12.1.1: What Is a Family? “

 12.1.1: What Is a Family? “What is a family, anyway?” Family should be easy to define because it is so significant to humanity that it is universal. Although every human group organizes its members in families, the world’s cultures display an incredible variety of family forms. The Western world regards a family as a husband, wife, and children, but in some groups, men have more than one wife (polygyny) or women more than one husband (polyandry). 

How about the obvious?

 Can we define the family as the approved group into which children are born? 

If so, we would overlook the Banaro of New Guinea.

 In this group, a young woman must give birth before she can marry—and she cannot marry the father of her child (Murdock 1949). What if we were to define the family as the unit in which parents are responsible for disciplining children and providing for their material needs? 

This, too, seems obvious, but it is not universal. 

Among the Trobriand Islanders, it is not the parents but the wife’s eldest brother who is responsible for providing both the children’s discipline and their food (Malinowski 1927). 

Such remarkable variety means that we have to settle for a broad definition. A family consists of people who consider themselves related by blood, marriage, or adoption. 

A household, in contrast, consists of people who occupy the same housing unit—a house, apartment, or other living quarters. 

We can classify families as nuclear (husband, wife, and children) and extended (including people such as grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins in addition to the nuclear unit). 

Sociologists also refer to the family of orientation (the family in which an individual grows up) and the family of procreation (the family that is formed when a couple has its first child). Often one of the strongest family bonds is that of mother–daughter. The young artist, an eleventh grader, wrote: “This painting expresses the way I feel about my future with my child. I want my child to be happy and I want her to love me the same way I love her. In that way we will have a good relationship so that nobody will be able to take us apart. I wanted this picture to be alive; that is why I used a lot of bright colors.” Credit: Courtesy of the Center for Talent Innovation, N.Y. copyright 1994.