The past few decades have witnessed significant variations in the patterns of modern families,

regarding its structure and members’ role. In my view, I wholeheartedly advocate this trend due
to numerous strong points it  brings.

First and foremost, that ideal family size is getting smaller can have a positive impact on families’
members and the globe.In particular, whilst wives in the past used to give birth to more than four
babies, they nowadays tend to have from one to two children under one roof. Consequently,
these nuclear families will not have to spend the lion’s share of their time on striving to earn
money with the aim of paying for the cost of raising their offspring and have extra time to play
with and educate them with the utmost care instead. Take some large families in mountainous
areas in Vietnam, for example - the number of children in each family used to range from eight
to ten, and , in fact, most of them were not fostered adequately and even suffered from hunger
and illiteracy. On a bigger scale, the tendency to curb family size can lessen the risk of
population explosion which is related to a plethora of other social problems, such as pollution
and homelessness.

Secondly, the equality in the roles of husbands and wives these days can be deemed as a
progress. Whereas in earlier periods, men and women were supposed to be breadwinners and
homemakers respectively; nowadays, this stereotype is eradicated, which means both of whom
currently gain equitable working opportunities and share household duties together. Thus, this
substantial change can assist women in reaping the benefit of having their own career and
hence, enhancing their status. As regards men, they can be freed from the financial pressuring
of being the only source of income in the family. More importantly, this even-handedness in
family roles could provoke a sense of sympathy between husbands and wives since both of
them have to join hands  to handle so-called duties of exclusively male or female , which can
lower the rate of divorce as a consequence.

Admittedly, some opposing my idea might argue that the new tendency of modern families to
change from heterosexual couples to single-parent or same-sex families can result in lack of
parental warmth and more emotional and behavioral problems such as anxiety or depression
among their children.  This conventional wisdom is superficial, let alone wrong. In the US,
several large studies comparing lesbian, gay, single-parent and traditional families found  no
differences in parents’ care for children, child behavior or children’s emotional concerns. As a
matter of fact, children with single mothers even had fewer psychological problems. For that
reason, we cannot blame the new change in modern families for adversely affecting children’s
well-being, in fact, the merits it brings are worth considering.

In conclusion, owing to these aforementioned reasons, I believe that these changes occurring to
a family’s hierarchy and members’ responsibilities are  a positive step towards an innovative
world, which needs receiving more encouragement.