Family - The Cornerstone

What is family? It is composed of.... family is defined as a group......family is the most basic.......

A family is composed of a man and a woman having a socially approved sexual relationship and whatever offspring they might have. As a social unit, a family is defined as a group of persons of both sexes related by marriage, blood, or adoption, performing roles based on age, sex and relationship and socially distinguished as making up a single household or a sub household with one another, and who also form an economic unit and the adult members are responsible for the upbringing of children. 

Murdock defines family as a social group characterized by common residence, economic cooperation and reproduction. It includes adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain a socially approved sexual relationship and one or more children, own or adopted, of the cohabiting adults. 

According to Ross, family is a group of people usually related as some particular type of kindred, who may live in one household and whose unity resides in a patterning of rights and duties, sentiments and authority. Here the definition of Ross, includes physical, social and psychological elements of family life. Family is rooted in the bio-psychic needs of human being, no family comes into existence without marriage.

Many sociologists have regarded the family as the cornerstone of society and most important primary group for the process of socialization. It forms the basic unit of social organization and it is difficult to imagine how human society could function without it. It is also a micro unit of social system. In general the family has been seen as a universal social institution, as an inevitable part of human society. Thus a family is a social group of two or more people who live together and are related by marriage, blood or adoption, where members of family always have some reciprocal rights and obligations, where members of family always have some reciprocal rights and obligations. Therefore, Burgess defines “family is a group of persons united by the ties of marriage, blood or adoption, consisting a single household, interacting and intercommunicating with each other in their respective social roles of husband and wife, father and mother, son and daughter, brother and sister creating a common culture”.

The family is the most basic and oldest social unit and traces of it can be found one million years ago, in all societies past and present in some form, although the nature of family relationships is widely variable. In the course of human history in all known societies it has been the family that provided the individual with an identity with a social status and with physical as well as moral support, by caring and protecting children while they acquire the cultural behavior, beliefs and values necessary for their own, and their society’s survival. Murdock speculated that the family is universal because it is functional, that performs the four functions fundamental to social life, sexual, economic, reproductive, and educational.

___________________________________________________________________

  

To know more you can visit these significant topics:
The Development of Literacy and Schooling, Commensality, Indian State, State, Indian Society, Religion, Marriage, kinship System, Social Institution, Types of Marriage, Community, Indology, Social Movement, Bride Wealth (Price), Nation State

Reference:

•  Various. 

___________________________________________________________________

Aptitude Amplifier ©2017. All Rights Reserved.