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14. American family: values & gender roles in the family & society.

Americans view family as a group whose primary purpose is to advance the happiness of individual members. The result is that the needs of each individual take priority in life of the family. So, the basic American value is equality of opportunity, while name & honour are less important. The American desire for freedom from outside control clearly extends to the family. Americans don’t like to have controls placed on them by other family members.

Independence & self-reliance are two more values that are important. Most American children live with their parents at least until they finish High school at the age of 17/18. Then they may go to college leaving some parents sad & lonely in their empty nests & others enjoying their release from parental responsibilities. Some children live with their parents until they get married, but may return to Mum & Dad in case of divorce. Middle-aged or elderly people rarely move in with grown children. Older people take pride in their independence & freedom & don’t want to be a burden to their children. If they are ill or handicapped, they prefer to live at live at nursing homes, or at the living quarters for older people who don’t need constant nursing care but can’t go shopping & cook for themselves.

As the main value is the equality of opportunity, it also affected the relationships between husband & wife, so the institution of marriage in the USA has experienced 4 stages of development. Stage 1. Wife as Servant to Husband, Stage 2. Husband – head, wife – helper, Stage 3. Husband – senior partner, wife – junior partner, Stage 4. Husband & wife – equal partners. So, the evolution f the women’s role in the family & society is clearly seen from these stages. And now a wife can become even the breadwinner in the family. She may be the one going off to work while the husband is at home with the baby 7 the housework. But such an occupation of husband is usually a temporary one, not a lifelong career.

Like any other family, American family may face a number of problems. For example, the divorce rate slowly & steadily increases. As a result, there occurs the destruction of nuclear family & more & more single-parent families appear. Americans may have problems with their children, they call the period of adolescence as the time of turmoil. Children are expected to be self-centered, moody & uncooperative, they want to establish their personal identities & separate from others in the family. So this problem is called the “rebellious teenager’. One more problem is the “empty nest syndrome”, which refers to the psychological impact on the parents, esp. on the mother when the last child leaves home. The syndrome is the combination of boredom, depression & purposelessness.

Another major turning point is likely to come when the parents’ parents become enfeebled or die. It’s usually considered a difficult or awkward situation when an aged parent is living with grown children. Thus, ideas about independence & self-sufficiency make the situation of enforced dependency extremely uncomfortable both for the elderly & their children.