The Changing Face of theAmerican Family: Modern HistoryChallenges AheadTheAmerican family at the beginning
of the 21st century faces some profound
challenges.Balancing work and family has
become increasingly difficult for families
with two working parents.The availability
of childcare is nearing a crisis point as
record numbers of mothers enter the
workforce.The graying of America as the
population ages has created thesandwich
generation,a term which applies to adults
who are responsible for raising their own
children and who,at the same time,
assume some or all of the caretaking of an
elder family member.Conversely,the
number of grandparents who are caring
for grandchildren has also risen.While
this may help to alleviate the childcareproblem for working parents,it is also
creating stress-related problems for the
older generation.
As we have seen,many changes have
taken place over the last 100 years which
has presented families with the many
challenges we have discussed.It is easy to
view these changes as negative,fearing the
demise of family as we know it.This is
often because we compare the complex
and diverse families of today with the
seemingly more standard-issue ones of the
1950s,a unique decade when every long-
term trend of the 20th century was
temporarily reversed.Stephanie Coontz,
family historian,sums up the resilience of
families in these words:Many adults find themselves in the sandwich generation caring
for their aging parents while still raising their own family.ImagefromBigstockPhoto.com/jgroup
Ifwelookbackoverthelast
millennium,wecanseethatfamilies
havealwaysbeendiverseandinflux.
IneachPeriod,familieshavesolved
onesetofproblemsonlytofacea
newarrayofchallenges.Whatworks
forafamilyinoneeconomicand
culturalsettingdoesn’tworkfora
familyinanother.What’shelpfulat
onestageofafamily’slifemaybe
destructiveatthenextstage.Ifthere
isonelessontobedrawnfromthe
lastmillenniumoffamilyhistory,it’s
thatfamiliesarealwayshavingto
playcatch-upwithachangingworld
(1999,p.90).