The Breakdown of the American Family

The breakdown of the America family is a serious problem today. In the history of our nation, there has not been a single generation raised with the societal conditions that we have. The disintegration of the family has always preceded the decline of a culture. In this paper, I hope to present the functional theory of sociology in respect to family disintegration. I want to present some reasons for the breakdown of the American family, and I want to present a possible solution to the problem.

As someone who is training for ministry and family counseling, I hope to present my beliefs, clearly and adequately supported with statistics, that God's plan for the family system is the best. I want to begin to support my thesis with some statistics of the problem. I then want to show statistics of families that follow God's plan. The results of the two family systems are significantly differently.

The Functionalist Theory of Sociology

The functionalist theory sees the norm of family as "one husband who is the father, one wife who is mother, and the children." Anything other than this ideal is a deviation from the normalcy of values.

"According to this point of view, the family is a basic unit of society that serves the purposes of socializing the young, regulating sexual activity and procreation, providing physical care for family members, and giving psychological support and emotional security to individuals. The precarious position of the family in modern society is seen as stemming from the fact that the family's share of these functions has been dwindling while institutions have taken on greater responsibility ."

In a "Summary of Comments Made During the White House Briefing on the Family," Dr. James Dobson made this comment about the family.