In human context, a family (from Latin: familia) is a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, affinity, or co-residence. In most societies it is the principal institution for the socialization of children. Anthropologists most generally classify family organization as matrilocal (a mother and her children); conjugal (a wife, husband, and children, also called nuclear family); and consanguinal (also called an extended family) in which parents and children co-reside with other members of one parent's family.
There are also concepts of family that break with tradition within particular societies, or those that are transplanted via migration to flourish or else cease within their new societies. As a unit of socialization the family is the object of analysis for sociologists of the family. Genealogy is a field which aims to trace family lineages through history. In science, the term "family" has come to be used as a means to classify groups of objects as being closely and exclusively related. In the study of animals it has been found that many species form groups that have similarities to human "family"—often called "packs." Sexual relations among family members are regulated by rules concerning incest such as the incest taboo.
Extended from the human "family unit" by affinity and consanguinity are concepts of family that are physical and metaphorical, or that grow increasingly inclusive extending to community, village, city, region, nationhood, global village and humanism.
Read more about Family: Procreation, History of The Family, Kinship Terminology, Less-known Family Types, Size, Criticism
Other articles related to "family":
... at a kosher meat market and gave Hebrew lessons on the side, and struggled to support his family ... Irving found it necessary to take to the streets to help support his family ... the five pennies that constituted his first day's receipts, his contribution to the family budget.” His mother took jobs as a midwife, and three of his ...
... concluded a peace, and went to war against Šubić family ... By 1325, the Branivojević family had emerged as strongest in Hum ... Though nominal vassals of Serbia, the Branivojević family attacked Serbian interests and other local nobles of Hum, who in 1526 turned against Serbia and Branivojević family ...
... Emily Smith had strong family ties to Chelsea, which centered around the church, in which her family took an active role ... In 1895 the Armstrong family moved from their brownstone row house at 347 West 29th Street to another similar house at 26 West 97th Street in the Upper West Side ... In order to improve his health the Armstrong family moved in 1902 from the Upper West Side into a house at 1032 Warburton Avenue in Yonkers, which overlooked the Hudson river ...
... internal storage, the structure might look like the following record member { // member of a family member next string firstName integer age } record family { // the family itself ... both the list of families and the list of members within the family are stored in two linked lists using the same data structure (node), and this language does not have parametric types ...
... After the German invasion of Poland in 1939 the family holdings in that country were gone, and all income from there ceased ... The family became destitute ... A friend of the family, a Russian sculptor, Naum Gabo, took Michael under his wing, so to speak ...
Famous quotes containing the word family:
“I am the family face;
Flesh perishes, I live on,
Projecting trait and trace
Through time to times anon,
And leaping from place to place
Over oblivion.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“Family values are a little like family vacations—subject to changeable weather and remembered more fondly with the passage of time. Though it rained all week at the beach, it’s often the momentary rainbows that we remember.”
—Leslie Dreyfous (20th century)
“I worry about people who get born nowadays, because they get born into such tiny families—sometimes into no family at all. When you’re the only pea in the pod, your parents are likely to get you confused with the Hope Diamond. And that encourages you to talk too much.”
—Russell Baker (b. 1925)