With the advent of the modern and postmodern era, the notion of family has undergone radical transformation. Moving far apart from their 'nuclear' status both families and communities are now a days heterogeneous constructions, driven primarily by materialism and self-interest. A widespread dissemination of statistical evidence in the mass media suggests the predominance of the so-called dysfunctional family in the American life due to a list of causes like: co-habitation, same-sex union, economic sustainability of women, lack of responsibility of men, increased rate of illegitimacy. For a long period of time the post-war American novels too have been focusing on the issue of family decline or the dysfunctional family and its effect on an individual identity. The reasons behind family decline in these fictions are not very different from real life. Several scholars have recently written books and articles claiming that the modern American family is not declining as much as it is changing its nature. The paper takes up an array of Post-war American fictions in order to portray that no matter what kind of perilous journey these fictionalized characters undertake, the root cause of their distress is a dysfunctional family, increasingly marked by a sense of mutability.