Family, Home, Relatives

A „family“ consists of people who are socially-related to one another. An exam of such a social relationship might be marriage or cohabitation.

„Kinship“ is a related concept taht means connections between people (either through marriage or lines of descent) that are „blood relationships“. An example of a kinship relationship might be that of a mother and child. Thus, the relationship between a husband and wife is one of „family“, while the relationship between them and their children is one of both family and kinship.

„Marriage“ is an important concept when talking about family life in our society. We place a great deal of importance upon the concept of „legal marriage“ as the cornestone of the family group.

A „household“ is a group of people who have a comon residence. There is not necessarily any family or kinship relationship between them.

In general, teh legal union of two (or more in some cases) adults is considered the norm in most modern indusrialised societies. However, „cohabitation“ (the idea tah two people live together and raise their children without being legally/formally married) is an increasingly popular choice.

Marrieage in our society tends to be of the serial monogramy type, that is, you can only be legally married to one partner of the opposite sex at any one time. But other societes practise strict monogramy, it means that you are married to your partner until his/her death – divorce is prohibited (Southern Ireland being a good example here). In yet other societies, various forms of polygamy are practised (where a man can be married to more than one woman or, in rather more extreme cases, a woman can be legally married to more than man.)

In some societies, choice of marriage partner is a matter of individual choice – people meet, fall in love and marry. In others )most notably sociesties where the Hindu religion is wellestablished – India for example) arranged marriages are the norm (a situation in which parents eigher decide or have a great say in the individual´s choice of marriage partner). In our own recent past, arranged marriages amongst the upper classes tented to be the norm, mainly because weathly parents wanted to ensure that their family wealth was not diluted by the son or daughter´s „inapprapriate“ marriage )that is, marriage to someone whose family were not weathly).

There are number of different family structures that we can identify (excented, nuclear, single-parent and reconstituted) as well as a number of „family structures“ that might be considered to deviate from the kind of nuclear norm.

Excented Families: This type of family structure generaly consist of three or more generations living in the same houshold (or very close proximity).

The Nuclear Family basically consists of two generatios of family members living in the same household. Family contats amongst kin (for example, brothers, sisters, cousin, etc.)  are usually weaker and less frequent than amongst members of excended families. Contact with wider kin, while it cleary exists, is more likely to involve „impersonal contats“ sucha s the telephone, rather than the more closely-personal relationships experienced in the excented family.

Single-Parent Families, as the name implelies, involve a single person plus depented children. Although i tis more likely to invole a female parent, a significant proportion of such families involves a male parent. This type  of family is sometimes referred-to as a „broken nuclear“ family, asi t often – but not always – arises out of the break –up of a nuclear family.

The precense of this family structure can be attributed to three main factors:

An increase in the numbers of people divorcing.
Pregnancy outside marriage
The death of a marriage partner.