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Family
Family is a group of people or animals (many species form the equivalent of a human family wherein the adults care for the young) affiliated by consanguinity, Affinity (sociology)|affinity or household|co-residence. Although the concept of consanguinity originally referred to relations by "blood", cultural anthropology|anthropologists 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.
One of the primary functions of the family is to produce and reproduce persons—biologically and socially.[Schneider, David 1984 A Critique of the Study of Kinship. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. p. 182][Deleuze-Guattari (1972). Part 2, ch. 3, p.80] 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.[John Russon|Russon, John, (2003) ''Human Experience: Philosophy, Neurosis, and the Elements of Everyday Life'', Albany: State University of New York Press. pp 61-68.] 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.[George Peter Murdoch ''Social Structure'' page 13] 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, is necessary for the formation of an economically productive household.[Wolf, Eric. 1982 Europe and the People Without History. Berkeley: University of California Press. 92][Harner, Michael 1975 "Scarcity, the Factors of Production, and Social Evolution," in Population. Ecology, and Social Evolution, Steven Polgar, ed. Mouton Publishers: the Hague.][Rivière, Peter 1987 "Of Women, Men, and Manioc", Etnologiska Studien (38).]
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 in sociology as a nuclear family.[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]
A '''consanguineal''' family consists of a parent and his or her children, and other people.
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.
History of the family
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.[Lacan 1938-2001, pp.24-25, 56][Fugier Pascal, 2007, p.226-8]
Early scholars of family history applied Charles Darwin|Darwin's biological theory of evolution in their theory of evolution of family systems.[Morgan 1877] Morgan's book was the "inspiration for Friedrich Engels' book" ''The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State'' published in 1884.Kinship terminology
Archaeologist Lewis H. Morgan|Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881) performed the first survey of kinship terminologies in use around the world. Though 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. Morgan's distinction is widely misunderstood, even by contemporary anthropologists. 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 more than a bit 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 which do. Morgan, a lawyer, came to make this distinction in an effort to understand Seneca tribe|Seneca inheritance practices. A Seneca man's effects were inherited by his sisters' children rather than by his own children.[Tooker, Elisabeth. “Another View of Morgan on Kinship.” ''Current Anthropology'' 20, no. 1 (March 1979): 131-134.]
Morgan identified six basic patterns of kinship terminologies:
- Hawaiian kinship|Hawaiian: only distinguishes relatives based upon sex and generation.
- Sudanese kinship|Sudanese: no two relatives share the same term.
- Eskimo kinship|Eskimo: in addition to distinguishing relatives based upon sex and generation, also distinguishes between lineal relatives and collateral relatives.
- Iroquois kinship|Iroquois: in addition to sex and generation, also distinguishes between siblings of opposite sexes in the parental generation.
- Crow kinship|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 kinship|Omaha: like a Crow system but patrilineal.
Western kinship
Most Western societies employ Eskimo kinship terminology. This kinship terminology commonly occurs in societies based on conjugal family|conjugal (or nuclear family|nuclear) families, where nuclear families have a degree of relative mobility.
Members of the nuclear family (or immediate family) use descriptive kinship terms:
- '''Mother''': a female parent
- '''Father''': a male parent
- '''Son''': a male child of the parent(s)
- '''Daughter''': a female child of the parent(s)
- '''Sibling|Brother''': a male child of the same parent(s)
- '''Sibling|Sister''': a female child of the same parent(s)
- '''Grandfather''': father of a father or mother
- '''Grandmother''': mother of a mother or father
- '''Cousin''': two people that share the same Grandparent(s)
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 raise their children on their own, but also have to deal with issues related to low income. Many single parents struggle with low incomes and find it hard to cope with other issues that they face 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:
- 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, mother's brother, father's/mother's sister's husband
- '''Aunt''': father's sister, mother's sister, father's/mother's brother's wife
- '''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. And 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 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".
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 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. No special terms exist for the rest of one's spouse's family.
The terms "half-brother" and "half-sister" indicate siblings who share only one biological or adoptive parent.
Economic functions
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.
Political functions
On the other hand family structures or its internal relationships may affect both state and religious institutions. J.F. del Giorgio in ''The Oldest Europeans'' points out that the high status of women among the descendants of the post-glacial Paleolithic European population was coherent with the fierce love of freedom of pre-Indo-European tribes. He believes that the extraordinary respect for women in those families meant that children raised in such atmospheres tended to distrust strong, authoritarian leaders. According to del Giorgio, European democracies have their roots in those ancient ancestors.
Family in the West
Family Types
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. Sociology|Sociologists have a special interest in the function and status of these forms in stratified (especially Capitalism|capitalist) societies.
The term "nuclear family" is commonly used, especially in the United States and Europe, 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 the United States and Europe. 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 (disambiguation)|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, history|historical and cultural anthropology|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.
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".[Blended and Blessed - Encouraging Step-Families, blendedandblessed.com ]
Sociological views
Contemporary society generally views family as a haven from the world, supplying absolute fulfillment. The family is considered to encourage "intimacy, love and Trust (social sciences)|trust where individuals may Escapism|escape the competition of dehumanizing forces in modern society from the rough and tumble Industrialisation|industrialized world, and as a place where Maternal bond|warmth, tenderness and understanding can be expected from a loving mother, and protection from the world can be expected from the father. To many, the ideal of personal or family fulfillment has replaced protection as the major role of the family. The family now supplies what is “vitally needed but missing from other social arrangements”.[Zinn and Eitzen (1987) ''Diversity in American families'']
Social conservatives often express concern over a purported decay of the family and see this as a sign of the crumbling of contemporary society. They feel that the family structures of the past were superior to those today and believe that families were more stable and happier at a time when they did not have to contend with problems such as illegitimate children and divorce. Others dispute this theory, claiming “there is no golden age of the family gleaming at us in the far back historical past”.[Coontz, Stephanie. 2005. Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage. New York: Viking/Penguin Books.]
Œdipal 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 ''oedipal model of the family'', and it is a form of patriarchal-family.
Many philosophers and psychiatrists analyzed such a model. One of the most prominent of such studies, is ''Anti-Œdipus'' by Gilles Deleuze|Deleuze and Félix Guattari|Guattari (1972). Michel Foucault, in its renowned preface, remarked how the primary focus of this study is the fight against contemporary fascism.[Wilhelm Reich (1933) ''The Mass Psychology of Fascism'', Chapter V, ''The Sex-Economic Presuppositions of the Authoritarian Family''] Kindship and family forms have often been considered as impacting the social relations in the society as a whole, and therefore been described as the ''first cell'' or the ''building social unit'' of the structure of a society.[Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, 1930s works][John Phillips Structural Linguistics and Anthropology, courses.nus.edu.sg] Fathers torment their sons.[Foucault (1984) Preface to the American edition of ''Anti-Œdipus'' pp. xiii-xvi).]
As Deleuze, Guattari and Foucault, also other philosophers and psychiatrists like Ronald David Laing|Laing and Wilhelm Reich|Reich, have explained that the patriarchal-family conceived in the West tradition, serves the purpose of perpetuating a propertarian and authoritarian society.[Wilhelm Reich 1936 ''The Sexual Revolution'', Chapter V, ''The compulsive family as educational apparatus'', pp. 71-77][ Gianni Vattimo ''Tutto in famiglia'' (article appeared on ''Il Manifesto'' October 15 2004), feltrinelli.it ][ Daniele Luttazzi|Luttazzi, Daniele ''Bollito misto con mostarda'' (2005) p.262, books.google.com][Theodor W. Adorno and Stephen Crook ''Adorno'' ISBN 0415270995, p. 9-10, books.google.com][E. James Anthony, ''The Family and the Psychoanalytic Process in Children'' (1980). Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 35:3-34, pep-web.org]
Some argue the family institution conflicts with human nature and human primitive desires, and that one of its core functions is performing a suppression of instincts,[Deleuze-Guattari (1972). Part 2, ch. 7, pp.129-31]
Michel Foucault, in his systematic study of Sexology|sexuality, argued that
rather than being merely repressed, the desires of the individual are efficiently mobilized and used,[Foucault, ''The History of Sexuality'']
According to the analysis of Michel Foucault, in the west:
Civil rights movements
The Family Equality Council[Family Equality Council, familyequality.org] envisions a future where all families, regardless of creation or composition, will be able to live in communities that recognize, respect, protect, and celebrate them. The organization envisions a world that celebrates a diversity of family constellations and respects individuals for supporting one another and sustaining loving families.
Inbreeding
A study performed by scientists from Iceland found that mating with a relative (incest) can significantly increase the number of children in a family. A lot of societies consider inbreeding unacceptable. Scientists warn that inbreeding may raise the chances of a child getting two copies of disease-causing recessive genes and in such a way it may lead to genetic disorders and higher infant mortality.
Scientists found that couples formed of relatives had more children and grandchildren than unrelated couples. The study revealed that when a husband and wife were third cousins, they had an average of 4.0 children and 9.2 grandchildren. If a woman was in relationship with her eighth cousin, then the number of children declined, showing an average of 3.3 children and 7.3 grandchildren .[Related Couples Have More Children, infoniac.com]
Size
Natalism is the belief that human reproduction is the basis for individual existence, and therefore promotes having large families. Many religions, e.g., Judaism,[Joys of A Large Family, by Rebbetzin Faige Twerski. angelfire.com ] encourage their followers to procreate and have many children. In recent times, however, there has been an increasing amount of family planning and a following decrease in total fertility rate in many parts of the world, in part due to concerns of overpopulation. Many countries with population decline offer incentives for people to have large families as a means of Population decline#National efforts to reverse declining populations|national efforts to reverse declining populations.
See also
References
Notes
- ''American Kinship'', David M. Schneider
- ''A Natural History of Families'', Scott Forbes, 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 978-0679724698
- ''More Than Kin and Less Than Kind'', Douglas W. Mock, Belknap Press, 2004, ISBN 0-674-01285-2
- 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
- Jack Goody (1983) ''The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe'' (Cambridge University Press); translated into Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese. review: {{cite web dcvbxcbvg
Further reading
- Mattox, William R., Jr., "America's family time famine", ''Children Today'', Nov-Dec, 1990
External links
- 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
- Unitedfamilies.org, International organisation
- UN.org, Families and Development
- ''Wiktionary entries for Western kinship terminology providing multilingual translations''
- Wiktionary:mother|mother, Wiktionary:father|father, Wiktionary:son|son, Wiktionary:daughter|daughter, Wiktionary:brother|brother, Wiktionary:sister|sister
- Wiktionary:grandmother|grandmother Wiktionary:grandfather|grandfather Wiktionary:grandson|grandson Wiktionary:granddaughter|granddaughter
- Wiktionary:uncle|uncle Wiktionary:aunt|aunt Wiktionary:nephew|nephew Wiktionary:niece|niece
- Wiktionary:cousin|cousin
- Family, marriage and "de facto" unions, vatican.va
Category:Family|
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