Dysfunctional Family Essay, Research Paper

Family

What is a dysfunctional family? According to Webster Dictionary dysfuntional means “abnormal” (Webster’s Dictionary 66), while the word Family means “related group of people.” So if you put both definitions together you get an “abnormal related group of people.” To many people in the US think that a dysfuntional family is a bunch of deranged psychos, I should know I was one of them. Truth be told I’m not to sure what a dysfunctional family is anymore. I always thought it was a family that was always on bunch of drugs, who had sex with each other. But my definition has changed over the years.

Now I believe that a dysfunctional family can be any family in the world. There are all kinds of problems that can happen with a family. There can be an abusive fathers, or husbands. There can be an abusive mothers, and wife’s. Both of the parents can be alcoholics. The child can be an consent drug user, and his or her excuse might be that they just want to escape the reality of their everyday life.

The same problems can still occur in the family but they don’t have to be as serve as being abusive or drug use. Look at the Bill Clinton and his family, he cheated on his wife with an intern. Jesse Jackson as well cheated on his wife and paid his mistress not to say anything to the media. Are these two family dysfunctional? How can they not be dysfunctional. Think about if there was a perfect family with a beautiful house and a picket fence with two and a half kids, one boy and one girl with another on the way. In my opinion there is no such family in the existence on this planet.

So are all families on this planet dysfunctional? Maybe, maybe not. It all depends if the family believes they are. Take my family for example. The only other person in my family that lives in the city besides myself is my mother. The rest of my family lives in mexico, my aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews etc. I never met my father and don’t care to meet he either. Is my family dysfunctional? Well I believe

so. Only because it compare to the ideal picture of a real family, mine doesn’t match compare or come close to it. Now a days there are more and more families that only have a single parent running a household with children. In the old days no family was without a mother or a father. But now that women are becoming more and more independent they don’t need to rely on a so called significant other for financial support.

Works Cited

Webster’s Dictionary: Of The English Language Hartford: Connecticut, 1997.