1、LOGO41235The total sums up the current American families.u Family is defined as a system of interaction,family dynamics in the system can reflect the unique way of interaction between family members.u Family dynamics is the study of family internal mental processes,behavior,communication and role in
2、 the interaction of households and the external environment of science.u Divorces are more common.u Willing to travel across nation or around the world to go where the job are.u Adult children live far from their parent.u Since the liberal revolutions of the 1960s,the number of American families wit
3、h both husband and wife present has been shrinking.u The number of single-parent households has skyrocketed.u The rising divorce rates.vThis has caused anxiety over the future of the family and many have proclaimed a crisis situation.vThere is a nostalgia for the mythical good old days.vA return to
4、that model would require women to give up the gains of the past 30 years and return to patriarchal models,something not many are willing to consider.vMiddle-class Americans are torn between traditional and modern family models and are deeply ambivalent about the one they should construct for themsel
5、ves.vThere is a culture war inside most individuals between traditional family values and contemporary liberalism.u no divorceu living near other family membersu children obeying their parents u women focusing on domestic duties and motherhood u believe godtraditional familyu both spouses as free ag
6、ents u to cultivate children is not their biological children living together u entertainment and emphasizing rights and sexual freedomsmodern familyvAffluence contributes to the breakup of families,young people grow up faster.vwhile parents are frustrated with the modern family,few seem willing to
7、return to the 1950s.officially sanctioned marriageuStressing traditional values,in 2004,Republican Party candidates and the Religious Right promoted only one type of officially sanctioned marriage:One“born-that-way”man and one“born-that-way”woman.uThe evangelical wing of Christianity argued that God
8、 created the family consisting of Adam and Eve,not Adam and Adam,or Eve and Eve.uIn 1996,Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act to define a legal marriage as a union between one man and one woman.uCivil unions are legal contracts between partners that are recognized by a state or government as
9、conferring all or some of the rights conferred by marriage,but without the implicit historical and religious meaning associated with the word“marriage”.uIn the United States,some states have legalized civil unions as an option for same-sex couples who cannot legally marry.uCivil unions were once dis
10、tinct from domestic partnerships,but the terms are now used more-or-less interchangeably.The U.S.birthrate chart（from 1909 to 2009）Company LogoFewer and fewer families choose to have childrenMore American women opt not to have childrenParents do not get an economic boon and children as a drain on re
11、sourcesIn the modernOver half of American women had more than three childrenChildren helped the familys income In the pastvThe main motivation for those who choose pregnancy 12 Chinese Academy of Social Sciences announce,Chinese parents raise their children to the age of 16,the figure they pay as high as 490,000 million.(2005)
