Family Flux Paper
Family Flux Paper
Dustin Kuhl
Comp 111
9-28-00
Families in the future will be very different from what they are today. Many things that will change will be for the worse but some things will change for the better. I'd like to say what I think the future family should be.
In the future I think that a family should consist of a father and a mother, none of the gay couple things that are going no now and what will probably get worse as time goes on. A child shouldn't be raised like that. He or she should be raised with the appropriate values and having gay parents won't help him to understand what is supposed to be right in the world if he grows up with that as his role models. Not to mention the sure ridicule that he will endure when his friends find out what his parents are and why they are so different and wrong compared to the rest of the world. Even if they don't have kids they shouldn't be allowed to marry or be around because little children and others who haven't found what they really want to do with their lives or how they are going to live will see it and might copy it. Instead of having easily influenced people see that, they should see normal people. A man, wife, and kids if they want to have them should be shown. It would just be unethical for gays to prance around like they are giving ideas to little kids that that sort of thing is even close to normal. The Catholic Church says that homosexual acts shouldn't be done because they are against scriptural teaching and natural law. God designed humans to be male and female, so they could reproduce(Flynn). Some of the thing that will be changed is the jobs that each person has. While this is changing now, further down the road it will be changed even greater. In 1960, 61% of families contained a female homemaker and a male breadwinner. Now the percentage of this kind of family is down to only 21%(Riche). In the future it will most likely even be lower yet. There won't be just a homemaker and just a breadwinner. Both will have to be a breadwinner and a homemaker if they want it to work out right. This means that both parents will be working and if they have kids that they will be alone if both parents are working. There is the possibility that one parent will be home though, because in the future, more people will be likely to be working from their own homes. Maybe they won't even have kids until they are a little older because people with alternatives to marriage will delay it until they think they should have kids(Riche). I think that this is wrong. Being raised in the traditional way, I think that it is a good way to be raised. My Dad is still the major breadwinner, and my Mom is the homemaker, but she does have other jobs. After school she teaches piano, which still allows her to watch over my brother, and when I was littler, she watched over me, and still have a job to do that makes her money. She also works part-time at an Insurance Agency during the day, which doesn't interfere with child raising. When I was growing up I knew that some of my friends had parents that worked later and when they came home from school no one else was home. I thought that would just be weird if no one was home when I got home from school. I always liked it when I got home from school on the bus and my Mom was there or on some occasions if my Dad wasn't in the field or over at the shop he was there also. In my personal opinion, this is the almost the best family type to be in. A father, a mother, and two or three kids. That's what most women are having now too. Most have less than two kids, in 1965 it used to be three(Riche).
I think it's too bad that some kids are raised with divorced parents. It seems that too many kids have this happening to them. Lots of books have been written about the American family and that it is in a bad crisis(Furstenberg and Kate). I agree with that, there is too many divorcees and remarries and couples who don't want to be together, and of course the homosexual marriages that shouldn't be going on either. Why are so many people getting divorces? I think that too many people are rushing into it or they just marry to get connections or have a little more money in their pocket by marrying a rich man. Or the high single parent raising of children could be because that Americans don't think that marriages work anymore(Furstenberg and Kate). Even though this isn't the way it should be, I think in the future there will be many more single parents and divorces and remarries. Somehow this needs to be changed or else the values of today will be gone more than they are already. People need to go back and get some of the traditional values of the past, because too many people are running around with no values or morals of what is right of wrong or what should be done and what shouldn't be done. The traditional family values need to come back, because all of what is happening now needs to be stopped. Hopefully people will realize this and in the future more people will stay in their marriages or at least try to make sure that before they get married they know that they can stay with the person they are marrying for the rest of their lives together. A change in marriages is not just happening now in the United States however, marriage as it was in the 1940s has went away from basically every Western society(Furstenberg and Kate). The majority of people in the future will most likely be single until later in their life and only have one kid the way things are going. Mary Wollstonecraft even thinks marriage should be modeled on more of a friendship type of relationship, with more emphasis on equality and concern for character(Abbey). This would be a drastic change because some people marry for looks or money but I think more emphasis on the character of the person would help. A lot more divorces wouldn't happen if people knew more about that person they were going to marry instead of going into it and then realizing that they can't live or stand to be with that person. Being single until it is known for sure that you can stay with someone should be a goal for the people of today and tomorrow. Some will even stay single and not get married but just have a kid by themselves and the father and mother will stay apart. I hope that this won't happen to everyone, that some people will still have values in their life and that in the end, more people will want to be like them, but most people will just look out for themselves and not really care about their families and what they do or their wives.
In 2025, 65% of people should be living in cities(Fudge). I think this will be pretty accurate if not a higher percentage of people that will live in cities. There will be a lot more technological jobs in the marketplace and most people will try to live close to where they work. Another source of people moving to the cities will be the ones coming from rural areas. Unable to make a profit farming or doing other jobs outside of the city, they will move closer to the city to try and find a job. It will be like the industrial revolution of before, with people taking advantage of what the ease of living in the city and having anything they want to do or want to get in close proximity. A problem they will find is the crime rate in most cities is bad. Violent crime rates have increased in most US cities(Ahmed). To cure this, penalties must be made to deter the criminals from doing them. Many violent criminals are repeat offenders, so if the laws were harsher for this, less crimes would happen. To stop this before it starts though, traditional values of what is right and wrong should come back. Violence at home and in schools is increasing due to this leaving of values and traditional social structures(Ahmed). In the future there will most likely be increases in safety in places though. New inventions and more cameras placed around will deter crime more also. Different ways to get to work, like using the subway could be safer possibly because of a camera/gun invention that might watch the people using the subway. In the event of an attack or seeing a weapon drawn, a shock or tranquilizer shot will be shot out at him and the police will be alerted at the same time. In some bad parts of town, small robotic hovering crafts might be employed to watch the area and follow and report any violent incident that would happen. If a shooting took place, the camera on it would have the evidence and it could alert the police to apprehend the person. Just having the hovering camera there would deter the criminals somewhat because of the factor that they have someone watching and they won't be able to get away free. Knowing the chance of getting caught has increased, some won't go to the trouble of doing the crime. This will increase the safety of the whole family in the future.
Health problems that the family will have might increase also, with the urban migration the cities will be very crowded and air pollution will increase(Ahmed). It might increase I say, because advances in technology will be increasing in the future also. Vehicles will become cleaner and the hydrogen and electric cars will be more popular as time progresses and new advances are made in those fields. Hydrogen will be the better one I think, as the only thing that comes out of the tailpipe as wastes is water. The air pollution will be reduced as well by machines that through chemical reactions will change the pollutants in the air into safer things and cities will once again be cleaner.
The future as it should be is one-time marriages, no divorces, and a couple children. Values should be put back in the people's heads and crime and pollution should be low. This would be a good place to live in. What will the future be like? A hate-filled world, with violent crime and little or no morals left in it and even fewer people who follow them.
Works Cited
Abbey, Ruth. "Back to the Future: Marriage as Friendship in the Thought of Mary Wollstonecraft." Hypatia. (1999). 10-4-00 http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/hypatia/v014/14.3abbey.html
Flynn, Eileen P. "Responding to the gay agenda." America. (Sep 30, 2000). 10-4-00 http://www.americapress.com
Fudge, Colin and Ahmed, Ghyassuddin. "Metropolis 2000: A forum on Urban Issues." Sais Review. (1996). 10-4-00 http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/sais_review/v016?16.2fudge.html
Kate, Nancy Ten and Furstenberg jr, Frank F. "The future of marriage." American Demographics. (June 1996). 10-4-00 http://www.infotrac.com
Riche, Martha Farnsworth. "The future of the family." American Demographics. (March 1991). 10-4-00 http://www.infotrac.com
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