensure that they and their husband would be taken care of after retirement. Therefore, a "good" mother's job was to raise sons who would exceed their father's success and daughters who would also be "good" mothers. Essentially, a "good" mother was to raise her children to be independent, hence further distancing the members of the nuclear family as the nuclear family had distanced themselves from the extended family (Scanzoni 2000: 29-31).

However, many people felt that the roles of women in the family were still oppressive. They argued that even though women dominated the household they had gained equality but not independence. John Stuart Mill, a self proclaimed male feminist and economist, hypothesized that the only way women could gain true equality was through economic freedom, which ruling the domestic realm would not provide them (Scanzoni 2000: 27-31).

Others argued that women would never gain independence as long as men controlled women's sexuality and reproductive rights. The sexual revolution of the 1920s helped women gain sexual independence and also reshaped our idea of what family is. It was a movement that contended that one could lust after someone they did not intend to marry. This idea paired with the notion that a "good" woman would be able to charm her potential husband into doing the honorable thing and waiting until marriage to engage in sexual intercourse. The idea of sex with someone you have no intention to marry rocked the nuclear family (Scanzoni 2000: 31-33). By the 1950s 20% of young women said they had engaged in pre-marital sex. This undoubtedly affected the number of unmarried women becoming pregnant. In the 1950s, one poll showed 4% of mothers were unwed (Jeynes 2002: 10). Another step in the evolution of the American family was taking place. The single parent family was beginning to emerge.

The Great Depression of the 1930s caused extended families to once again pull together for economic security. However, when the government stepped in with social welfare programs they completely replaced the benefits of holding onto the extended family. The Social Security Act of 1935 released children from the responsibility of providing for their parents once they reached old age. Aid to Families with Dependent Children allowed widows to go back to work by providing them with childcare. Trade Unions made it possible for men to find constant work. Essentially, the government was there to pick up the pieces that the extended family used to (Scanzoni 2000: 34-35).

After World War II the nuclear family further claimed their independence by moving away from the extended family, into the suburbs. Even the spacious lawns and yards of the homes built in the suburbs symbolized an independence from others. Many experts criticized grandparents as being psychological and economic strains on the nuclear family unit. This fear was intensified by the fact that grandparents who had experienced the depression did not approve of the loans their children took out to pay for suburban homes. Furthermore, the invention of the G.I. Bill encouraged couples to move to the suburbs and depend on the government instead of their families for economic support (Scanzoni 2000: 35-37).

The 1950s saw a halt in the family revolution. Couples who had married for love now felt bound by their children alone. This is ironic considering the fact that the advent of the nuclear family occurred because individuals desired to marry for love (Scanzoni 2000: 40-42). The divorce rate began to soar. By 1950, 46% of divorces involved children. Experts blamed divorce on the selfishness of parents. They said that parents of the 1950s had far less regard for the family. Fathers spent far less time with their children than the fathers of the 1800s. They blamed mothers for entering the workforce and not realizing that motherhood was a full-time job (Jeynes 2002: 6-9).

However, divorce rates continued to rise. By 1970, 50% of couples were expected to end up in divorce. That rate has remained constant till today (Jeynes 2002: 7-8). Today couples wait longer to marry, have fewer children, and are more likely to divorce (Ingoldsby and Smith 1995: 55). For these reasons a counterrevolution has begun. Groups that call themselves "fundamentalists" aim to defend the traditional nuclear family lifestyle. They plan to do this by putting children's needs before the needs of parents. They also hope to cancel new ideas of family and bring back the biological, heterosexual archetype of the nuclear family. They trust that this can be achieved by restricting divorce, avoiding single parent households, encouraging mothers stay home for the duration of the their children's adolescence, restricting sexually explicit media, banning abortion, and prohibiting homosexual marriage (Scanzoni 2000: 65-67).