Defining the Family

As a little girl, I sat in the church pew carefully scanning my eyes across the congregation observing the types of families I saw, then stared back at mine in disappointment. At that time, everyone I saw seemed to mold into a picture perfect family which consisted of a mother, father, and their children. Although I knew my parent's divorce was necessary, feelings of disappointment and shame of having a "broken family" tugged at my heart strings. As a 13 year old, I felt like my own future family was suddenly in jeopardy of divorce. And I admit, this thought still holds slight concern when dating today.

Since the early 2000's, the definition of family has been ever changing. Take a quick second or two and think about how YOU would define the family. Got one? Truth is, there isn't a clear definition of family. I've found that the term "family" these days is what you make it out to be.

When scanning any church congregation today, I see diversity in family functions I didn't necessarily see 10 years ago. A lot within the family has changed in such a short few decades and I'm sure will continually be in motion. How has your personal family become shaped since the early 2000's and in what ways?

This past week I've been very intrigued with the variety of family functions we see across America and potentially we are starting to see spread world-wide. The typical nuclear family; husband, wife and children are on a decline as we have seen growth in single parenting families, adopted families, step parenting families, same-sex parenting, and more. In 2016, 69% of American children (under age 18) lived in a home with two parents, that being a total of 50.7 million children. 47.7 million of those children lived under a household with two married parents while the remaining 3 million children lived with unmarried parents. These statistics are the latest gathered information from the United States Census Bureau which has me questioning how true are these numbers today in the year of 2019? Is it possible that because the family is hard to define and becoming so complex that it's even harder to obtain accurate household reports?

My parents taught me that to every action, there is a reaction/consequence. This is particularly true concerning how multiple family functions have formed overtime. In today's society we witness various relationship/family trends that have impacted and continue to impact the family unit immensely. These trends include but are not limited to; cohabitation, age of marriage, premarital sex, age of the first child, fertility rate, working mothers, divorce, and choosing to live alone.

When searching data for a few of the categories listed above, it's quite difficult finding information that is up to date even within the past few years including 2017 and 2018. According to WebMD, back in 2006 77% of males and females before the age of 20 have had sex. 75% were premarital sex. Some research that caught my attention came from ifstudies.org which mentions the correlation between premarital sex partners to the likelihood of future divorce. Again, this is a prime example of how trends can cause reactions to other trends. Premarital sex can sometimes play an effect on the age of marriage, which could string into potential divorce, and if divorced plays a significant role in working single mothers and so on.

From my own personal experience, I've seen all types of modern day families. A grandmother that choose to live cohabitant. I've firsthand experienced coming from a divorced family, watching my mother single parent her children while struggling to provide for us. Some of the friendliest couples I've met are gay. My cousin has a beautiful baby girl due to having premarital sex and married her sweetheart at the age of 20.

Essentially, every family is unique in their own special way and every family has its own stories to tell. I want to hear from you! What is your definition of family and what trends have affected the scale of your family?