Families are changing, but the idea of the perfect family is just as unrealistic as ever.
Sydney Cox, a sophomore at Ball State University, was home for summer vacation. While she was home, it was her responsibility to pick up her 9-year-old sister, Faith, from school. But when Sydney got to the school, she did not get the warm embrace from her sister that she was hoping for.
The hug Sydney expected was replaced by tears. Faith explained that her classmates were making fun of her because Sydney was picking her up. They all thought there was no way the two girls could be sisters because they looked nothing alike.
They said Faith must have been adopted, and she and Sydney weren’t real sisters.
Sydney has bright blue eyes and blonde hair that matches her mother’s. Faith’s eyes are brown like her hair, which is just as deep and warm as the color of her skin.
Sydney is the biological child of Amy and Tom Cox, while Faith and her brother Mateo were adopted. Faith’s birth mother had her in 2008 and her younger brother Mateo in 2010. Adoption was what merged this family together. Faith and Mateo’s mother was very involved before they were born and was even a part of the naming process. Faith and Mateo may have come from different parents than Sydney, but they have been a part of the family since the Coxes brought them home from the hospital.
The words of Faith’s classmates angered Sydney. She did not view her relationship with her sister the way they did.
“Here is this little girl that I love more than I could love anything, and I don’t understand how anyone could feel differently,” Sydney says.
When Sydney thinks about her siblings experiencing times of rejection, she feels helpless because she will not always be around to defend them. She says that’s terrifying. Even though she wants to protect her little brother and sister from the harsh opinions of others, there is only so much she can do.
“We are a family just like any other family,” Sydney says. “We just came to be in a different way.”
But today, “different” is actually normal. According to a 2015 Pew Research Center study, families are diversifying and can no longer be described as the “typical” ideal that usually comes to mind when thinking of “traditional” families. There are more unmarried couples raising children, same-sex marriages, single-parent households, interracial couples, and everything in between.
However, this doesn’t mean that everyone accepts the changes.
In 2011, Pew Research found that Americans are split on their perceptions of the changing American family. One third rejects anything that is considered to be non-traditional, one third is indifferent, and one third accepts it. The Coxes have experienced all three reactions.
Once, Sydney and her mother were shopping for groceries in Kroger with her younger siblings. At the time, Sydney was 14 years old, meaning Faith and Mateo were fairly young. They had not been in the store long before trouble came along.
In fact, they had just gotten their shopping cart, in which Mateo sat, and passed through the entrance doors as a middle-aged white man stopped and stared. Even though this happened to Sydney years ago, she still hasn’t forgotten the details.
As white women, it is a shame to parade them around, the man said as he pointed at Mateo in the cart and Faith walking alongside her mother.
Despite his words, other customers in the store did not have much of a reaction. It is possible that they were not aware of what was happening or that they did not want to get involved. Sydney’s urge to react violently to the man was interrupted by her mother’s smile as she calmly continued to enter the store. Her mother explained that raising her voice or being physically combative with the man would have allowed him to win because that was the type of response he was looking for.
The family’s close friends and peers admire her family’s ability to open their home to other children. Even though Sydney urges them that she is the one blessed by her siblings, people still applaud her family.
Pew Research states 16 percent of children are a part of blended families—a family that has a step-sibling or half-siblings. While Faith and Mateo did not join the family due to remarriage, their addition to the family has resulted in a blend of cultures and has opened their family’s eyes through new experiences. Sydney is aware that her family is different from the stereotypical idea of what a family is supposed to be.
However, Mellisa Holtzman, a Ball State sociology professor, insists that the “traditional family” never really existed, but was merely a model. She says the idea of a traditional family came about in the 1950s, when the idea of a nuclear family began. This consists of a mom, a dad, two kids, a dog, and everyone living under one roof enclosed by a white picket fence. Holtzman says this idea of a traditional family is an expectation rather than the norm for society today.
In reality, the number of non-traditional families is increasing. The United States Census Bureau Newsroom confirms that from 1960 to 2016, the amount of children living with two parents decreased by nearly 20 percent, and children living with only their mother nearly tripled.
Holtzman says these family variations have always existed. But the ways these families develop has changed. For instance, Holtzman says in early history, when children lost one parent to death, the other remarried, so the variation came from death rather than something more common in today’s society, like divorce.
Noelle Robinson, a freshman at Ball State, was 16 when her father died after months of battling blood cancer.Before his passing, Noelle’s family fit the traditional family model.
“My mom came home, cooked dinner. Both my parents worked. We all loved each other,” Noelle says. “I was daddy’s little girl. Me and my mom had a strong relationship, so we were kind of that picture perfect family until my dad passed.”
After the recent engagement of Noelle’s mother, the family will grow to include eight people. Her mother’s fiancé has five children of his own, with the youngest being the same age as Noelle. After she completes her freshman year of college and returns home for the summer, she will no longer be the only child in the house. Her household will consist of her mother, her step-father, her step-brother, and herself, making her family a blended one.
Even though the shift will be tough for Noelle because she has been an only child her whole life, she wants to make her mother happy. She doesn’t try to be too emotionally involved in what goes on back home while she is in school. She has also learned that it is not about her but about what her mother wants for the family.
Holtzman says conflicting views of diverse families can be remedied by exposure. She describes the importance of people who push against the norm, like the Coxes.
“It’s somewhere in that process,” Holtzman says, ”that we start to grow and embrace change.”
She believes that 10 years ago, if she had asked her Sociology 100 class about gay marriage, they would have rejected it for religious reasons. It was common for her students to believe that this non-traditional family went against Bible teachings, was not normal, and was not biologically sound because those two people can’t reproduce.
Today, during the discussion of gay marriage being legal, a good chunk of her students will say that it should be. A few will say they do not believe in it for personal reasons, such as religion or how they were raised. But even those students are willing to accept same-sex marriage in a legal manner.
Holtzman says this is where exposure comes into play. She predicts that 10 years from now, the conversation in her classroom will be less of a debate and more of an overall agreeance because same-sex marriage will be normalized.
Sydney and her family have exemplified the results that exposure can bring. Sydney says by being who they are, her siblings have not only changed her life, but the lives of those around them.
The idea of a traditional family does not reflect today’s family dynamics because it is just that—an idea. In reality, families are extremely varied and always have been. Today, the traditional family includes same-sex marriage, single-parent households, adopted children, and everything in between.
