Talk:Family in the United States/Archive 1

Untitled
Introductory To-Do List I want to suggest four areas to write about for our project, so that one area can be taken by each member of our group. There will be subheadings under each of the big topics depending on how much research we are able to find. A rough idea will be:

Different Types of Families -extended, nuclear, etc

Family Roles -economic -emotional

Contemporary Views of the Family -same-sex couples -single parent households

Controversy within American Families -adoption -incest -etc

Since our group is behind, begin by commenting on which area you want to focus on and then start accumulating as much information as possible. I want to get some sort of draft going by Thursday the 16th. --Red walnut (talk) 23:27, 13 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I'll post a more detailed review once you guys have more content, around late Thursday or Friday. I'll be expecting to see the content then, of course. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 03:09, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Quick comment: you need hyperlinks (see WP:LINKING). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 04:01, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

=July 20= A good rough draft is up [good research Tony] but we need to work on our formatting and wiki-structure. Here is the criteria for good article nomination:. --Red walnut (talk) 06:51, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It's high time to nominate your article for GA. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 16:41, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

=July 24= Finally figured out how to nominate for Good Article status and have done so. Hope to get some constructive comments soon!!--Red walnut (talk) 19:42, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Let me start by suggesting that you try to address the issues that have been tagged (missing citations, reference formating). Certainly any GA reviewer will ask you to do so. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 20:06, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

=July 25= Will be posting responses and checking off what has been done.--Red walnut (talk) 22:16, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Further suggestions
Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 23:43, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Please expand the lead to conform with guidelines at Lead. The article should have an appropriate number of paragraphs as is shown on WP:LEAD, and should adequately summarize the article. :✅
 * Consider adding more links to the article; per Manual of Style (links) and Build the web, create links to relevant articles. There are sections, starting with the lead, that are in desperate need of links. :✅
 * Per WP:WIAFA, this article's table of contents (ToC) may be too long – consider shrinking it down by merging short sections or using a proper system of daughter pages as per Summary style. :✅
 * Watch for redundancies that make the article too wordy instead of being crisp and concise. (You may wish to try Tony1's redundancy exercises.) :✅
 * Vague terms of size often are unnecessary and redundant - “some”, “a variety/number/majority of”, “several”, “a few”, “many”, “any”, and “all”. For example, “ All pigs are pink, so we thought of a number of ways to turn them green.” :✅
 * Avoid contractions: aren't, if these are outside of quotations, they should be expanded. :✅

Update 7/28
I think I accidentally overwrote the changes you made right before me Nikkimaria. I am not entirely sure though. I do apologize if I did and hope it wasn't too much!
 * Yes, I think you did. You could go through the edit history and pick out my changes - most of them were minor, but (I hope) they would be useful to you. Anyways, I've reviewed your changes and have posted my replies on the review (I ignored the stuff I fixed because I thought I had addressed it...). Take a look, let me know if you have any questions, and keep up the good work! Cheers, Nikkimaria (talk) 00:50, 29 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Hopefully we have addressed the majority of your concerns so far Nikkimaria. Really appreciate the help! --Red walnut (talk) 02:28, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

For future expansion, this article should have a comparison of families by ethnicity (white, Africian-American, Latino, Asian-American, Muslim-American, and so on). Race is a major factor differentiating families in the USA. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 19:06, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Adoption section
Aberry17, please be sure to cite where you are getting your statistics/information and ensure that the paragraph flows together neatly with what already exists. I would leave you a message on your user talk page but you have not created one yet. --Red walnut (talk) 05:04, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

The adopted children section is very poorly worded and doesn't really convey what adoption means - perhaps some performance info/statistics relating to adopted children would be relevant here as with only children? And should there be a section about long-term fostering? Redcore4 (talk) 13:38, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Same-sex parenting
Just came upon this page (which seems well-written) and this sentence raised my eyebrows: "Children with same-sex parents usually deal with discrimination by their peers and there is always the potential for gender confusion as they mature, but same-sex couples provide quality care just like their heterosexual counterparts." Probably the source does say this, but the claims still seem a bit unspecific. What exactly does "usually" mean here, and is "gender confusion" a real psychological term (for gender identity disorder)? With the current wikilink it seems to say that children of same-sex couples have a big possibility of becoming transsexuals, which is a somewhat outrageous claim to make. Since this is a controversial issue, it would be better to use hard numbers or such (such as statistics that show what percentage of children were harrassed due to their parents' sexual orientation compared with other children, if it is even necessary to mention that particular issue). IMHO some elaboration is needed here, or otherwise the sentence should be removed. --Epiq (talk) 20:09, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Title
Has the title been discussed anywhere? I think family structure in the United States is more typical for Wikipedia. This would be more precise, as "American" can mean more than just the United States. Plus, "American family structure" could imply that it is about a specific form of family. Family structure in the United States covers all families in the U.S. Tuf-Kat (talk) 22:27, 11 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree. Moved from American family structure to Family structure in the United States Zodon (talk) 07:26, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Only child
What does Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein or Jean Paul Sartre have to do with "American family structure"? The fact that they were successful does not mean it is true for only children in general, and only children in American families in particular, since they weren't even American.Avman89 (talk) 02:09, 14 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Good point. I removed the sentence. It's even wrong because Albert Einstein was not an only child. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:42, 13 January 2012 (UTC)