A nuclear family or elementary family is a family group consisting of a pair of adults and

their children.[1] This is in contrast to a single-parent family, to the larger extended family, and
to a family with more than two parents. Nuclear families typically centre on a married couple;
[1]
the nuclear family may have any number of children. There are differences in definition
among observers; some definitions allow only biological children that are full-blood siblings,
[2]
while others allow for a stepparent and any mix of dependent children including stepchildren
and adopted children.[3][4]
Family structures of one married couple and their children were present in Western Europe and
New England in the 17th century, influenced by church and theocratic governments. [5]With the
emergence of proto-industrialization and early capitalism, the nuclear family became a
financially viable social unit.[6] The term nuclear family first appeared in the early twentieth
century. Alternative definitions have evolved to include family units headed bysame-sex
parents,[1] and perhaps additional adult relatives who take on a cohabiting parental role; [7] in
this latter case it also receives the name of conjugal family.[1]
The concept that a narrowly defined nuclear family is central to stability in modern society has
been promoted by familialists who are social conservatives in the United States, and has been
challenged as historically and sociologically inadequate to describe the complexity of actual
family relations.[8]

Usage of the term[edit]

An American nuclear family composed of the mother, father, and children circa 1955
Merriam-Webster dates the term back to 1947,[9] while the Oxford English Dictionary has a
reference to the term from 1925; thus it is relatively new, although nuclear family structures
themselves date back thousands of years.[10][11] The term nuclear is used in its general meaning
referring to a central entity or "nucleus" around which others collect.
In its most common usage, the term nuclear family refers to a household consisting of a father,
amother and their children[12] all in one household dwelling.[9] The late George Murdock, an
influential observer of families, offered an early description:
The family is a social group characterized by common residence, economic cooperation and
reproduction. It contains adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain a socially
approved sexual relationship, and one or more children, own or adopted, of the sexually
cohabiting adults.[13]

Many individuals are part of two nuclear families in their lives: the family of origin in which
they are offspring, and the family of procreation in which they are a parent. [14]
Compared to extended family[edit]
Main article: Extended family
An extended family group consists of non-nuclear (or "non-immediate") family members
considered together with nuclear (or "immediate") family members.
Changes to family formation[edit]

From 1970 to 2000, family arrangements in the US became more diverse with no particular
household arrangement prevalent enough to be identified as the "average"
In 2005, information from the United States Census Bureau showed that 70% of children in the
US live in traditional two-parent families,[15] with 66% of those living with parents who were
married, and 60% living with their biological parents, and that "the figures suggest that the
tumultuous shifts in family structure since the late 1960s have leveled off since 1990". [16]
If considered separately from couples without children, single-parent families, and unmarried
couples with children, in the United States traditional nuclear families appear to constitute a
minority of households - with a rising prevalence of other family arrangements. In 2000,
nuclear families with the original biological parents constituted roughly 24.1% of American
households, compared to 40.3% in 1970.[15]Roughly two-thirds of all children in the United
States will spend at least some time in a single-parent household. [17]
In the UK the number of nuclear families fell from 39% of all households in 1968 to 28% in
1992. The decrease accompanied an equivalent increase in the number of single-parent
households and IN the number of adults living alone. [18]
According to some sociologists, "[The nuclear family] no longer seems adequate to cover the
wide diversity of household arrangements we see today." (Edwards 1991; Stacey 1996). A new
term has been introduced[by whom?], postmodern family, intended to describe the great variability
in family forms, including single-parent families and couples without children." [15]

Professor Wolfgang Haak of Adelaide University, detects traces of the nuclear family in
prehistoric Central Europe. A 2005 archeological dig in Elau in Germany, analyzed by Haak,
revealed genetic evidence suggesting that the 13 individuals found in a grave were closely
related. Haak said, "By establishing the genetic links between the two adults and two children
buried together in one grave, we have established the presence of the classic nuclear family in
a prehistoric context in Central Europe.... Their unity in death suggest[s] a unity in life." [19] This
paper does not regard the nuclear family as "natural" or as the only model for human family
life. "This does not establish the elemental family to be a universal model or the most ancient
institution of human communities. For example, polygamous unions are prevalent in
ethnographic data and models of household communities have apparently been involving a
high degree of complexity from their origins."[19] In this study evidence suggests that the
nuclear family was embedded with an extended family. The remains of three children (probably
siblings based on DNA evidence) were found buried with a woman who was not their mother
but may have been an "aunt or a step-mother".[20]

Though much of the public seems unaware of it, family scholars believe thatgenerally
speakingchildren are best off growing up with their two married parents. These are the
children most likely to get the education crucial for maintaining a middle-class life in an
advanced economy, to remain stably employed, and to marry and raise their own children to
go on and do the same.
But it is not well understood why the married coupleor nuclear familyworks so well for kids.
The most intriguing explanation Ive seen can be found in a little-known 2002 book by the
sociologist Brigitte Berger:The Family in the Modern Age. It recalls an old-fashioned era of
sociology. There are no charts, regressions, or metrics; it is, rather, an exposition of economic,
social, and demographic history. Yet it manages to anticipate and explain what todays
empirically grounded sociologists have repeatedly discovered about families and child
wellbeing.
And so to Bergers history: Not so long ago, family scholars labored under the assumption, halfMarxist, half-functionalist, that before the Industrial Revolution, the extended family was the
norm in the Western world. There was more than a little romanticism associated with this view:
extended families were imagined to have lived in warm, cohesive rural communities where
men and women worked together on farms or in small cottage industries. That way of life,
went the thinking, ended when industrialization wrenched rural folk away from their cottages
and villages into the teeming, anonymous city, sent men into the factories, and consigned
women to domestic drudgery. Worse, by upending the household economy, the Industrial
Revolution seriously weakened the family. The nuclear family, it was believed, was evidence of
family decline.
The nuclear family was the dominant arrangement in England stretching
back to the thirteenth century.
But by the second half of the twentieth century, one by one these assumptions were
overturned. First to go was the alleged prevalence of the extended family. Combing through
English parish records and other demographic sources, historians like Peter Laslett and Alan
MacFarlane discovered that the nuclear familya mother, father and child(ren) in a simple
house, as Laslett put itwas the dominant arrangement in England stretching back to the
thirteenth century.
Rather than remaining in or marrying into the family home, as was the case in Southern
Europe and many parts of Asia and the Middle East, young couples in England were expected
to establish their own household. That meant that men and women married later than in other
parts of the world, only after they had saved enough money to set up an independent home.
By the time they were ready to tie the knot, their own parents were often deceased, making
multi-generational households a relative rarity.

Far from being weaker than an extended family clan, Berger shows, the ordinary nuclear family
was able to adapt superbly to changing economic and political realities. In fact, the family
arrangement so common to England helps explain why it and other nations of northwest
Europe were the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, the launching ground for modern
affluence. The young nuclear family had to be flexible and mobile as it searched for
opportunity and property. Forced to rely on their own ingenuity, its members also needed to
plan for the future and develop bourgeois habits of work and saving.
These habits were of little use to the idle, landed rich who were wedded to, and defined by, the
ancestral property: think Downton Abbey. Similarly, in extended families, a newly married
couple was required to move in with the larger maternal or paternal clan, and to work the
family land or maintain the family trade. Under those circumstances, people, particularly
women, married young, generally before 20. Between their youth and dependence, the couple
was not capable of becoming effective strivers in a changing economy.
Could the traditional American family be making a comeback in of all places Seattle?
Recent census data reveal an unlikely trend: The good old nuclear family, declining across the
United States, is on the rise here.
Today, 70 percent of Seattles roughly 100,000 kids under 18 live with two married parents a
jump of 6 points from 2000. Among the 50 largest U.S. cities, Seattle now has the highest
percentage of kids in married-couple households.
To get to No. 1, Seattle leapfrogged some famously conservative and religious cities. We
surged past Salt Lake City and evangelical-mecca Colorado Springs, and even overtook Mesa,
Ariz., recently dubbed Americas most conservative city.
Surprised? It gets stranger still.
Among the 50 cities, Seattle is one of just three where nuclear families increased their share of
total households (Washington, D.C. and Atlanta being the others). Married couples living
with their own kids now represent 14 percent of Seattle households, up from 12.5 percent in
2000.

Click to enlarge
Nationally, the trend is moving the other way. Nuclear families have fallen from 24 percent of
U.S. households down to 19 percent today.
Liberal, accepting Seattle might seem like the ideal place to raise a kid in a less traditional
family structure, but few of us do. Seattle has a very low percentage of children in singleparent households. And perhaps more surprising, we rank just 45th out of 50 for kids living
with two unmarried parents.
So whats driving the nuclear-family trend here has Seattle turned back the clock to the
1950s?
No, probably not. But Seattle has changed in other ways.

As youve probably noticed, weve become a city teeming with well-paid professionals.
Research shows that family structures are strongly tied to economic and class standing.
Higher-income, well-educated couples are more likely to marry, and to stay married. And
poverty rates aremuch higher for households with a single parent, or two unmarried parents.

Click to enlarge
So in an increasingly affluent and educated Seattle, its not completely surprising that nuclear
families are on the rise. And single parents, who are typically poorer, may be leaving the city
as the cost of living here escalates.
Another change: In 2012, with marriage rights extended to gay couples in Washington, a more
contemporary version of the nuclear family was created. Unfortunately, the data do not
indicate how many of the married couples with kids in Seattle are gay couples. To be fair, its
probably a modest number in 2010, before legalization, census data show just 711 samesex couples raising children in the city. Still, legal gay marriage must be considered a
contributing factor to the rise of the married-parent household in Seattle.
So rest easy, Seattle. The nuclear family may be bouncing back here but that doesnt mean
weve become an improbable bastion for modern-day Ozzies and Harriets.
Gay, straight, single, divorced: Five studies that prove that the who of family matters a lot less
than the how when it comes to raising happy, healthy kids.
Over the past half century, the American family has shape-shifted. Gone is the dominance of
the nuclear family; in its place, a mishmash. In 2010, Pew Research published the popular
study The Decline of Marriage and Rise of New Families, which pointed out that changing
lifestyles and economics over the past half-century have drastically changed what the
American public thinks the word familymeans. A large majority of us now consider pretty much
any arrangement where there is a child involveda single parent, two gay parents, people who
are unwed and committedto be a family.
But America is still uneasy about how all these changes affect its children. Nearly 70 percent of
respondents to the Pew study felt that the trend toward single women having children was
unhealthy, and just over 60 percent of respondents felt that a child needed a mother and a

father to grow up happily. Almost 42 percent said that children of divorced parents face a lot
more challenges; 51 percent felt children of gay and lesbian couples did, too.
We are, it turns out, ill informed. To raise a healthy child, family mattersa whole lot. But as
these studies all show, the who of family matters a lot less than the how.
1. Kids Who Aren't Biologically Related to Their Parents Can Be Healthy Kids
It has long been known that adopted children have higher rates of school and behavior issues.
But, as Dutch psychologists Femmie Juffer and Marinus H. van IJzendoorn show us, there are
other ways to look at a kids future. Self-esteem is considered one of the most important pillars
of healthy personality development, so the researchers set out to see if adopted kids have
lower self-esteem than biological children. In 2007, they surveyed nearly 90 studies that
compared the self-esteem of adopted and non-adopted kids. Contrary to expectations, they
found, adopted children are able to develop normative levels of self-esteem. Their findings
held up for kids adopted as babies or later in life, and for international and mixed-race
adoptees. The findings, they say, should be considered evidence for adopted childrens
resilience to recover from severe deprivation ... and to catch up with their nonadopted peers.
Not surprisingly, the pair speculate the key is parenting: Adoptive parents are able to offer the
child secure parent-child attachment relationshipsa well- known protective factorfrom
which the child may profit in terms of positive social development and positive self-esteem.
2. Dont Blame the Single Parent; Blame the Poverty and Instability
Today, more than a quarter of children in America are being raised by a single parent. At a
glance, that sounds like a bad thing: Children of single parents have higher rates of poverty,
below-average social and cognitive skills, and lower rates of completing school and finding
work. But no study has proven that single parenting in itself is harmful. Instead, its the
poverty, mental health issues, and unstable relationships single people often carry with them
into parenthood that seem to do damage. Columbia University researchers Jeanne BrooksGunn and Jane Waldfogel write: Recent research holds that it is in large part the stability of
the traditional family structure that gives it its advantage. Family structure and family stability
are sometimes related, but we cant vilify single parents byassuming they are instable. Even
the American Academy of Pediatrics supports single-parent adoption by those with adequate
financial resources.
3. Divorce Doesnt Necessarily Harm the Child. How the Adults Handle the Divorce
May.
Penn State sociologist Paul R. Amato, in his 2010 review of a decade of divorce research, puts it
simply: Rather than ask whether divorce affects children, a more pertinent question may
be how and under what circumstances does divorce affect children either positively or
negatively? The style of the splitacrimonious or amicableappears to be more important
than the fact of the split itself. Amato suggests it would behoove researchers (and society) to
pay attention to the factors that produce variability in childrens adjustment following
divorce. Divorce, like marriage, is what you make of it, his colleagues have found. Amato
approvingly quotes one 2006 study that offered this glass-half-full analysis: Although divorce
leads to an increase in stressful life events, such as poverty, psychological and health
problems in parents, and inept parenting, it also may be associated with escape from conflict,
the building of new, more harmonious fulfilling relationships and the opportunity for personal
growth and individuation.
Research on Divorce: Continuing Trends and New Developments, Paul R. Amato,Journal of
Marriage and Family, 2010

4. Healthy Children Need to Experience Healthy Adult Relationships

Regardless of whether parents are gay or straight, divorced or married, cohabitating, or single
and dating, the strength of the adult relationship in a household strongly correlates with kids
well-being. One 1998 paper looked at how lesbian and heterosexual couples divided up
household work, and the impact on their childrens development. The research team examined
the division of labor in the households, the levels of love and conflict between couples, and the
childrens social competence and behavior. Parents satisfaction with each other and their roles
at home mattered most; even if these roles were unequal, as long as parents were content,
their children generally were better adjusted.
Division of Labor Among Lesbian and Heterosexual Parents: Associations With Childrens
Adjustments, Raymond W. Chan, et al., Journal of Family Psychology, 1998
5. Most Kids From Non-Nuclear Families Are All Right
Numerous large-scale studies show that the vast majority of the children and adolescents who
spend their childhoods living apart from one of their parents are well adjusted, writes
University of Cambridge psychology researcher Michael Lamb in his 2012 review of hundreds
of studies on family structure and child development. Lamb explains that our views on what
makes a healthy child originated in the early 20th century with psychoanalysts who depended
on clinical observations rather than empirical research like that conducted in the last 40 years.
The conclusions from recent studies are clear: The biological nuclear family is not a necessary
precondition for raising a healthy, hearty kid. As Lamb puts it, Dimensions of family structure
including such factors as divorce, single parenthood, and the parents sexual orientation
and biological relatedness between parents and children are of little or no predictive
importance once the process variables are taken into account, because the same factors
explain child adjustment regardless of family structure.