Family Trends

 For as long as I remember and for as long as most people can remember, A Family was defined as a Husband and Wife along with their kids. In the last few years, that fine line of a Husband and Wife being the only form of marriage has been fading. More and more people have been more verbal about their thoughts of legalizing Gay marriage. Originally, it was shut down by many states, but in 2015, the U.S Supreme Court made Gay Marriage Legal in all 50 states. In a few years that came before 2015, roughly 71,000 gay marriages took place in the U.S. From 2015 to the present, over 1 Million Gay marriages have gone about. 

    Traditionally, a Family has kids. Since Gay Marriage couples can't have kids of their own, they're left with the option of adopting kids if they want any. There have been many studies since that have tried to determine whether or not there are any negative long-term consequences of kids who belong to parents of the same sex rather than kids who have a Mother and a Father. One study case that we read in class argued that there was no difference in the long-term well-being of children whose parents are of the same sex compared to a Traditional Family. Upon further examination of this article, however, the studies and experiments they performed looked to be biased and carried out poorly. There were dozens of studies performed for this article, but nearly all of them were lopsided. They said there was no difference between Gay and Straight families, but for many of their experiments, they wouldn't compare Gay families to families between a Man and Woman. For some, they would compare gay families to families with a single parent and then say the gay families were actually better off. So in reality, there is still plenty of research to be done to truly determine how children are affected by living with same-sex parents vs. Families with a Mother and a Father. 

    Another buffer in the term marriage is in the last few years, the rate of Cohabitation has increased dramatically. After personally researching why people would choose to Cohabitate instead of getting married, I was shocked by what I found. Lots of people say they see it as a test drive to see if the relationship works out. If I'm allowed, in my own personal opinion, I think Cohabitation is a disgrace to families. A family should be a Man and Woman who love each other enough to want to spend the rest of time with each other. They strive to continually make each other better with each passing day. The driving force behind Cohabitation doesn't make any of that possible though. If they want to "Test drive" their relationship, they don't truly love each other. A relationship is a sacred thing, and if you're not going to take it seriously, keep trying until you can accomplish a true relationship with somebody, or don't try at all.

    Overall, Families have changed in the eyes of society significantly within the last 10-20 years. It will be interesting to see the future studies and trends of families as time continues to pass.