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A family consists of a domestic group of people (or a number of domestic groups), typically affiliated by birth or marriage, or by comparable legal relationships — including domestic partnership, adoption, surname and (in some cases) ownership (as occurred in the Roman Empire).
Although many people (including social scientists) have understood familial relationships in terms of "blood", many anthropologists have argued that one must understand the notion of "blood" metaphorically, and that many societies understand 'family' through other concepts rather than through genetics.
Article 16(3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says: "The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State".
The family cross-culturally
According to sociology and anthropology, the family has the primary function of reproducing — biologically, socially, or in both ways. Thus, one's experience of one's family shifts over time. From the perspective of children, the family functions as a family of orientation: the family serves to locate children socially, and plays a major role in their enculturation and socialization. From the point of view of the parent(s), the family serves as a family of procreation with the goal of producing, enculturating and socializing children.
Producing children, however important, does not exhaust the functions of the family. In societies with a sexual division of labor, marriage (and the resulting relationship between a husband and wife) must precede the formation of an economically productive household. In modern societies marriage entails particular rights and privileges that encourage the formation of new families even when participants have no intention of having children.
Typology
The structure of families traditionally hinges on relations between parents and children, on relations between spouses, or on both. Consequently, four major types of family exist:
- patrifocal
- matrifocal
- consanguineal
- conjugal
Note: this typology deals with "ideal" families. All societies tolerate some acceptable deviations from the ideal or statistical norm, owing either to incidental circumstances (such as the death of a member of the family), to infertility or to personal preferences.
Patrifocal families
A patrifocal family consists of a father and his children. It occurs in societies where men take multiple wives (polygamy or polygyny) and/or remain involved with each for a relatively short time. This type of family, not common from a worldwide perspective, occurs in Islamic states with considerable frequency. In some emirates the laws encourage this structure by allowing a maximum of four wives per man at any given time, and automatic deflection of custody rights to the father in the case of a divorce. In these societies a man will often take a wife and may conceive a child with her, but after a relatively short time put her out of his harem so he can take another woman without exceeding the quota of 4. The man then keeps his child and thus a patrifocal structure emerges. Even without the expulsion of the mother, the structure may become patrifocal because the father removes the children (often as infants) from the harem structure and places them in his own family.
Matrifocal families
A matrifocal family consists of a mother and her children — generally her biological offspring, although nearly every society also practises adoption of children. This kind of family commonly develops where women have the resources to rear their children by themselves, or where men have more mobility than women.
Consanguineal families
A consanguineal family consists of a mother and her children, and other people — usually the family of the mother. This kind of family commonly evolves where mothers do not have the resources to rear their children on their own, and especially where property changes ownership through inheritance. When men own important property, consanguineal families commonly consist of a husband and wife, their children, and other members of the husband's family.
Conjugal families
A conjugal family consists of one or more mothers and their children, and/or one or more spouses (usually husbands). This kind of family occurs commonly where a division of labor requires the participation of both men and women, and where families have relatively high mobility. A notable subset of this family type, the nuclear family, has one woman with one husband, and they raise their children.
Family in the West
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 an especial interest in the function and status of these forms in stratified (especially capitalist) societies.
Non-scholars, especially in the United States and Europe, use the term "nuclear family" to refer to conjugal families. Sociologists distinguish between conjugal families (relatively independent of the kindreds of the parents and of other families in general) and nuclear families (which maintain relatively close ties with their kindreds).
Non-scholars, especially in the United States and Europe, also use the term "extended family". This term has two distinct meanings. First, it serves as a synonym of "consanguinal family". 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 and anthropological research dedicates itself to the understanding of this variation, and of changes in the family form over time. Thus, some speak of the bourgeois family, a family structure arising out of 16th-century and 17th-century European households, in which the family centers on a marriage between a man and woman, with strictly-defined gender-roles. The man typically has responsibility for income and support, the woman for home and family matters.
In contemporary Europe and the United States, people in academic, political and civil sectors have called attention to single-father-headed households, and families headed by same-sex couples, although academics point out that these forms exist in other societies.
Roman Catholic Church tradition places the family under the special protection of Saint Joseph, the patron of families, fathers, expectant mothers, house-sellers and house-buyers (in contradistinction to Saint Monica, patroness of wives, mothers, and abuse-victims).
Economic function of the family
Anthropologists have often supposed that the family in a traditional society forms the primary economic unit. This economic role has gradually diminished in modern times, and in societies like the United States it has become much smaller — except in certain sectors such as agriculture and in a few upper class families. In China the family as an economic unit still plays a strong role in the countryside. However, the relations between the economic role of the family, its socio-economic mode of production and cultural values remain highly complex.
Families and other sociological institutions
Wherever people agree that families seem fundamental to the ordered nature of society, other social institutions such as the state and organised religion will make special provisions for families and will support (in word and/or in deed) the idea of the family. This can however lead to problems if conflicting loyalties arise. Thus the Biblical prescription: "every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life" (Matthew 19, 29). Totalitarian states also can develop ambiguous attitudes to families, which they may perceive as potentially interfering with the fostering of official ideology and practice. Different attitudes to divorce and to denunciation may develop in this light.
Kinship terminology
A kinship terminology describes a specific system of familial relationships. The now rather dated anthropologist Louis Henry Morgan (1818 - 1881) 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").
However, Morgan also observed that different languages (and thus, societies) organize these distinctions differently. He thus proposed to describe kin terms and terminologies as either descriptive or classificatory. "Descriptive" terms refer to only one type of relationship, while "classificatory" terms refer to many types of relationships. Most kinship terminologies include both descriptive and classificatory terms. For example, Western societies provide only one way to express relationship with one's brother (brother = parents' son); thus, in Western society, the word "brother" functions as a descriptive term. But many different ways exist to express relationship with one's male first-cousin (cousin = mother's brother's son, mother's sister's son, father's brother's son, father's sister's son, and so on); thus, in Western society, the word "cousin" operates as a classificatory term.
Morgan discovered that a descriptive term in one society can become a classificatory term in another society. For example, in some societies one would refer to many different people as "mother" (the woman who gave birth to oneself, as well as her sister and husband's sister, and also one's father's sister). Moreover, some societies do not lump together relatives that the West classifies together. For example, some languages have no one word equivalent to "cousin", because different terms refer to mother's sister's children and to father's sister's children.
Armed with these different terms, Morgan identified six basic patterns of kinship terminologies:
- Hawaiian: the most classificatory; only distinguishes between sex and generation.
- Sudanese: the most descriptive; no two relatives share the same term.
- Eskimo: has both classificatory and descriptive terms; in addition to sex and generation, also distinguishes between lineal relatives (those related directly by a line of descent) and collateral relatives (those related by blood, but not directly in the line of descent). Lineal relatives have highly descriptive terms, collateral relatives have highly classificatory terms.
- Iroquois: has both classificatory and descriptive terms; in addition to sex and generation, also distinguishes between siblings of opposite sexes in the parental generation. Siblings of the same sex class as blood relatives, but siblings of the opposite sex count as relatives by marriage. Thus, one calls one's mother's sister "mother", and one's father's brother "father"; however, one refers to one's mother's brother as "father-in-law", and to one's father's sister as "mother-in-law".
- Crow: like Iroquois, but further distinguishes between mother's side and father's side. Relatives on the mother's side of the family have more descriptive terms, and relatives on the father's side have more classificatory terms.
- Omaha: like Iroquois, but further distinguishes between mother's side and father's side. Relatives on the mother's side of the family have more classificatory terms, and relatives on the father's side have more descriptive terms.
Societies in different parts of the world and using different languages may share the same basic terminology patterns; in such cases one can very easily translate the kinship terms of one language into another, although connotations may vary. But translators usually find it impossible to translate directly the kinship terms of a society that uses one system into the language of a society that uses a different system.
Some languages, such as Chinese, Japanese, and Hungarian, add another dimension to some relations: relative age. There exist, for example, different words for "older brother" and "younger brother". Thus, although Westerners may "naturally" agree with Morgan in seeing the term "brother" as descriptive rather than classificatory, speakers of these languages might disagree.
Other languages, such as Chiricahua, have reciprocal terms. So, a Chiricahua child (male or female) calls her paternal grandmother -ch’iné and likewise this grandmother will call her son's child -ch’iné.
English kinship terminology
Most Western societies employ English-style kinship terminology. This kinship terminology commonly occurs in societies based on conjugal (or nuclear) families, where nuclear families have a degree of relatively mobility.
Members of the nuclear family use descriptive kinship terms:
- Mother: the female parent
- Father: the male parent
- Son: the males born of the mother; sired by the father
- Daughter: the females born of the mother; sired by the father
- Brother: a male born of the same mother; sired by the same father
- Sister: a female born of the same mother; sired by the same father
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 "step-brother" or "step-sister" 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 "step-parent" 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). This practice means that members of one's own nuclear family once functioned as members of another nuclear family, or may one day become members of another nuclear family.
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:
- Grandparent
- 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:
- Uncle: father's brother, father's sister's husband, mother's brother, mother's sister's husband
- Aunt: father's sister, father's brother's wife, mother's sister, mother's brother's wife
- Nephew: sister's son, brother's son
- Niece: sister's daughter, brother'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 prefix "great" modifies these terms.
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 the 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 the 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 the phrase "third cousin once removed upwards".
Distant cousins of an older generation (in other words, one's parents' first cousins), though technically first cousins once removed, often get 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 brother, or the sister of one's spouse, or the wife of one's spouse's sibling. "Brother-in-law" expresses a similar ambiguity. No special terms exist for the rest of one's spouse's family.
The terms "half-brother" and "half-sister" indicate siblings who one share only one biological or adoptive parent.
Specific distinctions vary among Western societies. For instance, in French, the prefix beau- or belle- equates to both "-in-law" and "step-"; in other words, the term belle-soeur could refer to the sister of one's spouse, the wife of one's sibling, the wife of one's spouse's sibling, or the daughter of one's parent's spouse. In Spanish, each of the roles that English creates with the suffix "-in-law" has a different word (suegros parents-in-law, yerno son-in-law, nuera daughter-in-law, cuñados siblings-in-law), but a separate suffix -astro or -astra equates to "step-". In Swedish, terms for grandparents differ on the mother's and father's sides: mormor and morfar ("mother-mother", "mother-father") as opposed to farfar and farmor ("father-father", "father-mother"). In Dutch, there no difference is made between nephews and male cousins, or nieces and female cousins. Unlike English, however, there is a difference between sexes of cousins. Nephews and male cousins are indicated using neef, where nieces and female cousins are called nicht.
One cannot always translate kin terms, and if one can, the outcome may remain culture-specific. For example, the Spanish word consuegro indicates the parent of one's son- or daughter-in-law (that is, two people whose children marry become consuegros to each other); the English language has no equivalent term. In polygynous African societies which use English and French as official languages, a sister-wife (in French belle-épouse) is another wife of one's husband; although these terms have come into common use ("I would leave my husband, but I like my sister-wives"), someone with a European cultural background may not readily understand the implications. The words brother, sister, aunt, uncle have stronger fictive-kinship nuances in many African cultures than in European ones, as exemplified by the phrase "he is my brother: same mother, same father" for a biological brother.
See also
- Kinship terms
- Ancestor
- Child
- Clan
- Consanguinity
- Domestic violence
- Family
- Genealogy
- Household
- Interpersonal relationship and Intimate relationship
- Sociology of the family
- The Family: A Proclamation to the World
- Familycentrics
- Incest
References
- American Kinship, David M. Schneider
- A Natural History of Families, Scott Forbes, Princeton University Press, 2005, ISBN 0691094829
- More Than Kin and Less Than Kind, Douglas W. Mock, Belknap Press, 2004, ISBN 0674012852
External links
- Fircle.com Family Organization
- Focus On The Family Website of Focus on the Family
- WikiTree.org - freely-edited family tree of all human beings.
- Online Dictionary of the Social Sciences: http://bitbucket.icaap.org/
- Cousins: http://www.tedpack.org/cousins.html
- Muslim Matrimonial and Muslim Family
- Grandparent Connection: http://www.thegrandparentconnection.org
- The Good Enough Family: http://samvak.tripod.com/family.html
- Cousin marriages: http://www.cousincouples.com/
- Family Court: http://www.stephenbaskerville.net/
- Family Research Laboratory
- Wiktionary entries for Western kinship terminology providing multilingual translations