Family

George R. King

AN ESKIMO FAMILY

Tenderness and responsibility in their treatment of children is a virtue of the Eskimo which binds them closer to the brotherhood of civilized peoples than their skill at carving or with the needle.

A family is a domestic group of people, or a number of domestic groups, typically affiliated by birth or marriage, or by comparable legal relationships including adoption.

The family is the basic social unit for the expression of love between man and woman and the creation and raising of children. The family tames the wilder impulses of men to the responsibilities of fatherhood, enables young women to blossom as mothers, and cultivates morality in children. Moral virtues, empathy, and good human relationships are learned in the family.

There are a number of variations in the basic family structure. The nuclear family consists of husband and wife and their children, while the extended family includes grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Other family patterns include polygamous (usually patriarchal) and single-parent families (usually headed by a female).

Throughout history, families have been central to human society; a key indicator of a society's well-being is the health of its families. For this reason, as stated in Article 16(3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, "The [family is the] natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State."

The significance of the family

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Ronald Reagan, son Ron, Mrs. Nancy Reagan, and daughter Patti outside their Pacific Palisades home in California, 1960.

The family is universally formed to protect and nurture children. Although the term "dysfunctional" has often been applied to the family in modern times, in fact, the vast majorities of families produce viable, peaceable, and productive citizens. Children in average families outperform children in institutional settings according to numerous developmental measures, most importantly impulse control and pro-social behavior. The three- or four-generation extended family, including grandparents in addition to parents and children, provides the richest network of human relationships and greatest support for the raising of children and continuation of the lineage.

Just as important is the family's purpose to foster the human need for love and intimacy. The family is generally viewed as a haven from the world, supplying "intimacy, love and trust where individuals may escape the competition of dehumanizing forces in modern society." In the family, protected from the rough and tumble of the industrialized world, where warmth, tenderness and understanding can be expected from a loving mother and protection from the world can be expected from the father. These purposes have declined as income levels allow for economic security independent of family support and as individuals enjoy increased civil rights and opportunities to pursue happiness outside the family setting.

Henry Moore, Family Group (1950) bronze, sited at the entrance to Barclay School, Stevenage, Hertfordshire, England.

Nevertheless, the family remains irreplaceable as the primary locus of love and personal fulfillment. Martin Luther termed the family "the school of love." It is in the family that people can realize love in all its dimensions: children's love for parents, love among siblings, conjugal love, and parental love. As people's hearts are cultivated through their family relationships, they can find fulfillment in their lives far beyond what they could attain as unattached individuals.

The family is also the primary school of virtue, where children learn manners, obedience to their parents, helpfulness to their siblings, care for their younger siblings, and so on. More lessons are learned in the school of marriage and still more in the school of parenthood. Anthropologist James Q. Wilson has called the family "a continuing locus of moral instruction... we learn to cope with the people of the world because we learn to cope with members of our family." The family provides the socialization and character education required of good citizens, who practice these same virtues in the larger contexts of society.

However, family life can also magnify people's shortcomings. Family dysfunction can cause such emotional damage that people will risk everything to escape their families. Some have lost confidence in family life and chose the option of remaining single. Indeed, there has never been an ideal human family. Christianity explains that this ideal—represented by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden—was lost at the Fall of Man. Marxism holds that the family is a structure of human domination. Nevertheless, Utopian attempts to replace the family with collective social structures, viz the Kibbutz, have not had long-term success.

For better or worse, human beings seem to be programmed to live in families. Research indicates that most Americans (71%) still idealize the traditional family even as they grow more accepting of divorce (78%), cohabitation (49%) and single-parent families. Margaret Mead, based on her anthropological research, affirmed the centrality of the family in human society:

As far back as our knowledge takes us, human beings have lived in families. We know of no period where this was not so. We know of no people who have succeeded for long in dissolving the family or displacing it ... Again and again, in spite of proposals for change and actual experiments, human societies have reaffirmed their dependence on the family as the basic unit of human living—the family of father, mother and children.

Love in the family and personal growth

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The mother, oil on canvas

The family is the primary means through which most people cultivate their character and learn about love. The family of origin is the context for a child's lessons about love and virtue, as he or she relates to parents and siblings. The challenges of marriage and parenting bring further lessons. The family's efficacy for personal growth is such that some religious and traditions equate honorable and loving relationships in the family with a template for a person’s right relationship with God. In the Talmud, for instance, it is written, "When a man honors his father and mother, God says, 'I regard it as though I had dwelt among them and they had honored me.'" (Kiddushin 30b) Confucius said, “Surely proper behavior toward parents and elder brothers is the trunk of goodness.” (Analects 1.2) Jesus encouraged his disciples to relate to God as a loving father, calling him "Abba."

The family structure provides the basic context for human development, as its members take on successive roles as children, siblings, spouses, parents and grandparents. As educator Gabriel Moran put it, "The family teaches by its form." These roles require four different and distinct types of love: children's love, sibling love, conjugal love and parental love. Taken together, they describe a developmental sequence, the later roles building upon the earlier ones. Each role provides opportunities to develop a particular type of love, and carries with it specific norms and duties.

Growing in Love as a Child

The heart of a son or daughter develops from that of a very young child and matures through a lifetime—from the toddler who clings trustingly to his or her parents’ hand to the adult child who nurses his or her elderly parents in their last years of life. Yet the essence of the child's love for parents remains the same: a heart of attachment, veneration, appreciation and love that deepens and becomes more conscious and responsible over time. Growth in love as a child also determines the person’s attitudes toward authority figures in society, and ultimately toward God.

In the East, a child’s devotion toward his or her parents is called filial piety and is considered the root of all goodness and morality. Confucius taught that responsiveness to one’s parents is the root or fountainhead of rén (仁), empathy for human beings in general. (See Confucianism).

Attachment theory has it that children form "inner working models" for all future relationships from the interactions they have with their first caretakers—usually their mothers. Empathy is learned from following and imitating the expressions and levels of emotions expressed by mothers as they play with their child, soothe their child, and respond to the infant's needs. The first developmental "crisis" of trust versus mistrust, as Erik Erikson put it, is resolved by a parent's caring responses to her child.

As the child grows, he or she internalizes the parents' values. Out of love for them and desire for their approval, the child learns obedience, self-control, to clean up messes, to be diligent in doing schoolwork, and to behave respectfully towards people and property. Studies of altruism following World War II showed that there was but one common factor among the people in Europe who risked themselves to save Jews from Nazi horrors: each rescuer had a warm, strong bond with one or more parent.

Conversely, children who are neglected or abandoned by their parents suffer from general moral impairment. Studies of children who were raised for the early years of their lives in institutions found them to be inordinately cruel to one another and to animals and severely lacking in impulse control, especially of aggressive impulses. They were often "unable in later years to bind themselves to other people, to love deeply."

In average families there is ambivalence in the love between a child and his or her parents, especially as it develops into the adolescent years. For instance, if a parent is excessively authoritarian, the child will project that image of parenthood into his or her concept of authority figures, even of God. Children are also quick to pick up on any hypocrisy in their parents. Hence, there is need for parents to be exemplary in loving their children and demonstrating in their own lives the ideals that they would wish to pass on to them.

Child's love reaches a new stage of maturity when he or she becomes an adult. New comprehension and sympathy for the parents may come as the son or daughter becomes a spouse, a breadwinner, a parent, a middle-aged caretaker of others, and a responsible community member. The child recognizes his or her debt to the parents and begins to repay it with gratitude. Mature children's love may also involve taking up the parents' unfinished tasks and unrealized dreams, desiring to make the parents proud of them and leave them a legacy.

Lessons of Sibling Love

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Sister with baby

The moment a sibling arrives on the scene, the dynamic of a family changes. The older child in a family is challenged to shed layers of self-centeredness to respond to and keep the approbation of the most significant others—the parents. His areas of self-love are further impinged upon by the presence of another on the scene. He must learn many of the most important lessons of sibling’s love—to share, to give, and to forgive. These lessons will be of major importance in later life, especially in marriage.

Parents can help an older child become more other-centered in the early days of having a sibling by including the older child in the baby’s care, thus activating altruism and its rewards in the child’s heart. Benjamin Spock explains, "One of the ways in which a young child tries to get over the pain of having a younger rival is to act as if he himself were no longer a child, competing in the same league as the baby, but as if he were a third parent." By encouraging the older child in this, "the parents can help a child to actually transform resentful feelings into cooperativeness and genuine altruism."

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Brothers

The natural inequalities and differences between siblings—of age, ability, and positions in a family—can be sources of friction or contexts for growth. The older sibling has had a head start on garnering the attention of the parents and has greater command of things in the home. Now he or she must learn to give a portion of these advantages to the younger one. A younger sibling, on the other hand, is born sharing. He or she necessarily becomes other-focused in order to form an affiliation with the more powerful older sibling(s). Siblings must learn to cope with disputes over the use of possessions, taking turns, physical and verbal aggression and other moral issues.

Parents have a central role in ameliorating sibling rivalries by affirming each child’s value in a manner consistent with the naturally unequal positions of elder and younger. They can see to it that while the older siblings command more respect and have more privileges commensurate with their greater maturity, they also have more responsibilities. Western and Eastern parents may have different ways of dealing with this natural inequality, given the West's value of absolute equality versus the East's codification of the special status of the eldest son.

A certain amount of sibling rivalry is natural, and parents have a responsibility to teach their children how to turn their rivalry into mutual respect. Otherwise, if allowed to fester it lead even to fratricide, as in the Bible's story of Cain and Abel. Parents’ love endows each child with value and equality. A son learns to respect his sister because his parents also love her. A daughter learns to love her brother because her parents love him.

The Parable of the Prodigal Son contains a moment of parental intervention into a sibling rivalry (Luke 15:11-32). When the prodigal son returns home, his father runs to embrace him, orders a feast and dresses him in fine robes. The father’s other son, who has been loyal all along, is displeased. He thinks, "Why should such a fuss be made over the family deserter?" and absents himself from the feast in protest. When the father finds him he consoles him, saying, "My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours" (Luke 15:31). One can imagine the son rather shame-facedly going back into the feast to celebrate the return of his brother, perhaps with his father’s arm about his shoulders for support.

Sibling relationships are training for living in a world of diversity. Though born of the same parents, siblings often differ from one another widely in temperament, personality, tastes, preferences, talents and even political leanings. Living amidst a large or extended family provides training in tolerance, charity, and acceptance of differences. It helps ingrain the lesson that although people differ, they are fundamentally related and may still treat one another with respect, appreciation, and love based on their common bonds.

Lessons of Conjugal Love

Couple married in a Shinto ceremony in Takayama, Gifu prefecture, Japan

Marriage is a culmination point of God’s family-based plan to help individuals grow toward perfection through practicing other-centered love. No relationship prior to marriage has the same potential for human oneness, and thus no other relationship entails the same demands for surrender of the self. In this way, marriage promotes true love, which is to live for the sake of others.

Marital expert Judith Wallerstein said, “A marriage that commands loyalty… requires each partner to relinquish self-centeredness.” Catholic psychologist Marshall Fightlin asserts that it is the daily task of a husband to “mortify” the impulses to act like a single man and to concern himself with his other—his wife. Thus, marriage requires renunciation of all other romantic or sexual relationships in favor of the spouse; it also means renunciation of many aspects of one’s own habits and attitudes that interfere with a life shared with someone who is physically, emotionally, and mentally "other"—a member of the opposite sex.

Paradoxically, renunciation of the self in favor of the other enriches and enhances the self. Joy and excitement are increased. Theologian Karl Barth taught, “It is always in relationship to their opposite that man and woman are what they are in themselves.” A solitary person is not complete; marriage makes him or her whole.

It stands to reason that virtue or good character is the bedrock of a happy marriage. This finding is backed up by psychological research. According to Wallerstein, "Happiness in marriage meant feeling respected and cherished… based on integrity. A partner was admired and loved for his or her honesty, compassion, generosity of spirit, decency, loyalty to the family, and fairness…. The value these couples place on the partner’s moral qualities… helps explain why many divorcing people speak so vehemently of losing respect for their former partners." Marital therapist Blaine Fowers says, "As I have observed many different couples, I have become convinced that strong marriages are built on the virtues or character strengths of the spouses. In other words, the best way to have a good marriage is to be a good person."

Marriage also brings a couple closer to God. The rabbis taught that the union of a man and a woman into one person or one flesh is the only full representation of the image of God. Barth sees a theology of marriage in the Trinity. God exists in a community of three persons, so a solitary, isolated human being without a counterpart is necessarily incomplete. Hak Ja Han Moon says,

We marry in order to resemble God. God exists as a being of dual characteristics. In God, the dual characteristics are completely harmonized as One. When God’s dual characteristics manifest in our world, they do so as man and woman. Accordingly, at the proper time, a man and a woman are like a seed. They unite to become one. Thus, husband and wife return to God.

Marriages do best centered upon God, connected to the very Source of love. Otherwise, they erode all too easily. God’s love empowers couples with the true love men and women need to see them through the vicissitudes of life together. Sometimes one's spouse may seem like one’s worst enemy. Without tapping into the divine Source of love, men and women may come up short on the ability to give and forgive, serve one another, and be steadfast and faithful throughout the years.

The nobility of parental love

Parenthood makes sacrifice an ordinary part of life. A father takes an extra job to afford a house with a yard or save up for his child's college education; a mother who formerly spent hours on makeup and stylish dresses sits happily with tousled hair and a stained shirt while her toddlers clamber around a messy house. Parents sacrifice their interests, plans and dreams to attend to their children's needs. As one child psychologist said, "If it is to be done well, childrearing requires, more than most activities of life, a good deal of de-centering from one’s own needs and perspectives."

Being a good parent requires patience and forbearance, as when answering their child's fiftieth question in a row while trying to prepare dinner. It requires firmness and fortitude, as when their defiant 15-year-old demands to know why she is not allowed to stay out late when all of her friends are doing it. The responsibility of caring for children bring out latent moral qualities in parents, presenting "opportunities to love when I would rather be alone, to be gentle when I would rather be efficient, and to surrender when I would rather be in control." The experience spurs on the parents' growth in heart.

Becoming a parent is a life-altering transition. Being totally accountable for the welfare of one's children gives parents a different outlook on life. One well-known actor gave up alcohol when he came into his home drunk one morning and found his infant staring at him in pure amazement. Eldridge Cleaver, a former Black Panther who was trained as a communist in the former Soviet Union, experienced such a transformation when his daughter was born. Surely, he thought, this beautiful child, and the love he felt for her, were not products of economic forces. It reawakened Cleaver's belief in God and let him see the error of Marxism. Parenthood likewise affects attitudes on social issues, which now must take into account how those matters will affect the lives of the next generation. One survey found that the most marked differences of attitudes on cultural issues are between those who have children and those who do not. These differences transcend economic, political, racial and other demographic factors.

Good parenting requires harmony between husband and wife. A harmonious partnership allows the parents to integrate the complementary dimensions of parental love—the warm supportiveness of a mother's love and the firm and challenging qualities of a father's love. Research has shown that a balanced approach to parental authority pairs high levels of compassion and care with an equally high degree of firmness. Psychologist Diane Baumrind calls this “authoritative parenting.” She found that children of authoritative parents are the most well adjusted and well-behaved.

Finally, parental love resembles God’s love. Parental love is the very definition of the unconditional. Parents give and give and forget what they have given, compelled by their love to give some more. Fathers and mothers cannot anticipate how their children will turn out—experiencing with God the breathless anticipation involved in having children who have free will. It is love fraught with risk, for there is always the possibility of loss. In the same way, God let His heart out at risk when He vested it in human beings, most of whom betrayed Him; nevertheless God never ceased laboring to save those lost souls. In the same way, parents' continual caring is the surest lifeline for even the most incorrigible child. In these ways, experiencing the heart of a parent while on earth is the highest path to becoming one with God, resembling God, and knowing God.

The love of grandparents

Grandma's favorite

Grandparents are an invaluable source of rootedness for a child. Children who have relationships with their grandparents are more trusting, calmer, and quieter than those who do not. Grandparents are the link to all that has gone before and they give a sense of continuity and reassurance. Grandparents help children to know what life was like long before they were born—where they have come from and the kind of people they have sprung from. They are the family's link to the chain of history.

Grandparents can provide a safe haven when their children and grandchildren are experiencing turbulence in their relationships. Certain of who they are, grandparents stand for verities of the human experience that go beyond current fashions.

The heart of grandparents has an innate need to give from their lifetime storehouse of knowledge and experience to nurture and enrich the younger generations. Erikson and his colleagues have characterized the primary challenge in old age as one of "integrity versus despair," with the possibility of culminating in a profound awareness or higher sense of self. By giving to their grandchildren, they can experience their personhood as that which "transcends time-bound identities." Those who do not have grandchildren will often seek surrogates for the same reason. By sharing their stories, insights and values with the young generation, grandparents receive affirmation and comfort that their legacy will live on.

Reverend Moon asks, "Who is the oldest grandparent of all—the father and mother of all the generations?" Of course, the answer is God. Looking down upon their children and grandchildren, grandparents can know on a smaller scale the heart of God gazing at His generations of children. Grandparents stand almost in the position of God in a family. He calls it the "kingship of love."

Benefits of family life

Family Reading Hour

Despite controversies over what the "family" is, there is considerable evidence about what the consequences of family life are for individuals.

Satisfaction for adults

• Men and women who are in their first marriages, on average, enjoy significantly higher levels of physical and mental health than those who are either single, divorced or living together. The research on this is very strong. Social scientist James Q. Wilson explains:

Married people are happier than unmarried ones of the same age, not only in the United States, but in at least seventeen other countries where similar inquiries have been made. And there seems to be good reasons for that happiness. People who are married not only have higher incomes and enjoy greater emotional support, they tend to be healthier. Married people live longer than unmarried ones, not only in the United States but abroad.

• Married people, whether men or women, enjoy higher levels of sexual pleasure and fulfillment than do single people.

• Among the various life spheres Americans report as being sources of a "great deal of satisfaction," studies consistently show family life as the most important. Three-fourths of Americans interviewed claimed that family life was their most important value, in surveys by Yankelovich between 1973 and 1981.

Benefits for children

All things being equal, children with married parents consistently do better in every measure of well-being than their peers who have single, cohabiting, divorced or step-parents. Being raised by a father and mother is a stronger indicator of well-being than race, economic or educational status, or neighborhood. According to the Center for Law and Social Policy, a child advocacy organization, "Most researchers now agree… studies support the notion that, on average, children do best when raised by their two married biological parents." A sampling of evidence:

• Children from biological two-parent families have higher test scores and grade-point averages, they miss fewer school days, and have greater expectations of attending college than children living with one parent.

• Children from divorced homes are 70 percent more likely than those living with biological parents to be expelled or suspended from school. Those living with never-married mothers are twice as likely to be expelled or suspended.

• Children raised in divorced or single-parent families are far more likely to commit crimes. Family structure is a much stronger predictor of criminality than race or income level.

• Teens living with only one biological parent, including those in stepfamilies, are particularly at risk for becoming sexually active at younger ages. Girls who grow up in single-parent homes are 111 percent more likely to bear children as teenagers, 164 percent more likely to have a child out of marriage, and—if they do marry—their marriages are 92 percent more likely to dissolve compared to their counterparts with married parents; this holds for whites and blacks alike.

Health benefits

• Married women are significantly less likely to be victims of any kind of violence, either by the spouse or by a stranger.

• According to a CDC study, married adults are less likely than other adults to be in fair or poor health, and are less likely to suffer from chronic ailments such as headaches and serious psychological distress. Married adults are less likely be limited in various activities, including work and other activities of daily living; they are less likely to smoke, drink heavily or be physically inactive. However, married men are more likely to be overweight or obese than other men.

• A married man with heart disease can be expected to live, on average, 1400 days longer (nearly four years!) than an unmarried man with a healthy heart. This longer life expectancy is even greater for a married man who has cancer or is 20 pounds overweight compared to his healthy, but unmarried, counterpart. The advantages for women are similar.

• A married man who smokes more than a pack a day can be expected to live as long as a divorced man who does not smoke. The researcher explains with a touch of humor, “If a man’s marriage is driving him to heavy smoking, he has a delicate statistical decision to make.”

• Married people are more likely to survive cancer, according to an analysis of 25,000 cases listed in the New Mexico Tumor Registry.

• Marriage is associated with lower rates of alcoholism. 70 percent of chronic problem drinkers were either divorced or separated, and only 15 percent were married. Single men are more than three times as likely to die of cirrhosis of the liver.

• In Lewis Terman's famous longitudinal study of 521 gifted California children, begun in 1921 with follow-ups every 5 or 10 years, it was found that those whose parents divorced faced a 33 percent greater risk of an earlier death (average age at death=76 years) than those whose parents remained married until the children reached age 21 (average age at death=80). There was no such mortality effect for children for whom one or both parents had died.

Economic benefits

• Married people are wealthier than their unmarried peers. They earn more money and are more likely to invest some of what they earn. They make more reliable employees, and so get promoted to better positions.

• In traditional societies the family was the primary economic unit. This persists for rural families, where every family member has a role in agricultural production. This role has diminished in modern industrialized societies; nevertheless it persists. Among immigrant families, the mom-and-pop business offers economies of labor.

• The contemporary trend towards dual-earner households, necessitated by the decline in real wages in the United States, reinforces the importance of the family for wealth-creation.

Religion and the family

Modern Parsi family in traditional costume, 2006

Strong families have long been grounded in religious values, for religion provides many buttresses to strengthen family bonds. In his letter to the Ephesians (5:25), St. Paul likened the virtues of love in a Christian marriage to the love of Christ for the church. It is, first and foremost, a giving love, a sacrificial love that resembles the love of Jesus. Christian marital love has been characterized as “a love that seeks to give way to the other whenever possible.” Thus religion, by cultivating character virtues such as steadfastness, responsibility and modesty, and by promoting the ethics of sacrifice, humility and charity, certainly provides valuable support for family members as they seek to maintain lasting love amidst the demands of family life.

Furthermore, traditional religious teachings lift up the expectation that marriage should last a lifetime. They decry divorce as a moral failure. "I hate divorce," declares God through the prophet Malachi (2:16). When Muhammad was asked about divorce, he said it was "the lawful thing that God hates most." (Hadith of Abu Dawud). When Jesus was asked about divorce, he said that God only allowed it because of peoples hardness of heart, and that it was not His way "from the beginning," adding "What God has joined together, let no man separate." (Matthew 19:5-8) Religions likewise condemn sex outside the context of marriage and family, teaching that it violates the sanctity of marriage and creates difficult entanglements of soul and spirit that can interfere with a person's eventual marriage.

These normative teachings provide both resources and sanctions which predispose traditional believers to maintain and make the best of even a difficult marriage. Not surprisingly, religion and family tend to go hand in hand. A 2004 survey by the National Marriage Project (Rutgers University) found that married men are more religiously active than the unmarrieds. Nearly half say that they go to religious services several times a month, versus less than a quarter of the unmarrieds. Compared to unmarried men, they are also significantly more likely (75% v. 59%) to agree that "children should be raised in a religion." Unmarried men who attend religious services several times per month or more are also more disposed to marry; they are likely to agree with the statement, "I would be ready to get married tomorrow" (55%) compared with nonobservant men (43%).

Nevertheless, it is not the case that religious belief is the main factor in maintaining strong families. Believing does not always translate into the morality of daily life. Religious affiliation ranks fourth among the factors that reduce the risk of divorce, as shown in the following U.S. statistics (the norm without any of these factors is a 50 percent divorce rate):

Percent decrease in the risk of divorce or separation during the first ten years of marriage

Annual income over $50,000 (vs. under $25,000)	-30%
Having a baby seven months or more after marriage (vs. before marriage)	-24%
Marrying over 25 years of age (vs. under 18)	-24%
Own family of origin intact (vs. divorced parents)	-14%
Religious affiliation (vs. none)	-14%
Some college (vs. high-school dropout)	-13%

Recent studies in the psychology of religion suggest that how one practices religion, or "what kind of religion" is more significant for the quality of family relationships than how strongly one believes in a religion, or "how much religion." Participants with rigid, literalistic or guilt driven approaches to religion reported an increased emphasis on control, difficulties in communication, and lower levels of marital satisfaction. In contrast, participants who identified with and maintained an open approach to religious sentiment tended to promote independence in their children, were more likely have affectionate and warm relationships with their children, and experience increased marital satisfaction.

While religious faith tends to make people less accepting of alternative family patterns, secularism tends to promote them. For example, Sweden, a highly secular country, leads the Western nations in the degree to which cohabitation has replaced marriage. Its marriage rate is one of the lowest in the Western world. Many couples in Sweden don’t marry even when they have children. Due to the weakness of religion, there is no longer any religious or cultural stigma in Sweden against cohabitation; it is regarded as irrelevant to question whether a couple is married or just living together. Rather, there is a dominant left-wing belief that families have been an impediment to full equality, based on the feminist view that the family is a structure of patriarchy and oppression and the Marxist view that the family is a bourgeois social institution with traditional ties to nobility and privilege. Finally, unlike in the United States all government benefits in Sweden are given to individuals irrespective of their intimate relationships or family form. There is no such thing, for example, as spousal benefits in health care or lower income tax rates for for married couples filing jointly. Nevertheless, when it comes to the welfare of children, whose parents are often not married, Swedish society boasts strong legal protections for children and a communitarian ethos; these factors compensate for the weaker family structure. It is doubtful whether such compensations could apply to the diverse, libertarian and mobile society that is the U.S.

Religions recognize that the ideal of the God-centered family runs up against the widespread corruption of the human heart due to the Fall of Man, creating difficulty and resentments between men and women, parents and children ever since. All the families in the Bible seem to be dysfunctional to one degree or another, and often the protagonist is challenged to overcome a festering family problem—Jacob and Joseph are two notable examples. Therefore, the centering of marriage upon God and striving to practice true love—divine love—within marriage can be viewed as a redemptive act and as opening the way to divine healing and personal growth. For believers who practice a life of faith, marriage and family can be a blessing, a restorative relationship to heal the most primal of human wounds and opening the way to future hope.

Anthropology looks at family structures

Borg Mesch

WARM HEARTS OF THE NORTH

The Lapland father may measure his wealth in herds of reindeer, in hides and pelts, but the Lapland mother knows that her bright-eyed, smiling baby and her sturdy two-year-old are treasures beyond price.

According to sociology and anthropology, the primary function of the family is to reproduce society, biologically and socially. For children, the family plays a major role in their socialization. From the point of view of the parent(s), the family's purpose is to produce and socialize children within a culture. However, producing children is not the only function of the family. In societies with a sexual division of labor, marriage, and the resulting relationship between a husband and wife, is necessary for the formation of an economically productive household. In modern societies marriage entails particular rights and privilege that encourage the formation of new families even when there is no intention of having children.

The structure of families can be classified into four major types: consanguineal, conjugal, patrifocal, and matrifocal. (Note: these are ideal types. In all societies there are acceptable deviations from the norm, owing either to incidental circumstances such as the death of a family member, infertility or personal preferences).

Extended middle-class Midwestern U.S. family of Danish/German extraction

A consanguineal or extended family consists of a husband and wife, their children, and other members of either the husband's or wife's family. This kind of family is common in cultures where property is inherited. In patriarchal societies where important property is owned by men, extended families commonly consist of a husband and wife, their children, the husband's parents, and other members of the husband's family. In societies where fathers are absent and mothers do not have the resources to rear their children on their own, the consanguineal family may consist of a mother and her children, and members of the mother's family.

A conjugal or nuclear family consists of a father, mother and their children. This kind of family is common where families are relatively mobile, as in modern industrialized societies. Usually there is a division of labor requiring the participation of both men and women. Nuclear families vary in the degree to which they are independent or maintain close ties to the kindreds of the parents and to other families in general.

A patrifocal family consists of a father and his children and is found in societies where men take multiple wives (polygamy or polygyny)and/or remain involved with each for a relatively short time. This type of family is rare from a worldwide perspective but occurs in Islamic states with considerable frequency. In the laws of some Arab nations encourage this structure by allowing a maximum of four wives per man at any given time, and automatic deflection of custody rights to the father in the case of a divorce. In these societies a man will often take a wife and may conceive a child with her, but after a relatively short time put her out of his harem so he can take another woman without exceeding the quota of four. The man then keeps his child and thus a patrifocal structure emerges. Even without the expulsion of the mother, the structure may be patrifocal because the children (often as infants) are removed from the harem structure and placed into the father's family.

A matrifocal family consists of a mother and her children. Generally, these children are her biological offspring, although adoption of children is a practice in nearly every society. This kind of family is common where women have the resources to rear their children by themselves, or where men are more mobile than women. Today's single-parent families can be classed in this category.

Family arrangements in the United States have become more diverse with no particular household arrangement representing half of the United States population.

Is there an ideal family structure?

Today many people tend to idealize the two-parent nuclear family as the ideal family structure. However, historians point out that this family type may be of recent origin—the bourgeois family—a structure arising out of 16th and 17th century European households in which the center of the family is a marriage between a man and woman with strictly defined gender roles. The man typically is responsible for income and support, the woman for home and family matters. Social conservatives often express concern over a purported decay of the family and see this as a sign of the crumbling of contemporary society. They look with alarm at the dramatic increase in households headed by single mothers and by same-sex couples. Yet anthropologists point out that these are merely variations on family types that have existed in other societies.

Even when people bypass the traditional configuration of father, mother and their biological children, they tend to follow its patterns anyway, showing the fundamental need they feel for its structure. Couples live together and raise children, even children from previous relationships. Same-sex couples assume masculine and feminine roles and demand legal recognition of their unions; many seek to adopt children. Homeless children tend to congregate in gangs that serve as surrogate families.

On the other hand, as families universally are built around the marriage bond and the responsibilities for raising children, there would seem to be some rationality to giving preference to the two-parent nuclear family—particularly over family structures headed by only one parent. As James Q. Wilson has stated:

In virtually every society in which historians or anthropologists have inquired, one finds people living together on the basis of kinship ties and having responsibility for raising children. The kinship ties invariably imply restrictions on who has sexual access to whom; the child-care responsibilities invariably imply both economic and non-economic obligations. And in virtually every society, the family is defined by marriage; that is, by a publicly announced contract that makes legitimate the sexual union of a man and a woman.

In other words, while single-parent and matrifocal families form a recognizable type, they are not the first choice where there is the possibility of forming stable two-parent families. However, where men are not strongly bound to the family unit, i.e. where a culture does not support lasting marriage or where economic hardships cause men to be apart from their wives for long periods of time, this family type becomes prevalent.

By the same token, societies where patrifocal families are the norm are vulerable to movements for women's rights and human rights that attack marriage arrangements that do not give wives equal status with their husbands. This may lead in the long run to the decline of polygamy.

In many cultures, the need to be self-supporting is hard to meet, particularly where rents/property values are very high, and the foundation of a new household can be an obstacle to nuclear family formation. In these cases, extended families form. People remain single and live with their parents for a long period of time. Generally, the trend to shift from extended to nuclear family structures has been supported by increasing mobility and modernization.

Still, some argue that the extended family, or at least the three-generational family including grandparents, provides a broader and deeper foundation for raising children as well as support for the new parents. In particular, the role of grandparents has been recognized as an important aspect of the family dynamic. Having experienced the challenges of creating a family themselves, they offer wisdom and encouragement to the young parents and become a reassuring presence in the lives of their grandchildren. Abraham Maslow described the love of grandparents as "the purest love for the being of the other."

The emotional pull of these intergenerational encounters remains strong even for those who have split off to form nuclear families. Individuals who leave the village and their extended families for the economic benefits of life in the city may feel a sense of isolation and a longing for the thick relationships and warm love of the extended family of their origin. This suggests that, economic issues aside, people are happiest living in extended families, or in nuclear families that treasure close bonds with their kinfolk.

Conclusion

A strong nuclear or extended family provides a haven of love and intimacy. It offers maximum opportunities for personal growth through its matrix of relationships—with spouse, parents, grandparents, siblings and children. A strong family provides a social support network that its members are able to rely on in times of stress. The rise of single parent households due to the absence of husbands represents reversion to a different family structure, one that is prone to isolation and provides weaker social support.

The two-parent family is important in the development of children and beneficial to their mental and emotional health. A strong conjugal bond between the parents provides the child security and a model for conjugal love to which s/he can aspire. The father's steady and responsible provision for the family provides a positive male role model for boys and a model of an ideal husband for young girls. Thus from an early age, children gain a positive sense of self-worth, sexual identity, and confidence about their future. Divorce or the chronic absence of one parent teaches the opposite lesson: that life is insecure, that the child is not lovable, that the child cannot hope for a successful marriage, that men are irresponsible and unsuitable as marriage partners, and so on. Statistically, children of single-parent families have a higher incidence of criminality, drug abuse, teenage pregnancy and depression.

The extended family provides a superior alternative to the nuclear family in many cultures, expanding the family dynamic intergenerationally. Grandparents offer a unique form of support to the family, both to the parents and to the children. When a newly married couple moves far away from their parents, establishing their own nuclear family, isolation from their extended family may prove stressful. Families in which three generations interact in close harmony provide the greatest support for successfully raising children, connecting them to their family traditions and giving value to their lineage.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Scott, Kieran and Michael Warren, eds. Perspectives on Marriage, a Reader. 3rd edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. ISBN 0195313461
• Devine, Tony, Joon Ho Seuk and Andrew Wilson. Cultivating Heart and Character: Educating for Life's Most Essential Goals. Chapel Hill, NC: Character Development Publishing, 2000. ISBN 1-892056-15-1
• Fraiberg, Selma H. The Magic Years. reprint, Scribners, 1996. ISBN 0684825503
• Wilson, James Q. The Moral Sense. New York: Free Press, 1993. ISBN 0029354064
• Erikson, Eric. Childhood and Society. reprint, W.W. Norton, 1993. ISBN 039331068X
• Spock, Benjamin. Baby and Child Care. 8th edition. New York: Pocket Books, 2004. ISBN 0743476670
• Wallerstein, Judith S. and Sandra Blakeslee, The Good Marriage. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1995. ISBN 0446672483
• Georgas, James, John W. Berry, Fons J. R. van de Vijver, Çigdem Kagitçibasi, and Ype H. Poortinga (Editors). 2006. Families Across Cultures: A 30-Nation Psychological Study. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521822971

External links

• Smartmarriages.com Clearinghouse for marriage, family and couples education. Retrieved April 6, 2007.
• Building Strong Families An educational program of the University of Missouri Extension. Retrieved April 6, 2007.
• Family and Marriage Articles on family issues by Focus on the Family. Retrieved April 6, 2007.
• Family Research Laboratory University of New Hampshire. Retrieved April 6, 2007.

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