Family
Family (from Latin: familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order.[1] The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Ideally, families offer predictability, structure, and safety as members mature and learn to participate in the community.[2] Historically, most human societies use family as the primary purpose of attachment, nurturance, and socialization.[3][4][5][6]
This article is about the group of related people. For the taxonomic rank, see Family (biology). For other uses, see Family (disambiguation).
Anthropologists classify most family organizations as matrifocal (a mother and her children), patrifocal (a father and his children), conjugal (a married couple with children, also called the nuclear family), avuncular (a man, his sister, and her children), or extended (in addition to parents, spouse and children, may include grandparents, aunts, uncles, or cousins).
The field of genealogy aims to trace family lineages through history. The family is also an important economic unit studied in family economics. The word "families" can be used metaphorically to create more inclusive categories such as community, nationhood, and global village.
Types of kinship[edit]
Patrilineal[edit]
Patrilineality, also known as the male line or agnatic kinship, is a form of kinship system in which an individual's family membership derives from and is traced through his or her father's lineage.[71] It generally involves the inheritance of property, rights, names, or titles by persons related through male kin.
A patriline ("father line") is a person's father, and additional ancestors that are traced only through males. One's patriline is thus a record of descent from a man in which the individuals in all intervening generations are male. In cultural anthropology, a patrilineage is a consanguineal male and female kinship group, each of whose members is descended from the common ancestor through male forebears.
Criticism[edit]
An early opponent of the family was Socrates whose position was outlined by Plato in The Republic.[173] In Book 5 of The Republic, Socrates tells his interlocutors that a just city is one in which citizens have no family ties.[174][175]
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.[176] "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."[177] Additionally, she spoke in favor of childfree lifestyle, while following it herself.[176]
The family and social justice[edit]
One of the controversies regarding the family is the application of the concept of social justice to the private sphere of family relations, in particular with regard to the rights of women and children. Throughout much of the history, most philosophers who advocated for social justice focused on the public political arena, not on the family structures; with the family often being seen as a separate entity which needed to be protected from outside state intrusion. One notable exception was John Stuart Mill, who, in his work The Subjection of Women, advocated for greater rights for women within marriage and family.[178] Second wave feminists argued that the personal is political, stating that there are strong connections between personal experiences and the larger social and political structures. In the context of the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, this was a challenge to the nuclear family and family values, as they were understood then.[179] Feminists focused on domestic violence, arguing that the reluctance—in law or in practice—of the state to intervene and offer protection to women who have been abused within the family, is in violation of women's human rights, and is the result of an ideology which places family relations outside the conceptual framework of human rights.[180]