What is a family?
When we look at the social institution of family from the macro level, we find that the concept of family exists in all societies. At the micro level, we learn that a family is a group of people related by marriage, blood or adoption who fulfill the functions of a family.
A family is a group of people related by marriage, blood or adoption and who fulfill the functions of a family.
Most people belong to two types of families in their lifetime. The first is the family of orientation and the second is the family of procreation.
The family of orientation is the family a person is born into.
The family of orientation is important because it provides a child with a name, an identity and a heritage. When a child grows up and marries, he or she forms a new family - the family of procreation.
The family of procreation is a family established upon marriage.
Both families of orientation and families of procreation can vary in size and family structure. In some families, only the nuclear family lives in the home. In other families, extended family members might share the home.
A nuclear family is a family structure composed of one or both parents and children.
An extended family is a family composed of more than two generations of family members.
In addition to grandparents and grandchildren, extended families might also include aunts, uncles, or cousins living in the same household. This type of family structure used to be quite common in the United States and is still common in many cultures around the world. In the United States, modernization and industrialization changed the typical family structure to be more nuclear than extended.
Sociologist Talcott Parsons studied family structures in the 1950s and much of his findings have defined what many Americans still see as a "traditional family." In his model, the contemporary nuclear family consists of a breadwinner husband, a homemaker wife and their children. If you recall, the gender tasks from earlier lessons, the male in this model performs the instrumental tasks and the female performs the expressive tasks.
A traditional family is the more common name for Talcott Parsons' contemporary nuclear family consisting of a breadwinner husband, a homemaker wife and their children.
While Parsons' theories have been quite popular and influential in America, it is not without flaws. For example, his model does not comply with the cultural standards of all societies in the world. Even in the United States, it has come under criticism for its rigidly defined gender roles, and for the fact that it is not economically feasible for all social classes. Read an article from The New York Times about the rise of women as the breadwinners in families:
U.S. Women on the Rise as Family Breadwinner
So far, the families we have been describing all reside under the same roof, but what about related people who don't live in the same house? Most of you when asked, "Who is in your family?" respond with the names of your nuclear family. Then again, if your cousin was visiting, you would consider her to be a family member, too, wouldn't you? While she is not a member of your nuclear family, she is a part of your kinship network.
Kinship is a large network of people who are related by ancestry, marriage, or adoption.
Kinship helps you to organize and identify relationships within families. You label certain people as you "aunt," "grandfather," "mother," or "great-uncle," to name a few, and with that term understand what that person's relationship is to you. Through kinship, you can divide your relatives into different categories. Three commonly used categories in Sociology are primary, secondary and tertiary relatives.
Primary relatives are an individual's closest relatives.
Primary relatives are directly related to you. These relatives are your mother, father, brother, sister, spouse, son, or daughter.
Secondary relatives are the primary relatives of an individual's primary relatives.
There are 33 categories of secondary relatives, but one good example is a grandparent. Your grandparent is your mother's or father's parent. Your mother or father is your primary relative, and his or her parent is his or her primary relative. Other examples include all of your aunts, uncles, in-laws, nieces or nephews.
Tertiary relatives are the primary relatives of an individual's secondary relatives.
Tertiary relatives consist of 151 additional categories of people, but a good example is your cousins. Your cousin is your aunt or uncle's child. Your uncle or aunt is your secondary relative, and his or her child is his or her primary relative. Other examples include great-grandparents, great-grandchildren, great- aunts, and great-uncles.
