Family Composition in the New Millenia

Topic: Family Composition
Source: Modern families including mine seem to more often than not be broken up due to the increasingly popular idea of divorce. In turn this has led to a different family composition for many American families in comparison to the older nuclear family norm. This has led to many observations and conversations on what is a normal family composition anymore as many American children grow up with entire step-families rather than their original parental units.
Relation: Throughout chapter 5 of Robbins we see the basis of family composition discussed from a variety of different cultures. However we never view or look into how these family compositions have changed over the course of history. In turn the composition of the nuclear family as illustrated on 111 of Robbins is actually very different than many American households. 
Description: Recently my girlfriend and I had a conversation with our friends on the issues that occur within a nuclear family and how the splitting of a nuclear family can lead to dramatic changes in the family composition. For many of us in the conversation our parents haven't been together for years and in turn find the structure of the ideal nuclear family to be something we had at one point in time.

Commentary & Analysis: The concept of a nuclear family amongst my friends here only exists in about 1/3 of my friends actual families. This lead to an interesting discussion in which those in a nuclear family already had a distorted view on the reality that is living in a split family. They assumed that such things as step parents just slid into place behind those members that had been removed from the nuclear group, however this is far from true in many cases. Step families always seem to be in an awkward limbo between friend and foe for the children who lost a parent to divorce. By this I refer to the fact that you want to accept them as family but they do not share that bond which exists between blood siblings. At the same time, you feel their pain as they too view you as this person stuck in limbo. Even more interesting is the awkward phase of step parent selection that occurs via your main parent. This seems less about finding someone they love but someone that they are satisfied with as a second half to the nuclear unit. This leads to less of a new nuclear family and more like 2 friends whose kids live together. While this may just be due to the point of view of a child looking at the adults relationship it seemed to be the consensus amongst those of us discussing the issues that occur with the destruction of the original nuclear unit. One thing that we did discuss but none of us had experienced is the perfect split of parents and the responsibilities that they used to share. Amongst us we all had a primary parent in which we lived with and identified with as our main parent while the other one seemed to have left the nuclear family. We theorized as a group that some parents must actually follow these "rules" of social fairness and attempt to raise/split the time with their children fairly between parents. However this is something that seems to only occur in TV perfect divorces and more often than not these relationships deteriorate in real life.