`The Family Of The Future Emails

Summary:

The article I found was a little different in formatting. CNN Health had did a special report called Welcome to the Future and asked it viewers how they thought families would change in the future. This article is from June 2006 and is a collaboration of some responses for viewer emails. Here are some of the responses:

• more single men will adopt children, because they want children but they do not want to get married (how does this counter our argument that men look for women that are suitable to have children ie. younger women?)
• there will be more extended families created because the cost of housing, land, and utilities are and will continue going up (does this fit in with our discussion that families are actually getting smaller?)
• families "will be spinning in their own personal electronic worlds"; there will no longer be an era where families will sit down and spend time together "without the interruption of things that can be plugged in (is technology truly tearing our families apart, or is it keeping us together over large distances?)
• women are waiting later too have children, and then will cause a problem when their children are in their teenage and college years and they need the support of there mother, but their mothers are old and tired - this will cause that generation to look for family first before their careers (does this hypothesis make sense? will pursuing a family ever be put before a career again?)
• gay couples will experience more public recognition and legitimacy
  
• "As the gay community tries to seek legal marriage, the straight community will stop the practice and the divorce rate will continue to climb as the morals of the U.S. decline." (do you think that the straight community will give up the want to marry, just because gay couples are trying to obtain it? or do you think that they will work hard to stop gays from getting married?)
• families will have fewer children because women will be working outside of the home
• a greater respect for the right of children as individuals (how is this younger generation supposed to go about obtaining this respect? what work do they need to do within the family?)
• plural/group marriages will become legal (other non-traditional families are legal, will this one soon follow?)
• "I think marriage will disappear as a viable institution in the next 20 years. Only religious-centric groups will continue marriage according to their beliefs." (this response is from 5 1/2 years ago, are we almost near the disappearance of marriage? and why?)
  

New Things:

I found it interesting that there were some many different changes that people are expecting for families in the future. Also, many of this changes contradicts each other. I found the response about the baby-boomers children feeling resentment, and how one man thinks that marriage is going to disappear to be very interesting. The various different responses just made me realize that the family will be changing a lot in the near and distance future.

Discussion:

I have posed some questions in the summary that I would like to discuss.

One women responded:
"In light of the fact that this generation is rejecting the failed social conventions of the baby-boomers, which led to high single parent family rates and rampant drug use, AND the growing population of morally conservative Latinos in this nation, I believe there will be a resurrection of traditional families in this nation. Make no mistake; this generation feels like they were guinea pigs in their parents social experimentation and resent it greatly."

• I found this response to be interesting. What do you think of this response? Is she right?

Lastly, there were contradictory responses on where the future of homosexual couples lies. Where do you think it lies, and what do these opposing views mean for the advancement of homosexuals?


http://edition.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/parenting/06/13/futureoffamily.emails/index.html