Family Structure Evolution in America Family Structure

Family Structure Evolution in America

Family structure in the United States is definitely evolving. This fact is demonstrated by an analysis of several different aspects of the family structure as defined within the National Council on Family Relations. The specific forms of evolution within the family structure studied within this paper pertain to dating, marriage, and gender roles. By conducting a literature review of articles related, respectively, to each of these facets of family, one can see that there has been a great deal of evolution in the values of the family in the U.S.

The first article reviewed for this assignment is entitled "History of dating violence and the association of with late adolescent health." This article explored the relationship between the health of young adults and adolescents and negative experiences associated with dating or romantic relationships. Health was defined in both sexual, physical and mental terms, as explicitly related to issues such as depression or eating aberrations, multiple sexual partners and smoking. This study explored a wide range of categories for dating violence, which included by physical and mental abuse. Of the latter, bullying and harassment issues disseminated via electronic communication common in today's society (such as emails or text messaging) was included. The principle means by which the summary was conducted was with nearly 600 participants at Ohio State University who filled out an online questionnaire.

The results of this study were quite revealing and somewhat predictable. Females showed a distinct correlation between physical dating violence and problems with their health, whereas males did not. Women who had experience such an issue were more likely to have problems with depression, smoking, sexual promiscuity (as defined as more than five sexual partners) (Bonomi et al., 2013, p. 821) and disorders related to eating. There was a positive relationship between both males and females and non-physical dating violence -- which is really harassment. Both sexes showed higher proclivities towards eating disorders and smoking, while girls were more likely to incur depression and be sexually promiscuous.

On the whole, this was a well conducted study. However, some of the participants were not adolescents (they were older), which makes the title of this study a little misleading and not truly representative of adolescent behavior.

The next article reviewed for this assignment is Alexis Dinno and Chelsea Whitney's "Same sex marriage and the perceived assault on same sex marriage." This document details the phenomenon of same sex marriage, in which homosexuality is legally permitted via the institution of marriage in an increasingly growing number of states. The basis of the study is that there are several sources and proponents of the fact that same sex marriages should not be allowed, for the simple fact that they are adversely impacting society at large within the United States. Specifically, this article explores the position that same sex marriages are causing more people to forgo conventional marriages in favor of same sex ones. The authors were attempting to determine if there was any empirical validity to this argument by an effort to "model state trends in opposite sex marriage rates by implementation of same sex marriages and other same sex unions" (Dinno and Whitney, 2013, p. 1).

The bulk of the research for this study was conducted by analyzing data provided by states (and Washington D.C.) for marriage rates throughout America for 20 years, spanning from 1989 to 2009. Additionally, this study considered data for people who were involved in committed, live-in same sex relationships from these parts of the country as well. One of the potential complications that this study faced was the fact that marriage rates are not static and fluctuate since people can get divorced. The authors were able to get around this potential limitation by employing a generalized error correction model, which indicated that there was no correlation between same sex marriages and unions and effects on conventional marriages.

The crux of this study was the employment of the error correction model, which the authors prudently used to form a relationship between the data and their research question.

The last study considered within this paper is "The interaction of race and gender: changing gender-role attitudes, 1974-2006." This document considers the way that gender has adapted from a period of time from the mid-1970s to the first decade of the 21st century. However, these changes are stratified according to a racial polarization which exclusively considers the viewpoints of either whites or blacks. One of the primary benefits of the article is that it is able to evaluate these changing gender roles over a lengthy period of time.

The data provided for the research came from the General Social Survey from 1974 to 2006. The researchers were able to measure and evaluate the data by utilizing a pir of "composite indices of traditionalism." The primary areas of traditionalism that were evaluated within the document were the phenomenon of women entering politics, as well as that of women entering the workforce and the perception that the latter would have on their ability to raise children who were still at home. The results indicated that women were less concerned with the phenomenon of women entering the workforce than men were, and that black women were the most liberal in this regard. However, Black males had substantially less reservations about women entering the workforce than white males did. Also, men had more reservations about women entering the relam of politics than women did.

The best aspect about this study was the stratification of changing gender roles according to race. However, by only focusing on black and whites, there were several races of men and women which were excluded. As such, the data utilized by this study may not be as comprehensive as it could have been were other ethnicities included.