ABSTRACT
There is little doubt that, when contemporary Americans judge the relative state of the modern family, many reflect on the American family of the 1950s. It is also the case that such a comparison often leads to the conclusion that the family is in decline. Critics of the modern family point to a variety of changes that have occurred in the family during the past 50 years that they see as evidence of decline. These include delayed marriage, decreased fertility rate, increased divorce rate, the disappearance of the two-parent family, and the increased number of children for whom after-school parental care is absent. In contrast, observers such as Skolnick (1991) and Coontz (1992) argue that the family model that emerged in the 1950s is remembered inaccurately and, anyway, violated established and ongoing revision of the family so that its use as a baseline in discussions of family health is misleading and, more specifically, fosters the erroneous conclusion of decay. Notably, both Skolnick (1991) and Coontz (1992) point to popular culture, and in particular television, as the source of misleading images of the American family of that period.
