Question

Question: What are the unique as well as shared problems of different types of nontraditional parents?

Answer 1

The earlier concept of a heteronormative family with the male parent as working was the traditional and ideal form of family, with the demarcation of the caregiving and domestic work to the mother and the larger disciplinary role to the father. However, over the years with increasing urbanisation and the awareness created by human rights activists and lobbyists, Psychology too had began to take notice of the deviations from this average ‘norm’ in the composition of a family. As such, several alternative or non-traditional families came to the fore as legitimate forms of family life. Thus, today families may be differentiated in terms of single parents or divorced family, two-provider family or family with greater paternal involvement, same sex parents family, adopted family, inter-racial family with parents from different ethnic or racial groups, and families based on cohabitation where children are raised by an unmarked couple.

In the past 50 years, parenting has undergone a revolution in thinking. Many people began to believe that the traditional authoritarian way of Victorian parenting styles of earlier generations were unsuited to a modern society. The development of the humanistic School in Psychology led by Carl Rogers and others influenced the understanding of families from a new lens. There was a spurt in experimentation in the adoption of alternative parenting styles. Such experiments led to the development of non-traditional forms of parenting which are marked by a relatively soft discipline. Non-traditional parenting styles share a common focus of garnering children’s curiosity and exploration of the world beginning from infancy rather than the traditional approach of limiting access to the world through a set of prescribed ‘dos’ and ‘don’t s’. The state of the family as outside the parlance of the normative or the average make the parents more sensitive to encouraging exposure in their own children’s life.

Secondly, non-traditional parents share the struggle to ensure development of certain essential aspects of the child’s personality, including self-esteem, empathy, social responsibility against the background of plausible sense of social disapproval from faith communities where traditional marriage is considered the standard. This is a more pressing concern for same sex families and cohabitation families.

However, in order to realise these goals, parents across the different non-tradiitonal families face the overwhelming challenge of setting the boundary of relativism in terms of exposure to the social environment. While the goal of a non traditional parenting is to leave open all the options that society can offer an individual, parents do not necessarily have to yield in towards a state of anarchy and moral relativism and leave the children to their consequences. The demands of reality may require them to extend the sense of freedom to their child in balance with the demands of the external world.

In addition to these shared problems, each non- traditional family may grapple with distinct and unique set of problems. For instance, cohabitation as a family arrangement indicates that the family is based on an alternative form of marriage as is therefore not subject to the same formal recognition or legal benefits as marriage. Contrary to this, a family with a legal status may find it easier to gain access to certain federal aid and health insurance.

Furthermore, another line of difference in the issues faced by alternative families can be dileanated in terms of social support. Same-sex families may continue to face social resistance from faith communities and other family members even if same sex marriage may be legally recognised in the state of residence. The social ideal of heteronormative family creates a pressing issue for this type of non-traditional family.

The absence of the other parent either due to divorce or death is a problem more relevant to single parent family. The challenge for the other parent is often to make the child recover from the absence of the other parent and to doubly fill the significant other’s roles.

Thus, the specific and the general problems in the experiences of these non traditional families elucidate that the composition of family is a complex and dynamic process especially in the diverse and changing society such as our.