DEFINITION AND UNIVERSALITY
Through her research Jan Trost (1990) confirmed this overwhelming definition dilemma experienced not only by family researchers but also the general population. Specifically, she illustrated the difficulty and diversity with which people identify those who could or should be labeled family members. For some in her sample, family consisted of only closest family members, the nuclear family, while for others family, included various other kin, friends, and even pets.
john Scanzoni and colleagues, in 1980s, discussed the traditional family defined as two parents and a child or children. They challenged the view held by many early writers that the traditional family was the ideal family, the family type by which the success of other families may be evaluated. The definition of family is not only structurally focused but also oriented to both ideology and process.
Katherine Allen further defines the ideology and process when she states, "Our assumptions, values, feelings, and histories shape the scholarship we propose, the findings we generate, and the conclusions we draw. Our insights about family processes and structures are affected by our membership in particular families, by the lives of those we study, and by what we care about knowing and explaining." These inescapable ideological differences result in a definition of the family that is driven by theory, history, culture, and situation.
Most argue that a universal definition is either not possible (Settles 1987) or only possible to discuss in relation to categories of definitions (Trost 1990). Most experts in the field have concluded that “there is no single correct definition of what a family is” (Fine 1993). Rather, the approaches that individuals have taken in attempting to define the family have ranged in meaning from very specific to very broad, from theoretical to practical, and from culturally specific to culturally diverse.
How the ' human beings live together in families can be studied, not as bizarre and exotic forms of human behavior, ' but as evidences of the adaptive potential of culture.
Definition:
(William Newton Stephens),
This definition rests on four criteria:
1. Marriage and the marriage contract
2. Reciprocal economic obligation between husband and wife
3. Common residence
4. Rights and duties of parenthood
these features may not be found in every human society, but in majority of societies, families satisfy these criteria. There is an absence of a definition for universal applicability. But to a majority of human societies, this definition can be applied.
Acc to Murdock Family is a social grp characterised by common residence, economic cooperation and reproduction.
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