Notion of progress

The notion of progress refers to something going forward towards an advanced or improved version of itself. Over history, great progresses encountered most of the time significant oppositions because some people weren’t comfortable with the great changes they involved.

It’s the case for instance with the evolution and the diversity of family structures.

Family is a group of individuals living under one roof and usually under one head, the «bread-feeder». Different type of family exist and could be divided into to 2 parts : modern and traditional families.

So the issue at stake here could be : how does the evolution of society influence family structure ?

To grasp this evolution we will first talk about social reasons, then historical and political reasons and finally economics reasons.

Foremost, let's talk about social reasons.

We’ve studied an article called The myth of the traditional family written by Linda Nicholson. This article gives us an insight of the significant social evolution in our society. Indeed due to the economic boom in the 50’s, people earned much more and therefore they have the means to purchase a house in the suburbs of big cities. Before this boom, most people lived together in « crowded housing condition » a personal house with 1 or 2 was seen as a dream come true. Parents and children were living in the same house. But this is now a bygone era.

New families are a great step forward because it’s a sight of freedom, diversity, tolerance and open mindness. On the contrary, other believes that it could be a regression because of religions reasons or negative influence on people.
Regardless of the fact that many parents are caring and loving, their children aren’t always happy, joyful, fulfilled at peace. We had the example with Nancy Lee’s book called Dead Girl. As a matter of fact, this book is about a teenager from a traditional family and who became a drug addict and also a prostitute. This story gives a particular insight of the irony of a worldly belief that : good and formal parents don’t necessarily give child as their image. So to speak family is not necessarily the source of trouble and hard children.

Then let’s talk about historical and political reasons.

Strong social reforms (after the great depression and War World 2) restructure society in general and family in particular. Majeur historical events have empowered to reinforced family unit. 
During the last mid-term elections in the US, we’ve studied the ideology of each political party. Actually the debate between traditional and modern family still divided the political landscape. Family changes have been so meaningful in the past few years that politicians (wether the right wing and the left wing) have tackle the issue in order to gain voter and to warn them about the potential danger.

On the one hand left wing (democrats) are for divorces, same sex family, abortion, pill,…

On the other hand right wing (conservatives, republicans) are more patriarchal and less progressive. They are for a traditional family based on a strong marriage between a man and a woman. In this respect they are hardly involved in religion.

For traditionalist,

...