"Changing American Families"

In her essay "Changing American Families," Judy Root Aulette gives an extremely detailed analysis of the relationship of family to race, gender roles and social status.

I found the part on the upper class to be quite disconcerting. Their apparent need to maintain their status in the social hierarchy seems to be the driving force behind most of their actions. Marriage within the class is considered to be very important, something I found to be very shocking. I could not bear the thought of marrying someone based on status, but then I am not that shallow. I found the importance of volunteer work to be equally strange, as they are not doing it out of the kindness of their hearts or a need to change the world it is all a show to as Aulette quoted "uphold the power and privilege of their class in the social order of things.

After growing up in a middle class family I cannot help but be biased in favor of it. I really enjoyed the fact that family could be so close knit, that no matter what the problem there was someone to talk to so I that I could work through it. I found the study of the Black middle class to be especially interesting in that it is similar to how I grew up, the emphasis of hard work and education as a means of success. While I agree that geographic mobility is a potential problem for the middle class i have found that if someone really wants to keep in touch with family then they will.

Many aspects of the working class family appealed to me because they are things that I believe are important such as marriage for love and the importance of family. I found the idea of a community helping to rear a child to be interesting in that it seems to transcend racial boundaries. While this class may not have the money or status of the others they tend to understand the importance of taking care of one another.

In all I found this essay to be very informative, not only that it gave what I feel to be a reasonably non biased look at all these groups that we know little about but want to understand.