Families and family life and Education
Families and family life
A family in the modern context is defined as comprising of a father, mother, and children. The father is often seen as the breadwinner with the mother as the homemaker. Although this is from a modern perspective, there are many forms of families that have existed prior to this and even after including polygamous families, multigenerational households, arranged marriages, and as society changes same-sex marriages. Monarchies allow marriage between siblings and cousins in order to protect their wealth and class, whereas others are patrilocal, which means the wife lives with the husband’s parents and follows their rules.
The family is a core institution in society as a whole. It plays a significant role in the development of children physically, emotionally, and socially as well as shaping society. At one or another in life, one is faced with family issues when it comes to choosing a marriage partner, the choice on the number of children to have in case of marriage, the type of life whether to marry or not and sexual activity. The United States Census Bureau has a different definition of family and nonfamily households where a group of people living together and have legal or biological ties form a family. As for those living together with no ties form the nonfamily households, including unmarried, childless couples living together, whether gay or straight.
Family life
Family life is complex and differs in each family family and not in the way we perceive it from the outside. All may seem well from the outside, whereas the real experience from those on the inside is different. An example is Josh, whose outward appearance looks well with a traditional kind of family of a father as a breadwinner, stay at home mother and siblings. But the real picture on the inside is different as they go through painful experiences of constant fights about housework, money, and the father’s drug addiction problem. It takes a series of critical events to turn around things, which include the parents separating, the mother getting a job, and the father cleaning up his addiction for them to build a better relationship. The father transforms and begins to appreciate his family and gets involved in his children’s’ lives while the mother gets her pride back and self-esteem. The benefits cannot be ignored as they get extremely close, and through increased income, the children get a college education. From this story, we get to see the different dynamic changes in family life that range from a traditional setup to single parenthood to dual-earners.
From the family life experience above, we learn that family life is dynamic in-process and path and develops in an unexpected way that unfolds over time. It is not predictable and varies depending on different viewpoints. To get the real picture, an in-depth interview can reveal the ups and downs of family life in different settings and bring out crucial events that trigger this unexpected and unpredicted outcome.
Conclusion
Families vary in size and shape, and there is no one size fits all kind of model to define it, and there is no one family type that is better than others as those with the real inside view know the benefits and disadvantages. Family life is fluid with the growing forms stemming from today’s society. It has since evolved from the breadwinner-homemaker type to single parents and dual-earners posing a new set of challenges. These challenges affect relationships between couples, how they raise children, and how they care for each other while striving to earn a living. Family values are affected as couples struggle to balance between work and family in this modern age leading to a decline in permanent marriages, lack of commitment in families, gender divisions, and conflicts related to work and family. Therefore, there is a need to formulate effective social policies in order to create the support needed for the family.
Education
Education involves learning in a systematic way, and it gives us knowledge. It is a very important global issue and is a basic human right for all. Education can be classified as being formal, informal, and non-formal. The quality of education in a society is affected by facilities available, income, teachers’ competency, available learning resources, and opportunities, among others.
Educational Inequality
There are educational disadvantages in the education system in the United States as the students do not get equal access to educational opportunities depending on the type of schooling, which often is a result of money involved. Elite schools are expensive, and low-income earners cannot afford to pay the fees compared to the public schools, which are characterized by low fees and, at times, receive grants and aid for students. Intergenerational social and economic advantages are passed down from one generation to another and are highly dependent on income and educational opportunities, which means the most learned and well-paid persons may be hierarchical.
Peter Cookson and Caroline Persell did research where they studied elite boarding schools in America and England in comparison to public high schools about the transfer of social and economic advantages from one generation to another. According to the study, they found out that elite boarding schools perpetuated intergenerational inequalities through the range of school practices they offered.
The difference in elite boarding schools and overcrowded public high schools were seen as they had different practices that came in hand with available resources. Elite boarding schools had social, economic advantages ranging from how the teachers handled the students to being offered individual help on graduation to transit to elite colleges and universities. Classes are taught as a seminar that comes as an advantage of having fewer students, less than 15 students. The students were well taught, got individual attention from the teacher, and extra help if they needed any. They also participate in extracurricular activities. They get advice and have their virtues promoted to top elite colleges and universities by college advisors. Most elite graduates do not do as well as students in public school, but due to being disproportionately represented, they often end up in top elite colleges and universities. This is so because their advisors have the resources and time to personally visit and represent their cases to administration officers where necessary.
In contrast, less than 10% of public high school students are involved in seminars and other extracurricular activities due to limited resources. Classes have more students (25-32), and there cannot be taught as seminars since they cannot fit for oval table discussion. The teachers, too, cannot offer individual attention to students as they serve four times more the number of students those in elite schools do (typically 160 compared to 40 or less at elite schools). The college advisors are faced with limited resources and do represent 300-600 students making it difficult to offer individual attention to students as well as promoting their virtuals.
Conclusion
Education, as one of the important institutions in society, gives us knowledge of the world around us and helps us look at life from a different perspective. It involves the whole global community at large as learning is essential in the social welfare and economic development of a country. In the United States and other industrialized countries, there is great inequality in educational opportunities and physical utilities, as the study above shows. This affects the quality of outcome and the generations to come as the outcome will often mean the rich will access better educational opportunities and be better placed economically compared to their poor counterparts. The need to provide equal educational resources and opportunities is, therefore, of great importance.