Now a days we seem to be trying to keep focus on what society calls a traditional family when the "traditional family" is becoming more and more non-traditional; yet we seem to want to keep pushing it through to everyone. In 2015, it is extremely sad to see that when you search for images of family on the internet the first pictures shown are of a woman and a man with 2 children, usually all of the same race... And we wonder why it is that people are having a hard time accepting the changes that society is going through.
Print ads and TV commercials have been used for many years to brainwash people into buying something or choosing something over something else. Even though most of us seem to pay little attention to the commercials and ads we see; they are and will always be a subtle form of mind control and society keeps being pushed to look at things in a "traditional" way, a way that is becoming less and less traditional when we actually look at society and how it has changed throughout the years.
Families are composed of two parents of different racial backgrounds, with science taking of we now have same sex couples racing children, we have single parent families being raised and by single parent I mean either a man who has decided to rear children on his own or a woman who has decided to do the same. It seems a bit silly that we are still pushing ads for this "tradition" that is no longer one.
When I was a child, I was one of two children in my classroom that had divorced parents, it was rare that a child would not have their parents together and even more rare that the parents were not around to raise said child. I was raised by my grandmother and I remember people actually feeling sorry for me because I did not have a "family". Truth be told, I had the best family ever! my grandmother and her sister raised me and my cousin (whose parents are still together til this day but because they did not have the means to send her to a good school my aunt decided to take her on and well, she lived with us and we were raised together). To me, my family unit were two women, who had worked hard their whole lives and had managed to make it in the world on their own, they were not married and did not ever seem to have the need to have a man around the house. In fact, if you ask my aunt why she never got married, her answer always was that she did not want to be washing clothes for some guy and she wanted to always spend her free time travelling, and so she did.
My grandmother separated from my grandfather when the guy that I was taught to call dad was very little. It did not work out so she moved on and made a life for herself and on her own. Both these women love us so damn much, and always made sure we were taken care of. The household I was raised in was a house where I always had a choice and whenever I made it I would have to live with the consequences that choice had. Until these day I still don't understand why people felt bad for us, we did not know any different so for us, it was our norm.
Seeing these ads keep the focus on a "traditional family" one that is quickly becoming non-traditional because really has Disney not seen who visits their parks? I am pretty sure that there are just as many interracial families visiting parks as families that come from the same racial background. What about couples that decide to adopt children from other countries? And same-sex couples? We keep wondering why it is that people have little tolerance for same-sex marriage, interracial families and single parent families. Look at TV commercials, at print ads in newspapers, magazines and billboards, look in the web and see how many times we actually see an ad that is promoting a vacation or a celebration where an interracial couple or same sex couple or even a single parent and their child is portrayed. There are very little, and most times if we do see an ad like that we see it for a campaign that promotes tolerance to it.
Want to see tolerance towards the society we live in now? The change has to start with the soft forms of mind control we are all subjects to, those big companies that say that they support gay-marriage should be the ones to have their ads showing that support, what good does it do to just say it out loud and follow a campaign when all of your ads focus on not just the opposite of it but on something that is no longer a big taboo subject anymore.
I would love to see Disney create an ad for their vacation packages where we see different kinds of families, because it is not sad for a child to be raised by one parent, or by two parents of the same sex, or of two parents of different races, or to be raised by two parents that are of different race than their child or children (and I could go on). It is sad to see a child being raised by people that do not love said child and that do not provide a save and comfortable environment for the child. It is sad to see children being put in situations that they are not comfortable in but because we follow outdated views we force them to be in those situations. It is sad that our system puts children at risk every single day by sending them back for the third or fourth time to abusive parents. That is what is sad, but a child who has a parent or two parents or more, no matter the race or sex, that care, love and provide a stable home environment for said child, is not sad; it is something that should be embraced and should be shown to the world. Maybe if we did that, we would start to see a difference in the attitude towards what society calls "non-traditional families".
PS: Look up images of family in Google, see what comes up first!
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