All in the Family

The nuclear family includes the stereotype of a stay at home mother, a working father, and two and a half children.  The gender roles of the woman was to stay at home and care for the children and their pick-fence home.  The woman would go shopping and bow down to the man's demand while cleaning up and taking care of the children when they came home from school.  The man would go to work and then on the weekends do yard work that included climbing high up on ladders and building things with tools.  The children included a girl- who would wear bows, dresses and help her mother in the kitchen or dust the home.  The boy would go outside and play ball and then come in with scraped knees.  The roles of everyone in this nuclear family has been modified in some way for the modern age we live in.
For the inclusion of the modern family, there is at least four types of families that immediately come to mind (however, there are many more that I acknowledge as families but will not be comparing to the nuclear family).  There is the typical family- woman, man, and child/children.  There is the gay family- two women or two men and possibly children.  There is the mixed family- an older man or woman with a younger man or woman and possible children (either of their own or from prior relationships).  There is the divorced family- a split in any of these types of families.  There are so many more and so many different types of family dynamics in this modern age that I am personally not surprised from any combination of people.  Even with the make up of genders in these families being different there is even greater change in the working aspect of the modern family compared to the nuclear family.
The greatest difference in the modern family to the nuclear family is the role reversal of who works and who stays home.  Today there are families where both spouses work and families where it is the mother that works and the father that stays home.  In the article, Working Mother, it is the father, John, who "does the dishes" and the mother, Christine, who supports the home financially.  The recession changed the way roles and family dynamics work shuffling around the nuclear family.  Today (2008), 51% of workers on payroll are women, however, when the nuclear family existed in 1969 is was 33%.  Also today (2008), 31% of working moms earn just as much as their husbands compared to 11% in 1967.  The gender roles are changing- either making woman work while men stay home or having both spouses work and split the home duties.  The modern families have come a long way from the nuclear white picket fences.  It is refreshing to see the number of woman positively impacting the work force and the number of men that are emotionally confident to care for their family.