Noun

Singular family

Plural countable and uncountable; plural families

family (countable and uncountable; plural families)

1. (countable) A father, mother and their sons and daughters; also called nuclear family.

   Her nuclear family was very small.

2. (countable) A group of people related by blood, marriage, law, or custom.
3. (countable) A kin, tribe; also called extended family.
4. (countable, biology, taxonomy) A rank in the classification of organisms, below order and above genus; a taxon at that rank.

   Magnolias belong to the family Magnoliaceae.

5. (countable) A group of people who live together.

   This is my fraternity family at the university.

6. (countable) A group of people similar to related by blood, marriage, law, or custom.

   Our company is one big happy family.

7. (uncountable) Collectively, people who are members of one's intimate social group.

   They treated me like family.

8. (countable) Any group or aggregation of things classed together as kindred or related from possessing in common characteristics which distinguish them from other things of the same order.
9. (countable, music) A group of instrument having the same basic method of tone production.

   the brass family

   the violin family

10. (countable, linguistics) A group of languages believed to have descended from the same ancestral language.

    the Indo-European language family

    the Afro-Asiatic language family

Family denotes a group of people or animals (many species form the equivalent of a human family wherein the adults care for the young) affiliated by a consanguinity, affinity or co-residence. Although the concept of consanguinity originally referred to relations by "blood," anthropologists have argued that one must understand the idea of "blood" metaphorically, and that many societies understand 'family' through other concepts rather than through genetic distance.

One of the primary functions of the family is to produce and reproduce persons, biologically and socially. Thus, one's experience of one's family shifts over time. From the perspective of children, the family is a family of orientation: the family serves to locate children socially, and plays a major role in their enculturation and socialization. From the point of view of the parent(s), the family is a family of procreation the goal of which is to produce and enculturate and socialize children. 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 two people, is necessary for the formation of an economically productive household.

A conjugal family includes only the husband, the wife, and unmarried children who are not of age. The most common form of this family is regularly referred to as a nuclear family.

A consanguineal family consists of a parent and his or her children, and other people.

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.

A family consists of a domestic group of people (or a number of domestic groups), typically affiliated by birth or marriage, or by analogous or comparable relationships — including domestic partnership, cohabitation, adoption, surname and (in some cases) ownership (as occurred in the Roman Empire). In many societies, family ties are only those recognized as such by law or a similar normative system. The different types of families occur in a wide variety of settings, and their specific functions and meanings depend largely on their relationship to other social institutions.

Sourced

• The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
  • Article 16(3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

• When harmony, mutual consideration and trust pass out of the home, hell enters in.
  • David O. McKay, Pathways To Happiness, (1957), p. 296.

• More often than not the people that you happen to be related to are your best friends… You can never really turn away from them, and you will always defend them to the best of your ability, they are your greatest resource, and the greatest love will come from them... that is family.
  • Jerry Grant Blakeney

• "In other words, I don't think people ought to be compelled to make the decision which they think is best for their family." — George W. Bush

—Washington, D.C., December 11, 2002

• The family is always the family but during vacations it is an extended family and that is exhausting.
  • Stein, Gertrude. Paris France. New York: Liveright, 1970. (p. 107)

From Wikiquote under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Mon Aug 31 15:46:17 2009