Short Essay About Family Problems: Types of Household Problems Due to Changing Households and Families

Abstract

We live in an exciting, organized, highly complicated changing world. Since my birth, American families have undergone many changes. Families and households experience many trials and tribulations in their quest for survival. Because of the journey to survive, individuals, families, and households are under pressure, faced with stress and exist with various types of problems. This short essay will focus on financial problems, relationships, family disruptions, and family bonding.

According to the textbook, a family is two or more people related by blood, marriage or legal adoption and a household is an economic unit of all persons who share the same house or apartment (Harper, 2019). Even though the definitions are very similar, they are very different. In America, families are an integral part of a household. All families are households, but not all households are families. Families and households experience many trials and tribulations in their quest for survival. Because of the quest to survive, individuals, families, and households are under pressure.Families are not always well functioning. Issues of power, gender, and control can create tension and even violence. Families may be faced with stress and exist with various types of problems such as increasing divorce rate, financial difficulties, family disruptions, and family bonding.

Increasing Divorce Rate

Divorce can be stressful for a family to go through because it can change the structure of the family. Adapting to different living arrangement affect both parents and children. After a divorce, family relationships can experience unhealthy issues that can affect every member involved. It takes a long time to truly get over the trauma and confusion about love, life, and relationships. The divorce affects housing arrangements, health, and economic status.

Female Headship

Often, after divorce, female heads take on the dual role of economic providers and family nurturers without the direct assistance of males or the support of traditional family networks. Female heads of households must deal with fewer adult earners in the household, experience lower earnings both as a result of gender discrimination in the labor market and as a consequence of the need to combine home care with economic activity, which leads many women to select jobs demanding a smaller time commitment.

Increasing divorce rates tend to raise a single household headed by females. Females who are the primary breadwinner face more social problems compared with those of both parents living together. Females, especially those with domestic and childcare responsibilities, tend to have less opportunity for social involvement than men. According to various resources, single-parent families or households can result in a lack of family time for family activities, problems with finances, and problems with children’s behavior. Furthermore, I know from experience, children in one-parent families often become overly dependent on the remaining parent.

Remarriage

The trend of remarriage can cause an increase in blended families. Blended families occur when one or both of the marriage partners bring child from their previous marriage into their marriage. Problems may result because a period of adjustment is needed. This process sometimes is a source of conflict in the family. Children may resent one parent because that parent appears to be trying to replace the other parent lost through divorce.

Reverse Gender Roles

Changes in structure, dynamics and economic need of families and households resulted the reverse of gender role in families. In a traditional family, males are the primary breadwinner and the female is the primary caregiver. Death, remarriage, cohabitation and delayed marriage caused this shift in gender role. For example, if the female left the family and the male given custody of the children, he had to step up to the plate as mother and father.

In conclusion, families and households go through changes. Changes can be positive or negative. Therefore, members of the family/household must work together to make the family/household stronger.

References

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