What is YOUR definition of "family"?

This seems to be a very hot topic. Perhaps moreso as the times change, yet, traditions may be held on to. So, what is YOUR definition of "famiy"? Does family start and end at blood? Is family anyone who you love unconditionally? Is family strictly a father and mother, plus child, unit? If so, are children raised in unconventional settings automatically disadvantaged, compared to children raised in conventional family units?

fertilemyrtle wrote:

My defintion of family, is a unit of people composed of healthy, balanced relationships guided by uncondtional love. Whether that "family" is made up of same sex partners or not has nothing to do with how a family will "turn out".  

I will finish later, I am being summoned.

bluelogos wrote:

This is a complicated question. I think "family" has different definitions depending on context.

In a sociological context, a family unit is a group of people who usually cohabitate, care for each other, and work for each other's mutual benefit. While friends can care for each other and sometimes cohabitate, they don't often work to keep each other alive/provide for each other the same way families do.

In a legal context, a family can be anything from college roommates (there is common law precedent for this) to people with consanguineous relations to people whose only relation is a legal obligation and a piece of paper (be it a marriage license or a birth certificate or an adoption certificate).

In a scientific context, a family (speaking of humans, not animals or plants) is most often a consanguineous unit, since it's the only really reliable way to establish the relationship. (Children have DNA from both their parents, et cetera.) I do not believe society's adoption of this definition for a sociological use was the result of a decision to oppress or ostracize, but it was the one that made pretty common sense: we made you, we care for you, and when we are old, you care for us.

I think these days since consanguinity is not as important as it once used to be, defining family based on consanguinity or legal fictions that mimic it (marriage, adoption) to the exclusion of all else is silly, but I do think the definition works and is useful, especially in the cases of intestate deaths.

I do not think family ends with blood. Family is, more importantly, love and dedication and sacrifice. We say "blood is thicker than water" and we think it means blood bonds are more important than non-blood bonds. That is incorrect. The full quote is "the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb." Someone you promise to care for, love, and protect is your family before someone who merely shares some DNA.

Statistics have shown that children raised in "unconventional" settings are disadvantaged. For example, children who grow up in single-parent households are less likely to achieve higher education (i.e. college) than children who grow up in two-parent households. However, I do not think these disadvantages are inherent to the childhood circumstances (i.e. kids raised by single mothers are dumber) but are in our social system instead. A child raised by a single mother does not have the support or dual incomes of two parents, and so that child may not have the opportunities to prepare for college or see college as a realistic goal as a result of his or her upbringing. While we (some of us,  in first-world countries) often aren't in situations where heavy division of labor is necessary, the division of labor between the sexes is what allowed societies to grow and flourish, and families who do not enjoy all the advantges of first-world living will be disadvantaged without the division of labor in a "traditional" family.