Nuclear family
[9] DNA extracted from bones and teeth discovered at a 4,600-year-old Stone Age burial site in Germany has provided the earliest scientific evidence for the social recognition of a family unit consisting of two parents with their multiple children.
[10] Historians Alan Macfarlane and Peter Laslett, among other European researchers, say that nuclear families have been a primary arrangement in England since the thirteenth century.
Sociologist Brigitte Berger argued, "the young nuclear family had to be flexible and mobile as it searched for opportunity and property.
[13] Influenced by church and theocratic governments, family unit structures of a married couple and their children were present in Western Europe and New England in the seventeenth century.
marriages were exclusively opposite-sex and it was assumed that the male would be the head of the household and provide for the nuclear family while the woman would stay in the home and care for the children.
However, conjugal roles have evolved over the years; in modern times, women often share breadwinning responsibilities with the men, and same-sex couples have become more common.
[18] Extended families also contribute to children's mental health due to increased resources in terms of adult support.
[20] The Pew Research Center's analysis of data from the American Community Survey and the decennial census revealed that the number of children living outside of the traditional ideal of parents marrying young and staying together till death has risen precipitously between the mid-to-late twentieth century and the early twenty-first century.
[24] Professor Wolfgang Haak of Adelaide University, detects traces of the nuclear family in prehistoric Central Europe.
A 2005 archeological dig in Elau in Germany, analyzed by Haak, revealed genetic evidence suggesting that the 13 individuals found in a grave were closely related.
For example, polygamous unions are prevalent in ethnographic data and models of household communities have apparently been involving a high degree of complexity from their origins.
[26] As a fertility factor, single nuclear family households generally have a higher number of children than co-operative living arrangements, according to studies from both the Western world[27] and India.
A study conducted in Japan between October 2011 and February 2012 further researched the influence of area of residence on mean desired number of children.
The number of nuclear families is slowly dwindling in the U.S. as more women pursue higher education, develop professional lives, and delay having children until later in their life.
[30] Children and marriage have become less appealing as many women continue to face societal, familial, and/or peer pressure to give up their education and career to focus on stabilizing the home.
[30] As ethnic and cultural diversity continues to grow in the United States, it has become more difficult for the traditional nuclear family to remain a norm.
[34] In "Freudian Theories of Identification and Their Derivatives" Urie Bronfenbrenner states, "Very little is known about the extent variation in the behavior of fathers and mothers towards sons and daughters, and even less about the possible effects on such differential treatment."
