Family

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).

Two parents and a child; statue Family in the garden of the Palace of Nations (Geneva, Switzerland)

{{Aology of kinship} {{Close reationships}

In human context, 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).

Kinship terminology

Degrees of kinship

Family in a wagon, Lee County, Mississippi, August 1935.

A first-degree relative is one who shares 50% of your DNA, such as a full sibling, parent or progeny.

Kinship	Closeness	Genetic overlap
Identical twins	not applicable	99.9%
Full sibling	first-degree	50%
Parent	first-degree	50%
Offspring/progeny	first-degree	50%
Half-sibling	second-degree	25%
Grandmother/grandfather	second-degree	25%
Aunt/uncle	second-degree	25%
Niece/nephew	second-degree	25%
First cousin	third-degree	12.5%
Half-aunt, half-uncle	third-degree	12.5%
Half-niece/half-nephew	third-degree	12.5%
First cousin once removed	fourth-degree	6.25%
Second cousin	fifth-degree	3.125%
Third cousin	seventh-degree	0.781%

Terminologies

Family tree showing the relationship of each person to the orange person. Cousins are colored green. The genetic kinship degree (excluding maternally-passed mitochondrial DNA and sex chromosomes) of relationship is marked in red boxes by percentage (%).

Main article: Kinship terminology

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. 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.

Family roles

See also: Cousin chart

Group photograph of a Norwegian family by Gustav Borgen ca. 1900: Father, mother, three sons and two daughters.

Extended family with roots in Cape Town, Kimberley and Pretoria, South Africa

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson with grandchild, 1900

An infant, his mother, his maternal grandmother, and his great-grandmother

Father and child, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Most Western societies employ Eskimo kinship terminology. This kinship terminology commonly occurs in societies based on conjugal (or nuclear) families, where nuclear families have a degree of relative mobility. Members of the nuclear use descriptive kinship terms:

• Father: a male parent
• Mother: a female parent
• Son: a male child of the parent(s)
• Daughter: a female child of the parent(s)
• Brother: a male sibling
• Sister: a female sibling
• Grandfather: the father of a parent
• Grandmother: the mother of a parent
• Cousins: two people who share at least one grandparent in common, but neither the same parents.

Such systems generally assume that the mother's husband is also 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 western society the single parent family has been growing more accepted and has begun to make an impact on culture. Single parent families are more commonly single mother families than single father. These families sometimes face difficult issues besides the fact that they have to rear their children on their own, for example low income making it difficult to pay for rent, child care, and other necessities for 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:

• Grandparent
  • Grandfather: a parent's father
  • Grandmother: a parent's mother
• Grandchild
  • 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, mother's brother, father's sister's husband, mother's sister's husband
• Aunt: father's sister, mother's sister, father's brother's wife, mother's brother's wife
• Nephew: brother's son, sister's son, husband's brother's son, husband's sister's son, wife's brother's son, wife's sister's son
• Niece: brother's daughter, sister's daughter, husband's brother's daughter, husband's sister's daughter, wife's brother's daughter, wife'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 uncles or aunts. 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.

History of theories of the family

Main article: History of the family

Social Darwinists

Early scholars of family history applied Darwin's biological theory of evolution in their theory of evolution of family systems. 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. Morgan's book was the "inspiration for Friedrich Engels' book" The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State published in 1884.

Engels expanded Morgan's hypothesis that economical factors caused the transformation of primitive community into a class-divided society. 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.

The nuclear family in industrial society

Family arrangements in the United States have become more diverse with no particular household arrangement representing half of the United States population.

Contemporary society generally views the family as a haven from the world, supplying absolute fulfillment. Zinn and Eitzen discuss the image of the "family as haven [...] a place of intimacy, love and trust where individuals may escape the competition of dehumanizing forces in modern society". During industrialization, "[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." However, Zinn and Eitzen 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."

"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." "Desertion by spouses, illegitimate children, and other conditions that are considered characteristics of modern times existed in the past as well."

The postmodern family

Percentage of births to unmarried women, selected countries, 1980 and 2007

Others argue that whether or not one views the family as "declining" depends on one's definition of "family". 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. In the Western World, marriages are no longer arranged for economic, social or political gain, and children are no longer 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.

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"

Oedipal family model and fascism

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 have analyzed such a model. In such a family, they argue, the young develop in a perverse relationship, wherein they learn to love the same person who beats and oppresses them. They believe that young children grow up and develop loving a person who is oppressing them physically or mentally, and that these children are not taught in a way that will raise affectionate children. Such philosophers claim that the family therefore constitutes the first cell of the fascist society, as the children will carry this attitude of love for oppressive figures in their adult life. They claim that fathers torment their sons. 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".

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. The child grows according to the oedipal model, which is typical of the structure of capitalist societies, and he becomes in turn owner of submissive children and protector of the woman.

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. 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, 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. 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.

— Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality vol I, chap. IV, sect. Method, rule 3, p. 99

Domestic violence

Main article: Domestic violence

Further information: Forced marriage and Child marriage

Domestic violence (DV) is violence that happens within the family. The legal and social understanding of the concept of DV differs by culture. The definition of the term "domestic violence" varies, depending on the context in which it is used. It may be defined differently in medical, legal, political or social contexts. The definitions have varied over time, and vary in different parts of the world.

The Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence states that:

" “domestic violence” shall mean all acts of physical, sexual, psychological or economic violence that occur within the family or domestic unit or between former or current spouses or partners, whether or not the perpetrator shares or has shared the same residence with the victim".

Forced and child marriages are practiced in certain regions of the world, particularly in Asia and Africa, and these types of marriages are associated with a high rate of DV.

Size

Mennonite siblings, Montana 1937

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, 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 increasing cost 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 of national efforts to reverse declining populations.

Family rights and laws

Reproductive rights

Main article: Reproductive rights

Further information: Forced sterilization, Forced pregnancy, and Forced abortion

Reproductive rights are legal rights and freedoms relating to reproduction and reproductive health. These include the right to decide on issues regarding the number of children born, family planning, contraception, and private life, free from coercion and discrimination; as well as the right to access health services and adequate information. According to UNFPA, reproductive rights "include the right to decide the number, timing and spacing of children, the right to voluntarily marry and establish a family, and the right to the highest attainable standard of health, among others".

Mothers' rights

Main article: Mothers' rights

Mothers' rights movements focus on maternal health, workplace issues such as labor rights, breastfeeding, and rights in family law.

Fathers' rights

Main article: Fathers' rights

The fathers' rights movement is a movement whose members are primarily interested in issues related to family law, including child custody and child support, that affect fathers and their children.

Children's rights

Main article: Children's rights

Children's rights are the human rights of children, with particular attention to the rights of special protection and care afforded to minors, including their right to association with both parents, their right to human identity, their right to be provided in regard to their other basic needs, and their right to be free from violence and abuse.

Marriage rights

Main article: Marriage laws

Each jurisdiction has its own marriage laws. These laws differ significantly from country to country; and these laws are often controversial. Areas of controversy include women's rights as well as same sex marriage.

Work-family balance

Further information: Work–life balance and Work–family balance in the United States

Work-family balance is a concept involving proper prioritizing between work/career and family life. It includes issues relating to the way how work and families intersect and influence each other. At a political level, it is reflected through policies such maternity leave and paternity leave.

Health

Global maternal mortally rate, (2010)

Family medicine

Main article: Family medicine

Family medicine is a medical specialty devoted to comprehensive health care for people of all ages; it is based on knowledge of the patient in the context of the family and the community, emphasizing disease prevention and health promotion. The importance of family medicine is being increasingly recognized.

World infant mortality rates in 2012

Maternal mortality

Main article: Maternal mortality

Maternal mortality or maternal death is defined by WHO as "the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management but not from accidental or incidental causes." Historically, maternal mortality was a major cause of women's death. In recent decades, advances in healthcare have resulted in rates of maternal mortality having dropped dramatically, especially in Western countries. Maternal mortality however remains a serious problem in many African and Asian counties.

Infant and child mortality

Main articles: Infant mortality and Child mortality

Infant mortality is the death of a child less than one year of age. Child mortality is the death of a child before the child's fifth birthday. Like maternal mortality, infant and child mortality were common throughout history, but have decreased significantly in modern times.

Criticism of family

Certain social scientists have advocated the abolition of the family. An early opponent of the family was Socrates whose position was outlined by Plato in The Republic. In Book 5 of The Republic, Socrates tells his interlocutors that a just city is one in which citizens have no family ties.

The family being such a deep-rooted and much-venerated institution, few intellectuals have ventured to speak against it. Familialism has been atypically defined as a “social structure where … a family's values are held in higher esteem than the values of the individual members of the family.” Favoritism granted to relatives regardless of merit is called nepotism.

The Russian-American rationalist and individualist philosopher, novelist and playwright Ayn Rand compared partiality towards consanguinity with racism, as a small-scale manifestation of the latter. “The worship of the family is merely racism, like a crudely primitive first installment on the worship of the tribe. It places the accident of birth above a man's values and duty to the tribe above a man's right to his own life.” Additionally, she spoke in favor of childfree lifestyle, while following it herself.

The British social critic, poet, mountaineer and occultist Aleister Crowley censured the institution of family in his works: “Horrid word, family! Its very etymology accuses it of servility and stagnation. / Latin, famulus, a servant; Oscan, Faamat, he dwells. … [T]hink what horrid images it evokes from the mind. Not only Victorian; wherever the family has been strong, it has always been an engine of tyranny. Weak members or weak neighbours: it is the mob spirit crushing genius, or overwhelming opposition by brute arithmetic. … In every Magical, or similar system, it is invariably the first condition which the Aspirant must fulfill: he must once and for all and for ever put his family outside his magical circle.”

The American journalist Marty Nemko considers family to be overrated. “Politicians, clerics, and just plain folks extol family as our most important institution. / I believe family is overrated. So many people suffer inordinately from family. … / Millions of people don't even speak with a family member. Millions more spend years and fortunes on therapists, trying to undo the ills that family perpetrated on them. / All this shouldn’t be surprising. After all, unlike with friends, we are placed in our family of origin at random, with no say in the matter.”

In the Bible

In the gospels of the New Testament Mark 3:31-35 and Matthew 23:9, it is written, “There came then [Jesus'] brethren and his mother, and, standing without, sent unto him, calling him. / And the multitude sat about him, and they said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee. / And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or my brethren? / And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! / For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother. … / And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.”

Jesus Christ is also recorded in the Bible as saying,

If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26)

, as well as “Then Peter began to say unto him, Lo, we have left all, and have followed thee. / And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's, / But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.” (Mark 10:29-30).

Such passages abound: Matthew 8-21, 10:34-36, 12:47-49, 15:4-7; Luke 2:46-49, 8:20-21, 9:59-62, 11:27-28, 12:51-53.

See also

• Familialism
• Nepotism
• Childlessness
• Childfree
• Family economics
• Household
• Stepfamily

Bibliography

• Chevallier, Denis. "Famille et parenté: une bibliographie". Terrain (in French). Retrieved January 8, 2014.
• Forbes, Scott, A Natural History of Families, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), ISBN 0-691-09482-9
• Foucault, Michel (1978). The History of Sexuality: Volume I: An Introduction. (New York: Vintage Books). ISBN 978-0-679-72469-8
• Gilroy, Paul 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
• Goody, Jack The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge University Press, 1980); translated into Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese.
• Mock, Douglas W., More Than Kin and Less Than Kind, (Belknap Press, 2004), ISBN 0-674-01285-2
• Schneider, David M., American Kinship: a cultural approach (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).
• 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. pp. 26–54. doi:10.1177/0272431611419509. Retrieved January 8, 2014.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Ommer, Uwe. 1000 Families: das Familienalbum des Planeten Erde. Taschen, Cologne 2002, ISBN 3-8228-2264-7

External links

• Family database, OECD,
• 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
• Families Australia – independent peak not-for-profit organisation. familiesaustralia.org.au
• 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