What More Does This Society Want?

What constitutes a "normal" family? Well according to most people these days it would be a family with a mom, a dad, and children. Why is that? I think it's because that is how it has been in the past, but now that society and social norms are changing, I think that the assumption, or the more that everybody has a "normal" family with a mom and a dad has to change because it is non inclusive to those whose families are different.

In our daily lives, we all will encounter people with divorced parents, gay/lesbian parents or someone who is being raised by a single parent. Especially at Blake, we are exposed to all kinds of social transformations and new contemporary ideas. With norms like this changing and evolving, I think that we have a moral obligation to change our thinking in terms of how families can and do work.

A concept that I think has fault to it is that we justify and moralize a lot of ideas or actions based on the fact that it is how things have been done in the past, so therefore it is okay to keep doing it. This logic I believe applies to most Blake student's everyday lives, not only in terms of ideas of a normal family, but many other social norms as well like going to college, getting a job and even how to live their everyday lives.

Another reason to why I believe this folkway exists is that no one has really ever questioned, or called for a reason to change the idea of what a normal family consists of until recently. With all of the GLBTQ rights, protests and laws that have been surfacing and been passed recently, it has brought to light all of the different types of people and families that exist in our society.

When students have to fill out college applications or forms where they ask for parent information, a lot of these applications have information to fill out for parent 1 and another option for parent 2. I've realized that when filling out these applications, they have become a lot more inclusive to kids that come from different families then just a mom and a dad. In the past, I've heard many stories about how colleges only offer space to fill out information for one mom and one dad; these changes are just one important step to change this folkway that exists in our society. 

The adjustments that a lot of colleges and other applications have made are an important step to changing the way this more has shaped our thinking. Other ways that will help change this more is having all institutions, forms, schools or anywhere else where someone may have to fill out family information more accepting to different family backgrounds so that they offer parent 1 and 2 rather than mom and dad.

These changes and adaptions that can be made in our everyday lives and in society as a whole will help to change or get rid of this folkway, in order to be more accepting of everyone around us.