Family Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Family - Essay Examplether hand, says the definition of what a family is depends on who is going to render the definition, a social scientist, the State, a conservative connection, or a libertarian society.Anthropologists localise family by a cultures biological and marital kinship rules and patterns of reciprocal obligations. Different cultures harbor different definitions of biological and marital kin, and the obligations kin have to one another. Some cultures use the fathers biological line, or the mothers or both. Kinship obligations, too, end at different levels for different cultures. As examples, Diem says that brothers, sisters and cousins are distinct in the American culture but not so in African societies. From the point of view of structure-functionalists, families are defined by the needs of the greater society. The definition of family changes when societys needs change. Examples include those when greater society needs rapid population growth such as after a time of war when procreation is emphasized, as against a period of everywhere population when childless couples are supported. For institutionalists, a family is the traditional, biological, procreative and child-rearing structure. For interactionists, the definition is based on the assumption of family-related role behaviours. For economists, the family is a production and consumption unit, thus defining a household slave in an African or Arabian household or the indentured servant in an early-American household as vocalisation of the family.Further, according to Diem, the States definition of family follows the structure-functionalist approach, where the States needs dictate how the authoritative and legal definition of family shall be formulated. In a conservative Free Society, as envisioned by Nisbet (1953), where the role of social institutions such as church, economy and educational system, are enhanced and those of the State reduced, the social institutions define family. Church may not recognise an unmarried