African American and American culture

Viewing a "normal" family as a nuclear family with a father and mother and children is damaging to people as a whole because this excludes and keeps people from accepting all others as part of their family. It makes putting grandparents in a nursing home and out of the household something that is normal and families who keep a close relationship with their grandparents or even live with them to keep them in their childrens lives and to take care of them as something that is abnormal. The idea of a "normal" family is just one more part of the sociological imagination that is holding women down in supression. It keeps them in the house to take care of the children and housework while the men go out and provide and completely isolates and condemns all single mothers. As if their work isn't hard enough providing for their family on their own but they get condemned by society for it. The sociological theories that peg Black families as dysfunctional or deficient and as families that will have single parent families or families that are very large and include all relatives and even those not related by blood as relatives is unfair. That these stereotypes exist is something that attention should be called to. The idea that a nuclear family is the "right" family is economically supressing because a family that includes only the mother and father as caregivers and providers is extremely limiting and can only be achieved by a family of good economic standing. A family that includes more members such as Aunts and Uncles or grandparents in helping with child rearing and providing for the family is more efficient economically.