How have changes in other social institutions changed the way the family operates in modern day?

[Miki.Mouse]

Changing dynamics of the family as an institution have been, in part, a result of broader social changes. How have changes in other social institutions (i.e. the economy, education, healthcare, etc…) changed the way the family operates in modern day (the Koontz video can help)?

[malinalli.medicine]

In the begining of human history we had strict role assignments and it made balance in most cultures as people worked together to survive as a family and a village.

When humans started farming the equality we had as hunters and gatherers decreased, of course nomadic humans didn't have perfect equlaity but it was pretty close.

Even now you can go out to isolated cultures who have their housing and food needs met and they are happy, comfotable, and most of all their children are valued and they don't have self esteem and mental health issues like our kids do in modern culture.

Farming created classes and or castes of elites, slaves, and people in the middle. As human societies began to develpoe in to nation economies we started having more "role confustion." This causes a lot of stress and confusions in marriages, unless they talk about it and make plans and agreements for the future about sharing the work in some kind of fashion resembling equality.

Economies developed and became Capitalistic, which requires a small portion of the populaiton to be unemployed, somewhere around 3-4% of unemployed people in the country is a NORM for Capitalism. ( I learned that in college) Countries that have a mixture of Democratic Socialsim and CApitalism have less unemployment. LIke Germany and Japan for example.

Unemployment was a new role for humans and no one wants to be in that role and it causes a lot of stress in the family unit. Most Psychologists agree that the number one topic of family fights is money.


Skip to the last 50 years, women started entering the work force in hudge numbers (and in the past this often happend in war time for example WWII) As women entered the work force in droves it created more jobs in the day care arena.

As the economy changed from techology improvements (which only happend from goverment programs like Defense and NASA) our GDP increased. Now that Americans have been brainswashed by Neo Cons starting with Regan, the words "goverment program" now induce some kind of sick feeling and sometimes fear in the public, when in fact goverment programs are what make us great as a nation, like NASA, Peace Corps, PUblic Health, Dept of Education. CDC, head start programs, etc

Greed crept in to a large portion of the upper class and with technological advancements and the birth of the "global market" corportaion began to ship jobs overseas, not out of nessessity but because of greed, therefore many working classa nd middle class americans have lost their jobs to Mexico and mostly China & other asian countries.

During the last few decades we got rid of the rules and regulations we made after the 1920's depression, in order to protect ourselves form another depression. Getting rid of those rules caused our recent depression and some say severe recession. This caused massive stress in the families and many families moved from single familiy houseing to multiple family housing, causing cultural stress as well.

Another major cause of the recent recession is the BUSH wars, The Iraq War alone cost 3 Trillion dollars, that we now owe a large part to China. The last 9 years of war caused many psychological damage from multi0le deployments & PTSD, which caused suicides to rise and also domestic violence. Veterans have a much higher unemployment rate and face less resources due to Republicans being against "goverment programs" like V.A. Hospitals.