Web Search for \"Nuclear Family Arrangement\" Using

Web Search for "Nuclear Family Arrangement"

Using the search engine Google, the term "nuclear family arrangement" results in a variety of different websites from wikis and scholarly articles, to videos and discussion groups. Google can find more that 2,500,000 results for that particular keyword search, but if your overall purpose for the search was to find support for the thesis: "the nuclear family arrangement is not the only practicable structure for a thriving family environment," one will only be partly satisfied.

The first three results are Wikipedia pages that start with "Nuclear Family," "Culture of the United States," and "Average Joe." The basic assumptions of all three sites is that the nuclear family is still considered the "norm" in American culture, even though demographic data demonstrates that "such households constitute less than a quarter of all households." ("Average Joe") And the very next site is an article that quotes a famous anthropologist who stated that the nuclear family "exists as a distinct and strongly functional group in every known society," ("Nuclear Families") and asserts that the nuclear family is a Western tradition and considered to be "normal." There are next some sites dedicated to the definition of the term "nuclear family," which most look at the term from a historical and cultural point-of-view as well as provide statistics about it's decline.

The first real site that actually support the thesis that the nuclear family is not the only way to have a thriving family environment is the McGraw Hill "Online Learning Center." (Kottak) This is an academic site that answers FAQ's about the nuclear family and assert that it is no longer considered to be the only viable family unit.

The most intriguing site that Google provides for results is a 1948 short film entitled "The American Nuclear Family: Your Family (1948). (YouTube) This ten-minute film is a snapshot of what American culture considered the traditional family immediately after World War II. In fact, this film, and others like it, created the perception in America that American culture was based on the tradition of the nuclear family. This film is strange as it portrays a "perfect American family" in a way that very few real families could actually attain. The second page of Google's results is a mix of books on the subject and a number of religious sites that seek to protect the nuclear family structure. And it is in the third page that the sites start to expand to topics that are not connected to the nuclear family.