FAMILY

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Family

Family

Introduction

The family, according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the state. The ties that define a family are of two types: links affinity derived from the establishment of a socially recognized relationship such as marriage, which, in some societies, only allows marriage between two people while in others it is possible polygamy, "and kinship ties, as the affiliation between parents and children or the bonds that develop between the brothers descended from a common parent. Family may also differ depending on the degree of kinship among its members (www.york.ac.uk).

There is no consensus on the definition of the family. Is legally defined by laws, and this definition is usually given in terms of what each law establishes marriage. For broadcast, it is considered that the nuclear family, heterosexual marriage is derived from the nuclear family. However, the forms of family life are very different, depending on social, cultural, economic and emotional. The family, like other social institutions, tend to adapt to the context of a society. This explains, for example, the high number of extended families in traditional societies, the increase of single parents in industrialized societies and the legal recognition of homo families in those societies whose law has recognized gay marriage (ibid).

Discussion

Much of the debate over how to define family has arisen because the diversity of human groups that call themselves families appears to be growing rapidly. These seem to be significantly different from, and some consider them even threatening to, what has been called the traditional family. The traditional family is usually thought of as the nuclear family. Some definitions of the traditional family include the additional stipulation that:

This is the marriage for both spouses

There are no children either spouse from other unions,

The children are the biological descendants of both spouses ( not adopted or in foster care), and/ or

The wife is not employed outside the home (www.archive.official-documentss.co.uk).

Of course, the more stipulations that are added to this definition, the smaller the number of families that can be considered traditional. As we will see variations on the nuclear family have always existed, and the traditional family, particularly defined as defined by the work patterns of the married couple, is a family form that was actually experienced on a large scale by middle class American families only in the mid twentieth century, not the standard throughout history. Nevertheless, it carries enormous emotional weight in our culture (Morgan 2009, pp. 98-114).

Social scientists approach about family

Like kinship and marriage, family is a term used in everyday language whose meaning is cognate with the culturally and historically specific social practices to which it refers. Unlike kinship and marriage the term is specifically associated with European American cultures and societies and their historical antecedents. In Consequence, while some social scientist has seen the family as universal social institutions, others have used the term to refer to a distinctive characteristic of the social life of ...