Defining Family
What is Family?
A. "A social group characterized by common residence, economic cooperation and reproduction, including adults of both sexes, at least one of whom maintain a socially approved sexual relationship, and one or more children, own or adopted, of the sexually cohabiting adults." (Murdock, 1949).
B. "A relationship of indeterminate duration exisiting between parent(s) and children" (Nimkoff and Ogburn, 1934).
C. "The family is...a group of persons united by ties of marriage, blood, or adoption; constituting a household; interacting and communicating with each other in their respective social roles of husband and wife, mother and father, son and daughter, bother and sister, and creting and maintaining a common culture" (Burgess et al. 1971).
D. "A family is any group of persons united by the ties of marriage, blood, or adoption, or any sexually expressive relationship in which (1) the people are committed to one another in an intimate, interpersonal relationship, (2) the members see their identity as importantly attached to the group, and (3) the group has an identity of its own" (Rice 1990).
E. "Family refers to a collection of people, related to each other by marriage, ancestry, adtoption, or affinity, who have a commitment to each other and a unique identity with each other. This collection forms an economic unit. The adults in the collection have varying degress of responsibility for young members that might be a part of the collection" (Bidwell and Vander Mey, 2000).
Various Definitions of Family Types
BOURGEOIS FAMILY
A family system first emerging in the 16th and 17th centuries in the towns of Europe among the growing middle class of merchants, professionals and administrators. It later spreads to the working class during the industrial revolution. This family type is centred on private homelife, the relationship of the couple and their children and based on a clear division of gender roles, with men as chief income earners and women centred in the domestic world of home and family. For many conservatives this remains the ideal form of family . Although this structure of family life is often assumed to be typical of modern Canadian families, it is a minority life style: only about 30% of Canadian families with children maintain this household organization and it accounts for only about 8% of all households.
CONJUGAL FAMILY
A nuclear family of adult partners and their children (by birth or adoption) where the family relationship is principally focused inwardly and ties to extended kin are voluntary and based on emotional bonds, rather than strict duties and obligations.
CONSANGUINAL FAMILY
A family system of nuclear families linked through shared descent from a common ancestor. The individual nuclear families are bound into complex ties of obligation and daily activity with each other. Consanguineal families can be linked either matrilineally or patrilineally.
EGALITARIAN FAMILY
A family system based on the equality of the participants and in direct contrast to the patriarchal family. It usually refers to an equal relationship between the adult partners, though it can mean permissive, rather than authoritarian, parent-child relationship. In North American families this family form is most likely to be found among young and well-educated couples. The term 'symmetrical family' is sometimes used as an equivalent. The concept is in many respects an ideal, rather than descriptive of typical or usual family relationships.
NUCLEAR FAMILY
This has the same composition as the conjugal family, but the term 'nuclear' does not imply that the family is inwardly focused and relatively autonomous from extended kin as in the case of the conjugal family. Extended, or consanguineal (based on shared blood descent), families can be thought of as composed of linked nuclear families.
