The Idea Of Progress

IDEA OF PROGRESS

I’m going to talk about the notion Idea of progress. First of all, I would like to give a definition of this notion: the idea of progress can be defined as an improvement, a development or a change, a technical, scientific or social advance which contributes to making the world a better place. We will talk about the case of the evolution of society and tis influence on family structures. To illustrate this, we will see how the family has evolved in the society and if it’s a progress or not. First of all, we will talk about the traditional families, and then we will see the evolution and the new family structures.

To begin with, I'm going to talk about the traditional family. One of the characteristics of the family traditional is that she is constituted of grandparents, parents, many children, aunts, uncles and cousins who lived together on a farm. The painting of Norman Rockwell in 1943 represents this family. A big family was hard to manage but all members of family had a specifically roles. Indeed, the man is the chief (he makes decision himself), the woman is the housewife (she has to do the housework, take care of their children and serve her parents-in-law). The sentence “A social unit where the father is concerned with parking space, the children with outer space, and the mother with closet space”, written by Evan Esar in 20s summarizes very well the organization in family in the old days. Moreover, at that time, the family members were satisfied with their lifestyle and evolved in a good environment to be educated.

Nonetheless, after 1950’s, a new structure family appear: the nuclear family. She’s composed of a couple with only one or two children and she live separate of their relatives. This evolution is due to the return of GI’s (after the end of the World War II), but also because of evolution of the role of women in society. Indeed in the second part of the 20th century, women are almost on an equal footing with men and obtained more and more rights like the voting right. Actually the society has evolved and we can see family with the same sex parents, inconceivable thing 50 years ago. Moreover, we can see more and more blended family which presents disadvantages like do housework.

To conclude, we must admit that this evolution was bound to happen. Indeed, everything changes and evolves through time and family structures couldn’t escape from it. This evolution has had a positive effect on women’s place in society but in more she has allowed to couples beings free more. So society has an important impact in the modal of family.

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