Social scientists have noticed that the concept of the family has changed in the past 40 years, and this has led some to comment on the 'disintegration of the nuclear family'. Do you agree with the claim that the nuclear family unit is breaking down?

The conventional nuclear family model, Murdock first spoke of, which entails the father as the employed bread winner and the wife as the stay at home housewife and mother looking after their children. This early idealistic model of the stable family life has changed and evolved. Some of these contributing factors that may have changed the family dynamics are, equality between men and women, the loss of religious influence over the traditional marriage, the accepted lifestyle of same sexed …show more content…

many preach the importance of ‘enjoying’ the moment. They say that it is not worth making a life-long commitment, making a definitive decision ... because we do not know what tomorrow will bring. I ask you, instead, to be revolutionaries,...I am asking you to rebel against this culture that sees everything as temporary and that ultimately believes you are incapable of responsibility, that believes you are incapable of true love' (Pope Francis, 2013)

Along with religious factors, same- sexed families have diversely changed. According to Australian Bureau of Statistics it revealed that 33,700 Australian couples are living together in a same-sex relationship, with 17,600 male couples and 16,100 female couples. There are almost twice as many children living in same-sex couple families as there were in 2001, with most of these children living in female same-sex couple families. Figures showed 6300 children are living in same-sex couple families from 2011, up from 3400 in 2001. With the availability of modern science, sperm donors, in vitro fertilisation, surrogacy and the availability to adopt or foster a child gives the same-sex family opportunity to increase their family of two, to three or more. The report also 'unveiled a trend against traditional housework gender roles, with cooking, cleaning and laundry responsibilities more evenly shared in same-sex couples, unlike opposite-sex couples where women tend to do more than men' (Wright J. 2013).

Sole parenting