Economic Influences And The Different Family Structures Between Populations Essay Examples

The family unit has a basic definition that everyone agrees upon: a mother, a father, and children. Of course, the definition is modified sometimes, such as in the case of a single-parent family, a family without children, or a family with children who have grown up and left the house. There is also a traditional definition for the roles of the different people in the family: the mother stays at home and runs the house, the father works and provides for his several dependents, and the children go to school and generally grow up. Economic situations and the ethnicity or age of a population has always influenced the family dynamics.
One of the best examples the economic situation’s influence on the families unit is found in history. For, during the Great Depression and then again the World Wars, many women from almost all the classes except for the very highest and richest classes had to work to help support their families and keep themselves and their children from starving. Also during Canada’s Great Depression the economy exerted pressure on women to not have children so that they could continue working their paid jobs rather than quit the job field in order to have a family. The two biggest results that we see today are smaller families with older parents as the result of family planning and women remaining in the work force rather than staying home with their children.
The ethnicity and age of populations also has a great affect on family dynamics. For example, aboriginal families define the family unit as including much of the extended family. French Canadians, especially because of their Catholic beliefs, have proportionally larger families than much of the rest of the population. As for the influence of age on a family, the baby boomers are an excellent example: the aging baby boomers families now no longer have children at home, so they are two-member families.