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Introduction The family as the basic unit of Philippine society is very significant to Filipinos. It demands his interest and loyalty more than any other institution in the larger society. Perhaps the most common assumption about the families is that they are necessary. The idea that people could not do without such an important and worthwhile social institution is based primarily on the mere fact of the continuing existence of families, although, as people have seen, they are not fixed in structure and composition. It influences every aspect of life. It can then be said that community life is organized by the family. Furthermore, the family is a universal and basic social unit as the site for co-operation and exchange of resources is taken to include money, food, skills and space. In addition, the home as a conflict-free arena, thus ignoring power relation between family and presume that all share the same interest. The modern setup of living makes it impossible to go through life without meeting conflicts and frustration of all kinds- financial, educational, family and occupational. At times people cannot cope with these challenges. As a result, there is dissatisfaction with society and the strain affects his or her attitudes, reaction and conduct. The constant feeling of failure and the inability to make proper adjustment to problems change his or her total personality. Life becomes a persistent state of maladjustment and sometimes causes broken homes. Marriage may be said to be the most intimate human relationship since a husband and wife are expected to be one. Underlying this oneness, however, there should be a presence of mutual understanding and this can be attained through communication and deep dialogue which is a regular feature of marital life (Sussman, 1985). Marriage therefore has played an important role for women as the source of marital security, and as almost their sole route for social mobility.
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Marital conflict is one of the most common problems of the family. It is natural and normal to have conflict from time to time, especially during the first few years of the marriage, because no two spouses ever agree completely on basic values, attitudes towards allocation of certain privileges and distribution of scarce resources or on perceptions of the precise meaning of the role responsibilities (Melville, 1980). While family values and norms are derived from and independent on the general culture of the community, the prevailing type of the family system and socialization practiced can gently affect changes in society. This is due to the fact that the family holds the personality and character of young people. Thus, a child becomes more conscious of his environment, he will learn to view his parents and observe the roles they play at home. According to Macaraya (1989), they help form the child’s own good role so that the characteristics that are identified as male and those as female are defined in of what he has seen in his father and mother respectively. In other words, parents are the ones who greatly set the emotional atmosphere of the home. The child’s natural nursery is the home. The home has the responsibility of establishing limits and incentives for the process of socialization. The most important teachers are the parents in the process of the child’s growth. For their actions and words, they constantly show the child how to cope with life situations, how he is to handle emotions, and how he is to live with others. Broken homes are a social reality that one meets nowadays. Classrooms around the world are becoming full of children who come from broken homes. It is often the observation of teachers that these children or adolescents have difficulty relating to others, socializing with others, and generally have more difficulty in performing well in school. This term paper aims to find out the causes of broken homes in the Filipino context and the effects of broken homes on Filipinos.