The Way We Wish We Were

In this article Stephanie Coontz talks about types of families and the way our society views the family roles and structure. Our society has a picture in our minds of what a traditional family should look like. This image comes from many different things like older TV shows such as The Andy Griffith Show, Father Knows Best and Wally and Beaver. She points this out when she says, “The problem is not only that these visions bear a suspicious resemblance to reruns of old television series, but also that the scripts of different show have been mixed up” (677). These shows set an image in our minds. They are like role models to us. Coontz points out that we have an image of the “traditional family” and this is an image that society projects. Coontz says this image is, “The notion that traditional families fostered intense intimacy between husbands and wives while creating mothers who were totally available to their children, for example, is an idea that combines some characteristics of the white, middle-class family in the mid-nineteenth century and some of a rival family ideal first articulated in the 1920’s” (677). This is an older style of thinking that our generation is starting to break away from. Coorntz relates back to “The way it’s always been”. We were raised with this idea about what families are supposed to look like in society but in reality this picture that we have isn’t always true. She points out that society can pick a model for themselves, “Pick a ballpark date for the family they have in mind. Once pinned down, they are invariably unwilling to accept the package deal that comes with their chosen model” (678). She says we have different model and some of the examples that she uses are looking at the colonial families and looking at the Victorian style families.
One of the reasons why the family is changing so much in society is because the roles of family members are changing. The mom was the one that always stayed home with the kids and did all of the household work but now the women are also working and having to do the household work. Coontz points this out when she says, “Within the home, prior to the diffusion of household technology at the end of the century, house cleaning and food preparation remained mammoth tasks. It has always been viewes that the women is supposed to stay home and raise the kids and the husband is the one that goes out and provides for the family. This image is changing and other images of family structure ate now arising. She points this out to when she says, “The late nineteenth century saw a modest but significant growth of extended families and a substantial increase in the number of families who were ‘harnessed’ together in household production. Extended families have never been the norm in America” (680). Families are changing in America and the image that was the mom, dad, one boy, one girl, is not a reality anymore.