For the last fifty years there has been debate among family experts whether the family is resilient or in decline. Those on Stephanie Coontz's side believe the family is stronger than ever, but people think it is in decline due to nostalgia for the 1950s. However, some people, like Barbara LeBey, take the opposite position and believe that the family is in decline. These positions are actually shown in the articles written by these two women, however, I stand with Stephanie Coontz and believe the families are still resistant to this day. In Coontz's article "The American Family," she outlines the reasons why she believes the American family The family is more resilient than ever. In his article he talks about nostalgia for the 1950s and the “good old days” and that he believes this nostalgia is due to the fact that so many negative aspects of families were hidden and never brought to light. In one section, he writes about how in 1900, a white child had a one in three chance of seeing his brother or sister before the age of fifteen and a black child had a one in three chance of one of his siblings dying in the same amount of time. During the same period, child neglect and abuse were widespread but rarely reported. Coontz goes on to explain how this has been the phenomenon behind many of the problems people have as reasons for family decline. Coontz also explains how people compare today's complex families to the "standard" families of the 1950s, where many long-term trends of the last century were reversed, but only for those ten years. During the 1950s, divorce rates plummeted while marriage and fertility rates skyrocketed... middle of paper...how families are both changing and resilient. In the 1950s, the father acted solely as the “breadwinner” of the home and didn't do much, now, 4% of fathers are the primary breadwinner, proving that families are resilient to the changes that have occurred over the past 60 years. (Benokraitis, 366). Just as the economy has changed over the last century, so too has the family. The average family has fewer children than in the past, so they can now dedicate more time to each child (Benokraitis, 12). In the old sense of the word “family,” some might believe that the situation has been getting worse since the new idea of ​​family began to emerge as mothers entered the workforce and divorce rates reached historic highs (Benokraitis , 17). Despite all the difficulties of today's society, families remain strong despite the changes they have gone through.