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When Will we Learn all About American Family?

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When we attempt to learn all about American family issues and problems, the starting point seems to be economic, in more cases than not. 

A few years ago, economists and sociologists began to point to a transfer of wealth from baby boomers to the children of baby boomers. 

The strong emphasis was on families in the United States having the resources to care for their own members and relying on the massive health industry to provide care. 

But something else has happened, a factor that some didn’t figure into the boomer-retirement equation, and it will have significant impact on the last years of many lives. 

The factor most ignored and probably most important is the increasing economic divide between people who have the resources to care for family members and those who don’t. 

The top 1 or 2 percent of the population in the United States holds a majority of the wealth in cash, business assets and real estate.

Yet the majority of the population that actually does the work don’t have the resources they need. 

In fact, those wealthy few make it a point to encourage daily wage work and encourage borrowing to acquire possessions that can be enjoyed now, while the wage earners struggle to make payments for homes, appliances and cars. 

People who want to know all about American family issues in the 21st century may want to begin with decisions being made to go without adequate health care and new clothing in order to be fed and keep a roof overhead.

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Good Jobs aren’t Enough

Most families truly want to work and provide a good home for spouses and children, with luxuries farther down the priority list. 

As mentioned earlier, there was some excitement in anticipating the wealth, however limited, that would be transferred from people now between 55 and 65, for example, to their children. 

But research from such groups as the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences shows that even two good-paying jobs are not enough for families who want to hold onto some of their assets. 

Families are increasingly forced to liquidate assets and use any extra cash to provide health care, child care and basic transportation just to maintain a minimum lifestyle.

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Double Trouble

In addition to the economic stress that is increasingly placed on lower-middle class and lower class families (in economic terms) there is the subsequent problem of less quality family time. 

Anyone who wants to know all about American family problems should look directly at the increasing cases of unsupervised children, left to themselves because the adults in the family are working most of the time. 

Of course, much of the advertisement fired at young people every day through television and the World Wide Web encourages them to be independent and get their hands on the things that make them part of the accepted group. 

In turn, the young people in a family put pressure on parents to buy them what they want, or even demand such things, which only adds to internal stress in the family. 

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Let Us Live Our Lives

Though much of the call for strong, traditional families supposedly comes from the conservative, Christian right, a huge percentage of the population in the United States hold these same values but don’t have a political identity. 

This generally means that the mass media and the international bureaucrats don’t pay much attention to them because they don’t’ have access to the media outlets to get their point across. 

Not only that, but this massive section of the population actually resents the interference of the bureaucracy and the wealthy elite who try to set guidelines for how everyone should live. 

Most of the people in this large but silent group wish that either the bureaucrats wouldn’t help so much, or would at least start helping in the correct way.

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