Family
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
This
article is about the group of people such as a mother and a father. For the
family in biology, see Family (biology).
For other uses, see Family (disambiguation).
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Marriage and similar status
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Ward
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Divorce
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Nullity
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Related
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In human context, a family (from Latin: familia) is a group of people affiliated by consanguinity,
affinity, or co-residence. In most societies it is the principal institution
for the socialization of children. Anthropologists most generally classify
family organization as matrilocal (a mother and her
children); conjugal (a husband, his wife, and children; also called nuclear family); and consanguineal (also called an extended
family) in which parents and children co-reside with other members of one
parent's family.
There are also concepts of
family that break with tradition within particular
societies, or those that are transplanted via migration to flourish or else
cease within their new societies.[clarification needed] As a unit of socialization the family is the object of
analysis for sociologists of the family. Genealogy is a field which aims to
trace family lineages through history. Inscience, the term
"family" has come to be used as a means to classify groups of objects as being closely
and exclusively related. In the study of animals it has been found that many
species form groups that have similarities to human "family"—often
called "packs."
Sexual relations among family members are regulated by rules concerning incest such as the incest taboo.
Extended from the human
"family unit" by affinity and consanguinity are
concepts of family that are physical and metaphorical, or that grow
increasingly inclusive extending to community, village, city, region, nationhood, global village and humanism.
Family is also an important
economic unit. Economic aspects of family is subject of family economics branch within economics
field.
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Contents
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8 Notes
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One of the primary
functions of the family is to produce and reproduce persons, biologically
and/or socially. This can occur through the sharing of material substances
(such as semen, and food); the giving and receiving of care and nurture (nurture kinship);
jural ties of rights and obligations; and moral and sentimental ties.[1][2] Thus, one's experience of
one's family shifts over time. From the perspective of children, the family
is a "family of orientation": the family serves to locate children
socially and plays a major role in their enculturation and socialization.[3] From the point of view of
the parent(s), the family is a "family of procreation," the goal of
which is to produce and enculturate and socialize children.[4] However, producing children
is not the only function of the family; in societies with a sexual division of
labor, marriage, and the
resulting relationship between two people, it is necessary for the formation of
an economically productive household.[5][6][7]
A "conjugal"
family includes only the husband, the wife, and unmarried children who are not
of age. The most common form of this family is regularly referred to insociology as a nuclear family.[8] A "consanguineal"
family consists of a parent and his or her children, and other people. Although
the concept of consanguinity originally referred to relations by "blood," cultural anthropologists[1] have argued that one must
understand the idea of "blood" metaphorically and that many societies
understand family through other concepts rather than through genetic distance. A
"matrilocal" family consists of a mother and her children.
Generally, these children are her biological offspring, although adoption of
children is a practice in nearly every society. This kind of family is common
where women have the resources to rear their children by themselves, or where
men are more mobile than women.
The diverse data coming
from ethnography,
history, law and social statistics, establish that the human family is an
institution and not a biological fact founded on the natural relationship of consanguinity.[9][10]
Early scholars of family
history applied Darwin's biological theory
of evolution in their theory of evolution of family
systems.[11] American anthropologist Lewis H. Morgan published Ancient Society in 1877 based on his theory
of the three stages of human progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization.[12] Morgan's book was the
"inspiration for Friedrich Engels'
book" The Origin of the Family,
Private Property and the State published in 1884.[13]
Engels expanded Morgan's
hypothesis that economical factors caused the transformation of primitive
community into a class-divided society.[14] Engels' theory of resource control, and later that of Karl Marx, was used
to explain the cause and effect of change in family structure and function. The
popularity of this theory was largely unmatched until the 1980s, when other
sociological theories, most notably structural functionalism, gained acceptance.
Family tree showing the
relationship of each person to the orange person. Cousins are colored green.
The genetic kinship degree of relationship is marked in red boxes by percentage
(%).
Family chart. Note that not
all relatives are shown in the chart
(specially at step-relatives).
Anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881) performed the
first survey of kinship terminologies in use around the world. Although much of
his work is now considered dated, he argued that kinship terminologies reflect different
sets of distinctions. For example, most kinship terminologies distinguish
between sexes (the difference between a brother and a sister) and between
generations (the difference between a child and a parent). Moreover, he argued,
kinship terminologies distinguish between relatives by blood and marriage(although
recently some anthropologists have argued that many societies define kinship in
terms other than "blood").
Morgan made a distinction
between kinship systems that use classificatory terminology and those that
use descriptive terminology. Classificatory
systems are generally and erroneously understood to be those that "class
together" with a single term relatives who actually do not have the same
type of relationship to ego. (What defines "same type of
relationship" under such definitions seems to be genealogical
relationship. This is problematic given that any genealogical description, no
matter how standardized, employs words originating in a folk understanding of
kinship.) What Morgan's terminology actually differentiates are those
(classificatory) kinship systems that do not distinguish lineal and collateral
relationships and those (descriptive) kinship systems that do. Morgan, a
lawyer, came to make this distinction in an effort to understand Seneca inheritance practices. A
Seneca man's effects were inherited by his sisters' children rather than by his
own children.[15] Morgan identified six basic
patterns of kinship terminologies:
·
Hawaiian:
only distinguishes relatives based upon sex and generation.
·
Sudanese:
no two relatives share the same term.
·
Eskimo:
in addition to distinguishing relatives based upon sex and generation, also
distinguishes between lineal relatives and collateral relatives.
·
Iroquois:
in addition to sex and generation, also distinguishes between siblings of
opposite sexes in the parental generation.
·
Crow:
a matrilineal system with some features of an Iroquois system, but with a
"skewing" feature in which generation is "frozen" for some
relatives.
·
Omaha:
like a Crow system but patrilineal.
Most Western societies
employ Eskimo kinshipterminology.[citation needed] This kinship terminology
commonly occurs in societies based on conjugal (ornuclear) families, where
nuclear families have a degree of relative mobility. Members of the nuclear use
descriptive kinship terms:
Such systems generally
assume that the mother's husband has also served as the biological father. In
some families, a woman may have children with more than one man or a man may
have children with more than one woman. The system refers to a child who shares
only one parent with another child as a "half-brother" or
"half-sister." For children who do not share biological or adoptive
parents in common, English-speakers use the term "stepbrother" or "stepsister"
to refer to their new relationship with each other when one of their biological
parents marries one of the other child's biological parents. Any person (other
than the biological parent of a child) who marries the parent of that child
becomes the "stepparent" of the child, either the
"stepmother" or "stepfather." The same terms generally
apply to children adopted into a family as to children born into the family.
Typically, societies with
conjugal families also favor neolocal residence; thus upon
marriage a person separates from the nuclear family of their childhood (family
of orientation) and forms a new nuclear family (family of procreation).
However, in the western society the single parent family has been growing more
accepted and has begun to truly make an impact on culture. The majority of
single parent families are more commonly single mother families than single
father. These families face many difficult issues besides the fact that they
have to rear their children on their own, but also have to deal with issues
related to low income. Many single parents struggle with low incomes and must
cope with other issues, including rent, child care, and other necessities
required in maintaining a healthy and safe home. Members of the nuclear
families of members of one's own (former) nuclear family may class as lineal or
as collateral. Kin who regard them as lineal refer to them in terms that build
on the terms used within the nuclear family:
·
Grandfather: a parent's father
·
Grandmother: a parent's mother
·
Grandson: a child's son
·
Granddaughter: a child's daughter
For collateral relatives,
more classificatory terms come into play, terms that do not build on the terms
used within the nuclear family:
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Nephew: sister's son, brother's
son, wife's brother's son, wife's sister's son, husband's brother's son,
husband's sister's son
·
Niece: sister's daughter,
brother's daughter, wife's brother's daughter, wife's sister's daughter,
husband's brother's daughter, husband's sister's daughter
When additional generations
intervene (in other words, when one's collateral relatives belong to the same
generation as one's grandparents or grandchildren), the prefixes
"great-" or "grand-" modifies these terms. Also, as with
grandparents and grandchildren, as more generations intervene the prefix
becomes "great-grand-," adding an additional "great-" for
each additional generation. Most collateral relatives have never had membership
of the nuclear family of the members of one's own nuclear family.
·
Cousin: the most classificatory
term; the children of aunts or uncles. One can further distinguish cousins by
degrees of collaterality and by generation. Two persons of the same generation
who share a grandparent count as "first cousins" (one degree of
collaterality); if they share a great-grandparent they count as "second
cousins" (two degrees of collaterality) and so on. If two persons share an
ancestor, one as a grandchild and the other as a great-grandchild of that
individual, then the two descendants class as "first cousins once
removed" (removed by one generation); if they shared ancestor figures as
the grandparent of one individual and the great-great-grandparent of the other,
the individuals class as "first cousins twice removed" (removed by
two generations), and so on. Similarly, if they shared ancestor figures as the
great-grandparent of one person and the great-great-grandparent of the other,
the individuals class as "second cousins once removed". Hence one can
refer to a "third cousin once removed upwards."
Cousins of an older
generation (in other words, one's parents' first cousins), although technically
first cousins once removed, are often classified with "aunts" and
"uncles." Similarly, a person may refer to close friends of one's
parents as "aunt" or "uncle," or may refer to close friends
as "brother" or "sister," using the practice of fictive kinship.
English-speakers mark relationships by marriage (except for wife/husband) with
the tag "-in-law." The mother and father of one's spouse become one's
mother-in-law and father-in-law; the female spouse of one's child becomes one's
daughter-in-law and the male spouse of one's child becomes one's son-in-law.
The term "sister-in-law"
refers to three essentially different relationships, either the wife of one's
sibling, or the sister of one's spouse, or, in some uses, the wife of one's
spouse's sibling. "Brother-in-law"
expresses a similar ambiguity. The terms "half-brother" and
"half-sister" indicate siblings who share only one biological or
adoptive parent.
Family arrangements in the United States have become more diverse
with no particular household arrangement representing half of the United States
population.[16]
The different types of
families occur in a wide variety of settings, and their specific functions and
meanings depend largely on their relationship to other social institutions. Sociologists have a special interest in
the function and status of these forms in stratified (especially capitalist)
societies. The term "nuclear
family" is commonly used, especially in the United States, to
refer to conjugal families. Sociologists distinguish between conjugal families
(relatively independent of the kindred of the parents and of other families in
general) and nuclear families (which maintain relatively close ties with their
kindred). The term "extended
family" is also common, especially in United States. This term
has two distinct meanings. First, it serves as a synonym of "consanguinal
family" (consanguine means "of the same blood"). Second, in
societies dominated by the conjugal family, it refers to "kindred" (an
egocentric network of relatives that extends beyond the domestic group) who do
not belong to the conjugal family. These types refer to ideal or normative
structures found in particular societies. Any society will exhibit some
variation in the actual composition and conception of families. Much
sociological, historical andanthropological research dedicates itself
to the understanding of this variation, and of changes in the family that form
over time. Times have changed; it is
more acceptable and encouraged for mothers to work and fathers to spend more
time at home with the children. The way roles are balanced between the parents
will help children grow and learn valuable life lessons. There is great
importance of communication and equality in families, in order to avoid role
strain. [17]
According to the work of
scholars Max Weber, Alan Macfarlane, Steven Ozment, Jack Goody and Peter Laslett, the
huge transformation that led to modern marriage in Western democracies was
"fueled by the religio-cultural value system provided by elements of
Judaism, early Christianity, Roman Catholic canon law and the Protestant
Reformation".[18]
Male same-sex couple with a
child.
The term blended family or stepfamily describes families with
mixed parents: one or both parents remarried, bringing children of the former
family into the new family.[19] Also in sociology,
particularly in the works of social psychologistMichael Lamb,[20] traditional family refers to "a
middleclass family with a bread-winning father and a stay-at-home mother,
married to each other and raising their biological children," and nontraditional to exceptions from this
rule. Most of the US households are now non-traditional under this definition.[21]
In terms of communication
patterns in families, there are a certain set of beliefs within the family that
reflect how its members should communicate and interact. These family
communication patterns arise from two underlying sets of beliefs. One being
conversation orientation (the degree to which the importance of communication
is valued) and two, conformity orientation (the degree to which families should
emphasize similarities or differences regarding attitudes, beliefs, and
values).[22]
Family members
Contemporary society
generally views the family as a haven from the world, supplying absolute
fulfilment.[citation needed] Zinn and Eitzen discuss the
image of the "family as haven [...] a place of intimacy, love andtrust where individuals may escape the competition of
dehumanizing forces in modern society".[23] Duringindustrialization,
"[t]he family as a repository of warmth and tenderness (embodied by the
mother) stands in opposition to the competitive and aggressive world of
commerce (embodied by the father). The family's task was to protect against the
outside world."[24] However, Zinn and Eizen
note, "The protective image of the family has waned in recent years as the
ideals of family fulfillment have taken shape. Today, the family is more
compensatory than protective. It supplies what is vitally needed but missing in
other social arrangements."[25]
"The popular
wisdom", according to Zinn and Eitzen, sees the family structures of the
past as superior to those today, and families as more stable and happier at a
time when they did not have to contend with problems such as illegitimate
children and divorce.
They respond to this, saying, "there is no golden age of the family
gleaming at us in the far back historical past."[26] "Desertion by spouses,
illegitimate children, and other conditions that are considered characteristics
of modern times existed in the past as well."[27]
Others argue that whether
or not one views the family as "declining" depends on one's
definition of "family". The high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock
births indicate a decline in the institution of the family.[citation needed] Married couples have
dropped below half of all American households. This drop is shocking from
traditional forms of the family system. Only a fifth of households were
following traditional ways of having married couples raising a family together.[28] No longer are marriages
arranged for political or economic gain, and children are not expected to
contribute to family income. Instead, people choose mates based on love. This increased role of love indicates a
societal shift toward favoring emotional fulfilment and relationships within a
family, and this shift necessarily weakens the institution of the family.[29]
Margaret Mead considers the
family as a main safeguard to continuing human progress. Observing, "Human
beings have learned, laboriously, to be human", she adds: "we hold
our present form of humanity on trust, [and] it is possible to lose it"
... "It is not without significance that the most successful large-scale
abrogations of the family have occurred not among simple savages, living close
to the subsistence edge, but among great nations and strong empires, the
resources of which were ample, the populations huge, and the power almost
unlimited"[30]
As an agent of
socialization, family is the primary source of influence behind the formation
of personality and the growth of a child,[31] due to its influence on the
basics of personality and its role providing gender identity. This impact is
large as the family confers its social position onto the child when it is
brought into the world.
The model, common in the
western societies, of the family triangle, husband-wife-children isolated from
the outside, is also called the oedipal model of the family, and it is a form of patriarchal family. Many philosophers
and psychiatrists analyzed such a model. In the family, they argue, the young
develop in a perverse relationship, wherein they learn to love the same person
who beats and oppresses them. Young children grow up and
develop loving the person that is oppressing them physically or mentally. These
children are taught differently than the appropriate way of raising
affectionate children.[32] The family therefore
constitutes the first cell of the fascist society, as they will carry this
attitude of love for oppressive figures in their adult life.[33][34] Fathers torment their sons.[35][36]Deleuze
and Guattari, in their analysis of the dynamics at work within a family,
"track down all varieties of fascism, from the enormous ones that surround
and crush us to the petty ones that constitute the tyrannical bitterness of our
everyday lives".[33]
As it has been explained by
Deleuze, Guattari and Foucault, as well as other philosophers and psychiatrists
such as Laing and Reich, the patriarchal-family
conceived in the West tradition serves the purpose of perpetuating a propertarian and authoritarian society.[37] The child grows according
to the oedipal model, which is typical of the structure of capitalist
societies,[9][10] and he becomes in turn
owner of submissive children and protector of
the woman.[36][38][39][40][41]
As the young undergoes
physical and psychological repression from someone for whom they
develop love, they develop a loving attitude towards authority figures. They
will bring such attitude in their adult life, when they will desire social repression and will form docile
subjects for society.[37] Michel Foucault, in
his systematic study of sexuality, argued
that rather than being merely repressed, the desires of the individual are
efficiently mobilized and used,[33] to control the individual,
alter interpersonal relationships and control the masses.
Foucault believed organized
religion, through moral prohibitions, and economic powers,
through advertising, make
use of unconscious sex drives. Dominating desire, they dominate individuals.[42] According to the analysis
of Michel Foucault, in
the west:
the
[conjugal] family organization, precisely to the extent that it was insular and
heteromorphous with respect to the other power mechanisms, was used to
support the great "maneuvers" employed for the Malthusian control of the birthrate,
for the populationist incitements, for the medicalization of sex and the
psychiatrization of its nongenital forms.
Natalism is the belief that human
reproduction is the basis for individual existence, and
therefore promotes having large families. Many religions, e.g., Islam,Christianity and Judaism,[43] encourage their followers
to procreate and have many children, however many of them also propound stewardship and responsibility to care
for the environment and society. In recent times, however, there has been an
increasing amount of family planning and a following decrease in
the total
fertility rate in many parts of the world,
in part due to improvements in health care, concerns of overpopulation,
decreasing need for manual labor and increasingcost of raising a child as workers need to be more
skilled. Many countries with population
decline offer incentives for people to have large
families as a means ofnational
efforts to reverse declining populations.
·
Nepotism
1. ^ a b Schneider, David 1984 A
Critique of the Study of Kinship. Ann Arbor:University of
Michigan Press. p. 182
3. ^ Russon, John, (2003) Human Experience:
Philosophy, Neurosis, and the Elements of Everyday Life, Albany: State
University of New York Press. pp. 61–68.
5. ^ Wolf,
Eric. 1982 Europe and the People Without History. Berkeley: University
of California Press. 92
6. ^ Harner,
Michael 1975 "Scarcity, the Factors of Production, and Social
Evolution," in Population. Ecology, and Social Evolution, Steven Polgar,
ed. Mouton Publishers: the Hague.
8. ^ Oregonstate.edu, Nuclear family – "A
family group consisting of wife, husband (or one of these) and dependent
children." – Definitions of Anthropological Terms – Anthropological
Resources – (Court Smith) Department of Anthropology, Oregon State
University
15. ^ Tooker,
Elisabeth. "Another View of Morgan on Kinship." Current
Anthropology 20, no. 1 (March 1979): 131–134.
16. ^ Williams, Brian;
Stacey C. Sawyer, Carl M. Wahlstrom (2005). Marriages, Families & Intinamte
Relationships. Boston, MA: Pearson. 0-205-36674-0.
17. ^ Levitan,
Sara. 2010. What Happens to Family Life?http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1981/09/art4full.pdf
18. ^ "The Collapse of Marriage by Don Browning – The
Christian Century". Religion-online.org. February 7, 2006.
pp. 24–28. Retrieved 2007-07-10.
20. ^ "Department of Social and Developmental Psychology:
PPSIS Faculty, Academic Profile". Sdp.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved
2011-03-26.
22. ^ McCornack,
Steven (2010). Reflect & Relate an introduction to interpersonal
communication. Boston/NY: Bedford/St. Martin's. pp. 369–370.
23. ^ Zinn,
Maxine Baca; D. Stanley Eitzen (2002). Diversity in families (6 ed.). Allyn and Bacon.
p. 557. ISBN 978-0-205-33522-0.
Retrieved 2012-01-06. "This 'family as haven' image of a refuge from an
impersonal world characterizes the family as a place of intimacy, love, and
trust in which individuals may escape the competition of dehumanizing forces in
modern society. Christopher Lasch (1977:8) has named this image a 'haven in a
heartless world' and described it as a glorification of private life made
necessary by the deprivations experienced in the public world."
28. ^ Tavernise,
Sabrina. (2011). Married Couples Are No Longer a Majority, Census Finds. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/26/us/26marry.html?_r=1#
29. ^ Coontz,
Stephanie. 2005. Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage. New York:
Viking/Penguin Books.
32. ^ “About
Family.” Word Press. Published 31 March 2012.http://kirkomrik.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/more-notes-about-family/
34. ^ Wilhelm Reich (1933) The Mass
Psychology of Fascism, Chapter V, The Sex-Economic
Presuppositions of the Authoritarian Family
36. ^ a b Wilhelm Reich [1936] The Sexual Revolution,
Chapter V, The compulsive family as educational apparatus, pp.
71–77
38. ^ (Italian) Gianni Vattimo Tutto in famiglia (article appeared
on Il ManifestoOctober
15, 2004), feltrinelli.it (Italian)
41. ^ E. James Anthony, The Family and the Psychoanalytic Process in Children(1980).
Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 35:3–34, pep-web.org
·
Foucault, Michel (1978). The History of Sexuality:
Volume I: An Introduction. New York Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0-679-72469-8
·
Denis Chevallier, « Famille et parenté: une
bibliographie », Terrain, Numéro 4 – Famille et parenté (mars 1985), mis
en ligne le 17 juillet 2005. Consulté le 15 juin 2007,
terrain.revues.org (French)
·
Paul
Gilroy (2000) [Identity Belonging and the
Critique of Pure Sameness] in Gilroy, Paul (2000) Against Race: Imagining
Political Culture Beyond the Color Line, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, Ch. I.3, pp. 97–133
·
Jack
Goody (1983) The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge University Press); translated into Spanish,
French, Italian, Portuguese.
·
Tabak I., Mazur J., Granado M.C., Örkenyi Á., Zaborskis
A., Aasvee K. & Moreno C. (2012). Examining trends in parent-child
communication in Europe over 12 years. The Journal of Early Adolescence, 32
(1), 26-54. DOI: 10.1177/0272431611419509 [2]
 |
 |
For
a list of words relating to family, see the en:Familycategory of words in Wiktionary,
the free dictionary.
|
·
Family Research Laboratory, unh.edu
·
Family evolution and
contemporary social transformations, seres.fcs.ucr.ac.cr (Estación
de Economía Política)
·
Family Facts: Social Science
Research on Family, Society & Religion (a Heritage Foundation
site). familyfacts.org
·
FAMILYPLATFORM - A consortium of 12
organisations providing input into the European Union's Socio-Economic and
Humanities Research Agenda on Family Research and Family Policies.
·
Unitedfamilies.org,
International organisation
·
UN.org, Families and
Development
·
Family, marriage and "de
facto" unions, Vatican.va
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