{"id":232,"date":"2008-09-09T08:16:39","date_gmt":"2008-09-09T14:16:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/crawler\/?p=232"},"modified":"2008-09-09T08:16:39","modified_gmt":"2008-09-09T14:16:39","slug":"the-american-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2008\/09\/09\/the-american-family\/","title":{"rendered":"the american family"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/discussion\/2008\/09\/05\/DI2008090503315.html\">Washington Post<\/a> recently posted comments from sociologist Andrew Cherlin on the state of the American family. The online forum was developed to address vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin&#8217;s remarks about her own family.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/discussion\/2008\/09\/05\/DI2008090503315.html\">Post<\/a> reports:\u00a0<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;If the candidates wished to convince viewers that their families were just like ours, they were undone by a 21st-century reality: There is no typical family anymore &#8212; at least not in terms of who lives in the household and how they are related. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin noted as much on Wednesday when, while introducing her clan to a cheering crowd of the Republican faithful, the GOP vice presidential nominee said: &#8216;From the inside, no family ever seems typical. That&#8217;s how it is with us.'&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>View the transcript of the online forum <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/discussion\/2008\/09\/05\/DI2008090503315.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The exchange features topics like homosexual family formation, and Cherlin&#8217;s own work, but centers mostly around families currently in the political spotlight. The exchange was in part a response to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2008\/09\/05\/AR2008090502652.html\">a piece by Cherlin in the Post in the &#8216;Outlook&#8217; section this past Sunday<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Cherlin writes:\u00a0<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>That traditional family unit has been replaced by a wide variety of living arrangements. Today, only 58 percent of children live with two married, biological parents. Many others live with stepparents or with single parents. Even having a pregnant teen in the home is not that unusual: About one out of six 15-year-old girls will give birth before reaching age 20, according to the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/ac2\/related\/topic\/National+Center+for+Health+Statistics?tid=informline\">National Center for Health Statistics<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The candidates seemed to realize that none of their families is typical in the old sense. None of them tried to look like the &#8217;50s family. Instead, they focused on being &#8220;typical&#8221; in a different, 21st-century sense: They worked hard to show us how emotionally close they are.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2008\/09\/05\/AR2008090502652.html\">Read more<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Washington Post recently posted comments from sociologist Andrew Cherlin on the state of the American family. The online forum was developed to address vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin&#8217;s remarks about her own family. The Post reports:\u00a0 &#8220;If the candidates wished to convince viewers that their families were just like ours, they were undone by a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[70,39114,118,39115],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-family","tag-gender","tag-journalism","tag-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":233,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions\/233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}