Comparison of the Walton's Television Show to Today's Modern Family
Julia Walton
Introduction to Sociology | SOC 1001
April 27, 2012
Rebecca Stout
South University Online
Week 6 Assignment 2 Application Project
In this week’s application project essay, I would like to compare an older television show that projected family life as it was in the 1930’s as compared to how family is viewed from a sociological viewpoint today. “The Walton’s” may not have been an idealistic portrait of family, but the series did portray family as it really was in that era, since it was based on the autobiographical writings of Earl Hamner, Jr. The television series, “The Walton’s” was about a family living through the Great Depression in the Blue Ridge Mountain area of Virginia. Their daily struggles through all of life’s problems were exactly how life was lived in the era of the Great Depression. Although today’s economy is not quite as drastic as that in the show, the characters contend with this situation much differently than a modern family would. The morals of the Walton family were to stick together where now many families facing such drastic economic issues would not have the same integrity. Divorce was not even considered to be an option in the era of the Great Depression as it is today.
To compare the Walton family structure to a modern family; the Walton family consisted of a married man and woman, their seven children, and the paternal grandparents where now there are marriages consisting of same sex genders, interracial marriages, and most families of today have only two children. A lot of modern families are blended; conjugal families, or “based on marriage” (Macionis, 2011) families, made up of extended kin, children from previous relationships, and the like living within the family structure. While there is nothing wrong with having extended families, sometimes there is a lack of intimacy that is provided from a united family structure such as a consanguine, or “shared blood” (Macionis, 2011) family.
In today’s modern
Introduction to Sociology | SOC 1001
April 27, 2012
Rebecca Stout
South University Online
Week 6 Assignment 2 Application Project
In this week’s application project essay, I would like to compare an older television show that projected family life as it was in the 1930’s as compared to how family is viewed from a sociological viewpoint today. “The Walton’s” may not have been an idealistic portrait of family, but the series did portray family as it really was in that era, since it was based on the autobiographical writings of Earl Hamner, Jr. The television series, “The Walton’s” was about a family living through the Great Depression in the Blue Ridge Mountain area of Virginia. Their daily struggles through all of life’s problems were exactly how life was lived in the era of the Great Depression. Although today’s economy is not quite as drastic as that in the show, the characters contend with this situation much differently than a modern family would. The morals of the Walton family were to stick together where now many families facing such drastic economic issues would not have the same integrity. Divorce was not even considered to be an option in the era of the Great Depression as it is today.
To compare the Walton family structure to a modern family; the Walton family consisted of a married man and woman, their seven children, and the paternal grandparents where now there are marriages consisting of same sex genders, interracial marriages, and most families of today have only two children. A lot of modern families are blended; conjugal families, or “based on marriage” (Macionis, 2011) families, made up of extended kin, children from previous relationships, and the like living within the family structure. While there is nothing wrong with having extended families, sometimes there is a lack of intimacy that is provided from a united family structure such as a consanguine, or “shared blood” (Macionis, 2011) family.
In today’s modern