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In sociology, family is defined as basis of any national society. This concept is supposed to include, differentiate and analyze all kinds of relationships between people – gender relationships, marriage relationships, parents’ and children’s relationships, etc. This paper is devoted to analysis of an average statistical middle-class American family everyday problems. American Beauty movie directed by Sam Mendes was chosen as the material to analyze.

 
Analysis of Problems in American Family Life
on the Basis of Movie American Beauty

In this paper I would like to analyze problems of a middle-class American family. I want to base my analysis on the movie American Beauty directed by Sam Mendes. This movie reveals everyday life of the Burnhams – a middle-class family consisting of Lester (middle-aged office worker), his wife Carolyn (real-estate broker), and their daughter Jane (a sixteen years old teenager). s
In this film the family members try to mask their inner problems with external well-being. They have a house and two cars, they have a beautiful garden full of roses but they do not have the essentials of family life – love, respect, confidence, and mutual understanding.
The first problem we can see in the film is the lack of intimacy between spouses who live together more than ten years. Lester is caught masturbating by Carolyn; she feels disgusting, and he is angry. According to Allan (2007) indifference and lack of passion between spouses is one of the main problems of middle-aged families. The abovementioned problem results in mutual infidelity. Wife has an affair with her business rival, and husband becomes infatuated with a young woman; in the movie

Lester feels lust for the daughter’s friend Angela. Unfortunately, the situation is quite common for American families. Nowadays, people prefer to make themselves out to be a family because they are afraid to face a potentially expensive divorce but at the same time many married people have extramarital affairs.
Another widely spread problem disclosed in the movie is the so-called “parents and children problem” or the problem of an awkward age when children become teenagers, their body and their mind change, and parents should appeal to all their love and patience to help their children to overcome the hard period of getting adult. The character of the movie – Jane, aged 16 – abhors her parents, father especially; it can be proved by the fact that she several times discusses with her friends (Ricky and Angela) the possibility of killing her father. She is irritated by her mother constant reproaches and hypocrisy. On the one hand, Carolyn insists on her and Lester’s visit to a high-school basketball game to see Jane performing her half-time dance at the game as though parents are interested in the daughter’s life, but on the other hand, mother never tries to talk to her daughter frankly about anything.

Instead of existing problems perception and attempts to discuss them and find the way out the Burnhams in the movie as well as many other families in real life try to behave as nothing happens and are stuck in their difficulties deeper and deeper. Thus, Carolyn Burnham insists on everyday family dinners accompanying by classical music which is hated by other family members; she also associates their family well-being with roses as the symbol of beauty and happiness, Carolyn says “as long as there can be roses, all is well”. The same often takes place in real life – people try to substitute moral values for luxury goods in order to cover a bleak, unbeautiful reality by a mask of prosperity.
I consider that not prosperity and luxury but love, respect and patience are foundation of a family life. So, to safe the family happiness people should talk to each other and reach compromises.
References
Allan, Graham A. (2007). The Sociology of the Family. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
American Beauty. (n.d.). In Wikipedia