Family

I

Introduction

Family, basic social group united through bonds of kinship or marriage, present in all societies. Ideally, the family provides its members with protection, companionship, security, and socialization. The structure of the family, and the needs that the family fulfills vary from society to society. The nuclear family—two adults and their children—is the main unit in some societies. In others, it is a subordinate part of an extended family, which also consists of grandparents and other relatives. A third family unit is the single-parent family, in which children live with an unmarried, divorced, or widowed mother or father. See Parent and Child.

II

History of the Family

Anthropologists and social scientists have developed several theories about how family structures and functions evolved. In prehistoric hunting and gathering societies, two or three nuclear families, usually linked through bonds of kinship, banded together for part of the year but dispersed into separate nuclear units in those seasons when food was scarce. The family was an economic unit; men hunted, while women gathered and prepared food and tended children. Infanticide and expulsion of the infirm who could not work were common. Some anthropologists contend that prehistoric people were monogamous, because monogamy prevails in nonindustrial, tribal forms of contemporary society. See also Anthropology.

Social scientists believe that the structure of the modern Western family traces to the ancient Hebrews, whose families were patriarchal (see Patrilineage). The family in Greco-Roman culture was also patriarchal and bound by strict religious precepts. In later centuries, as the Greek and then the Roman civilizations declined, so did their well-ordered family life.

With the advent of Christianity, marriage and childbearing became central concerns in religious teaching. The purely religious nature of family ties was partly abandoned in favor of civil bonds after the Reformation, which began in the 1500s. Most Western nations now recognize the family relationship as primarily a civil matter.

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III

The Modern Family

Historical studies have shown that family structure has been less changed by urbanization and industrialization than was once supposed. The nuclear family was the most prevalent preindustrial unit and is still the basic unit of social organization. The modern family differs from earlier traditional forms, however, in its functions, composition, and life cycle, and in the roles of husbands and wives.

A function common to all families is the provision of affection and emotional support, particularly to infants and young children. Specialized institutions now perform many of the other functions that were once performed by the agrarian family: economic production, education, religion, and recreation. Occupation has become separate from the family group, as family members often seek different career paths in locations away from the home. Education is provided by the state or by private groups. Religious training and recreational activities are available outside the home, although both still have a place in family life. However, the family is still largely responsible for the socialization of children despite the influence of peers and of the mass media.

Family composition in industrial societies has changed dramatically. The average number of children born to a woman in the United States, for example, fell from 7.0 in 1800 to 2.0 by the beginning of the 21st century. Consequently, the number of years separating the births of the youngest and oldest children has declined. This has occurred in conjunction with increased longevity. In earlier times, marriage normally dissolved through the death of a spouse before the youngest child left home. Today husbands and wives potentially have about as many years together after the children leave home as before.

Some of these developments are related to ongoing changes in women’s roles. Women in all stages of family life have joined the labor force. Rising expectations of personal gratification through marriage and family, together with eased legal grounds for divorce and increasing employment opportunities for women, have contributed to divorce rates in the United States and elsewhere.

During the 20th century, extended family households declined in prevalence. This decline was associated with increased residential mobility in particular and with diminished financial responsibility of children for aging parents, as pensions from jobs and government-sponsored benefits for retired people became more common.

By the 1970s, the prototypical nuclear family had yielded somewhat to modified structures including the one-parent family, the stepfamily, and the childless family. One-parent families in the past were usually the result of the death of a spouse. Now, however, most one-parent families are the result of divorce, while others are created when unmarried mothers bear children. In 2007 about 26 percent of children in the United States lived with one parent, usually the mother. Some one-parent families eventually become two-parent families through remarriage.

A stepfamily is created by a new marriage of a single parent. It may consist of a parent and children and a childless spouse, a parent and children and a spouse whose children live elsewhere, or two joined one-parent families. In a stepfamily, problems in relations between nonbiological parents and children may generate tension; the difficulties can be especially great in the marriage of single parents when the children of both parents live with them as siblings.

Childless families may be increasingly the result of deliberate choice and the availability of birth control. Today many couples elect to have no children or to postpone having them until their careers are well established. For many years the proportion of couples who were childless declined steadily as sexually transmitted infections and other diseases that cause infertility were controlled. In the 1970s, however, changes in the status of women reversed this trend. By the early 21st century about 20 percent of women ages 40 to 44 were childless, compared to 10 percent in 1976.

Several variations on the family unit have emerged since the 1960s. More unmarried couples are living together, before or instead of marrying. Some elderly couples, most often widowed, are finding it more economically practical to cohabit without marrying. Homosexual couples also live together as a family more openly today, sometimes sharing their households with the children of one partner or with adopted or foster children. Communal families, made up of groups of related or unrelated people, have long existed in isolated instances (see Communal Living). Such units formed in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s as an alternative lifestyle.

IV

Families Around the World

Most industrial nations have experienced family trends similar to those found in the United States. The problem of unwed mothers—especially those who are very young or unable to support themselves—and their children is an international one, although improved methods of birth control and legalized abortion have slowed the trend somewhat. Divorce has increased even in areas where religious and legal impediments to it are strong. Smaller families and a lengthened postparental stage are found in industrial societies.

Unchecked population growth in developing nations threatens the family system. The number of surviving children in a family has rapidly increased as infectious diseases, famine, and other causes of child mortality have been reduced. Because families often cannot support so many children, the reduction in infant mortality has posed a challenge to the nuclear family and to the resources of developing nations.

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