When people create a family, they hope that their family will be ideal. However, understanding of the ideal is different for each person. Therefore, trying to create the perfect family, people create many different types of families, each of which has its own characteristics. This paper tells the story of two different families, who are portrayed in the Side Effects movie.
Side Effects movie tells the story of a newlywed young couple, Martin and Emily. Immediately after their wedding, Martin has been arrested for several years. And when he was set free, instead of joy, Emily pretended to commit a suicide and seemed to be mentally ill in order to get rid of her husband. In the end, she kills Martin as if she was in a fit of somnambulism. As a result of this Emily`s lie, the career and family of Jonathan, Emily`s psychiatrist started to get collapsing. However, at the end of the film, after a series of setbacks and problems, Dr. Jonathan was able to prove the absence of mental illness in Emily. As a result, Emily was convicted of premeditated murder, and Jonatan`s career and family were saved.
As can be seen, in this film two families are shown. The first couple is Martin and Emily, who might seem the perfect couple, if not for Emily`s lie. This couple is an example of the nuclear family, which has not had children yet. Thus, these two people can be called family only formally because they lived together for too little time (Hollingshead, 1975). They did not even have time to share life routine together because Martin has spent a lot of time behind bars. These two people live in the pleasure (or pretend to do so, like Emily does).
The second couple is Dr. Jonathan and his wife Deirdre, who almost left him when she was given false pictures with a hint of a nonexistent treason of Jonathan with Emily. The couple is a more typical example of a nuclear family than couple of Martin and Emily. The reason is that this couple already has a child and tries to shape family life (Friedman et al., 2003).
Summing up, it is necessary to say that the film Side Effects shows two nuclear families, only one of which though really lives as a family, having a baby and planning routine comfort. Other nuclear family is just a couple that legally confirmed their union. On the example of these two pairs it becomes clear that two nuclear families might be completely different if to look at their life more precisely.
References
Friedman, M. M., Bowden, V. R., & Jones, E. (2003). Family nursing: Research, theory & practice. Pearson.
Hollingshead, A. B. (1975). Four factor index of social status.
