In the 19th century, family photos depicted the husband in a central, dominant position while wives played a secondary role. Families had many children as the woman's role was to care for the home and family. By the 20th century, roles became shared and family sizes decreased. Modern 21st century families show complete equality between partners and come in various forms, such as single parents, same-sex couples, and smaller nuclear families, reflecting diverse concepts of family today.

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Family photos in the
19th century

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In the 19th century, as we can see in this family
photograph, main role belongs to the husband, that’s
why he’s sitting down in the center of the image,
sorrounded by his wife and children. Wife’s role is
secondary, that’s why her position in the frame is on
one side of it.

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In the 19th Century, families used to have plenty of
children, mainly due to woman’s main role inside
the house: to take care of her husband and children,
and housekeeping. That’s why her main objective in life was
to get married.

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 In this wedding photograph of a Spanish officer
from the 19th Century, man wears his army uniform,
while the bride is in black, an austere colour but also
a trend in that period.

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Family photos in the
20th century

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 As we can see in this photograph, the man has
lost, at least in part, his main position, sharing it
with his wife in the center of the frame. At the
same time, children’s number has been reduced if
we compare it to an average 19th century family.

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 In this period, we can also find two big differences
with family photographs from previous century: on
the one hand, people’s mood has changed from
austere to more relaxed; they’re even smiling in this
photograph. And, on the other hand, costumes have
also changed, with the woman being more worried
about her own image.

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 In this weeding photograph, the change of mood we
already noticed in this century becomes even more
obvious when we analyze bride’s costume:
white, much more decorated than man’s one, a big
bridal bouquet and a large veil, making her the main
character of the image.

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Family photos in the
21th century

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 In the 21th century, roles of men and women in the family are
completely interchangeable; there’s no leading role. As we can
see here, the photo recreates a situation in which the family is
having fun: a picnic in the countryside.
 About the number of the family members, it seems that there
are no big changes from the 20th century; that is, families
normally have two or three children, or even less, as you can
see in the following picture.

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 However, the concept of “traditional family” in the
21th century has changed in many ways.
Nowadays, we can find a single mother (or father)
who brings up the child without having a couple.

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 Thanks to the changes that some countries have been
making lately in some of their laws, gay & lesbian
couples are starting to create their own version of the
family: now, they can get married …

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…and they can also adopt children to create
their own family.

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So, this is how it looks a “modern
family” today:

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“…and in any century, they all
lived happily ever after”
THE END