Although the term is technically unfamiliar to me, I watched enough Happy Days and The Cosby Show to know the general structure of the "ideal family" to include " . . . the wage-earner father, a mother who doesn't work outside the home and two or more children" (Hoffman 59). However, I am more inclined to recall (and relate to) Ann Romano from One Day at a Time, the single mother working full-time and the obstacles of raising her children on her own. Even more now than ever, I can relate to Eight is Enough or Brady Bunch. Families that were resurrected and reconstructed by remarriage and/or blending two families together, the "nontraditional family."
             Since the 1970s, there has been a liberation from bad marriages. People no longer have to hide behind the facade of a perfect marriage or to endure a lifetime of misery or abuse, either for themselves or for the sake of their children. Society has come to realize that "[a] nonfunctioning marriage is a
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