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Family

Many definitions of the word “family” vie to become the most prevalent and relevant ones. Whether it’s a “group consisting of two parents and their children living together as a unit”, “all the descendants of a common ancestor”, or even a “fundamental social group in society”, trying to narrow down such a ubiquitous term is a thankless task.

Not only is it thankless to try and extract a single meaning out of this term, but it’s also very wrong. The family has had too many meanings throughout history and very often it had very little to do with blood kinship or legal marriage either. Any group of people tied together by the same set of circumstances often harbored emotions and loyalty to each other, the kind of which we prescribe to a modern nuclear family.

But, besides the inability for a single term to encompass all the historical context of the word, it’s also hard to elaborate on what “family” means in the dynamics of the contemporary world. Rather than trying to capture all of the modern family structures, a more prudent task is to discuss the importance of family in the society, and the values it instills in its members.

Types of Family

Importance of Family

Importance of Family Values

Family Relationship

Types of Family

Discussions on various types of families explore the differences in how many people comprise the household. This is an important distinction to be made, and one that plenty of authors often fail to acknowledge. Oftentimes, some types of families are treated as if they exist in a vacuum without no one to help them, but the truth of the matter is that all of the divisions that exist focus on who is constantly present in the household. There are usually seven types to distinguish from one another.

Nuclear Family

By nuclear family, it’s considered that the household is occupied by the parents and their children (who are not yet of age). It is considered to be the ideal family composition in the west and has been perpetuated for the longest time. Sometimes, a difference is made between the conjugal family, where there’s no one but the parents and their kids, and nuclear family, which is comprised of the same people, but who have a closer relationship with the extended family.

Single-parent

Family The household comprised of only a single parent, a mother or a father, and their progeny. The parent is either divorced, widowed, or never married to begin with. Due to a spike in the number of divorces, more and more single-parent families are appearing in the west.

Extended Family

Unlike the western civilization, the eastern ones are more orientated towards living in households occupied by extended families. Sometimes, this includes just one or two grandparents, but can also encompass aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.

Blended Family

We refer to a family as blended when one of the parents remarries and takes the children from the previous marriage into this new relationship.

Family of Choice

As opposed to family of origin, the family of choice is a term often used by the LGBT community, war veterans, or people who’ve never met their biological parents, just to name some. Family of choice is the group that individuals identify as their family due to the amount of support they get out of it. They cannot receive this kind of emotional support from their family of origin for one reason or another.

Monogamous Family

Jurisdictions that require monogamous marriages use bigamy laws to allow for an individual to have only a single legal spouse. In other words, a monogamous family is a structure where only a single official partner is present.

Polygamous Family

Polygamous family allows for a male to have multiple female partners (polygyny), a female to have multiple male partners (polyandry), or to simply involve various multiple partners in which case it’s referred to as polyamory. This form of plural marriage is more present in certain countries around the world and in specific cultures. Childless couples and children raised by grandparents are also groups often enlisted as types of family, with the former especially being on the rise. The latter has always existed to an extent, in cases when parents are gone or incapable of taking care of children.

Importance of Family

While disregarding the importance of family has become somewhat of a trend, in reality, the truth could not be the furthest thing from. To begin with, it’s a good idea to take a look at Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” and see all the human necessities spread across the five-layered pyramid. A man and woman with their child The same people who disregard the value of family also question the applicability of Maslow’s pyramid in the 21st century, but they could not be more wrong - family is not just the fulfillment of the fundamental needs of human beings, instead, it is the realization of most of them. In Maslow’s terms, the family can occupy the first three layers of human needs - physiological, safety, and belongingness and love needs.

In other words, the family is the backbone of an individual for most of their life, taking care of not just the basic, primal needs, but also those of more complex, psychological nature. The importance of family is so multifold and so convoluted, that simplifying it too much doesn’t do it justice. But, for the sake of the argument, this inherent importance is usually broken down as follows:

Material support. It is prudent to start with more generalized utilities that a family provides, before proceeding to the more specific examples. Material support, while not as important as some other factors, is still necessary and a foundation on which individuals can grow. It encompasses both basic needs such as food, water, and shelter, but also the more indulgent behaviors, i.e. providing the family with wants, not just needs.

Emotional support. The family provides a healthy and nurturing environment where everyone can feel open to express themselves and learn about the self in the less punishing surroundings. The world can be gruesome and tiring, and the family can provide shelter and protection from external influences when the world wears us all out. Most importantly, it’s of utmost significance for people to feel loved and cherished, appreciated for merely existing.

Value formation. For children, there should be no other place to form values that will follow them for the rest of their lives. It’s up to no one else but the parents to instill virtuous family values in their offspring, and thus equip them for all the days ahead of them.

Self-esteem. Providing children and young adults with love, guidance, support, and values will give them a fighting chance in a world so desperate to lead them astray. Knowing right from wrong and being aware that there’s always someone to stand by your side, it’s much easier to develop self-esteem in progeny and have them grapple with life on their own terms. Providing support is just as important as enabling them to live their own lives and “leave the nest”, so to speak.

Home. Life takes people in most diverse directions imaginable, where some find themselves on top, some cope with it just fine, and some simply fall. There’s no better feeling in the world than knowing that no matter how hard one can fall, there’s always one place that will take them in and help heal the wounds - home.

Importance of Family Values

Establishing a valid set of family values is but one reason why family is so important. Family values are a set of rules and principles put in place by parents in the family, inherited from their own predecessors, dictating which characteristics and behavior are to be commended.

They represent the value system on which the family lies, and they cannot in any objective way be determined true or false. In other words, one set of values can hardly be seen as better or worse than any other set of values, at least when referring to more traditional virtues such as hard work, honesty, compassion, respect, responsibility, and kindness. A specific set of beliefs in these values does not place one family above another, especially considering that family values can change and evolve over time.

The importance of family values is great indeed, as they are the most solid foundation on which family relations can be further developed. What this means is that by instilling these values in the next generation, they’ll be made aware of what behavior is valued in their family and know what will be expected of them. In the same vein, children will also know know the root of scorn they might find themselves on the receiving end of when their obligations are not fulfilled.

Besides being the most dependable of all the foundations on which the family itself can grow, family values also indicate how individuals will carry themselves in various situations in life. From decision-making, academic success, and career choices to parenting and relationships, family values establish a valid set of expectations from life and responses to crises, problems, and conflicts. More than anything, values can serve as a bulwark against unwanted behavior patterns and influence by less than savory characters.

Family Relationship

Despite it may feel as if the family structure such as we know it in the west has always been around, the history tells us otherwise. Family members Before it became a source of continuous love and emotional support, a respite from life and its dreariness, it used to share more similarities with an economic union where people were bound to the household and the person at the head of it.

Today, it’s considered to be the very spine of society, holding it upright against all odds. Even though it seems at times that the value of family relationships has been forgotten, replaced by ideals of individualism and self-indulgence and destroyed by throngs of divorces, it’s still the prevalent form of unity that people can rely on.

Formed either through blood relations or agreed upon legally, the relationships within the family are divided as such:

Affinity. Kinship formed by marriage or adoption.

Blood kinship. It refers to a relation by blood, or consanguinity.

Offspring. The progeny of a couple, children.

Fatherhood, Motherhood. The former relates to the kinship between the father and the offspring, the latter to the mother and the offspring.

Spouse. A partner in marriage (husband, wife).

A sister and a brother

Sibling. A first-degree relative, a brother or sister born of the same parents.

That is as far as the nuclear family is concerned. When it comes to the extended family, the relationships become much more complicated and include nephews, nieces, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, in-laws, and a great many others.

Some cultures actually value the extended family more than the nuclear one, but in the west, it’s vice versa. Regardless of how many people form a family relationship or how distant they are, the fact is that it serves as core of modern civilization and should be preserved as such.

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