Basic structure of family for anthropology UPSC mains optional

Basic Structure of the Human Family

Family establishes an institutionalized mating relationship or marital relationship, which can be termed ; as the conjugal (rln b/w married couple) relationship.

•  The husband has a monopoly over the wife's sexuality and vice versa.Infact the family establishes some kind of relationships between the various members in the society and by controlling the human urges is indirectly removing confusions that may exist.
• husband with the right to beget children by his wife and the wife with the right to bear the children of her husband. 
•  the biological mother is called the child's Genetrix and the father Genitor.  His social father need not (foster father) be his genitor, though most often he is and so is the case with his social mother.  Similarly is the mother. When anthropologists refer to a mother/ father, they mean the child’s social father(Pater)/mother (Mater). 
• Pater and Mater are the persons whom the society recognizes as the child's legal father and mother respectively. 
• Natal relationship refers to the ties that exist between a person and his parental family. A single family acts as both the family of procreation and the family of orientation, an individual has a status of a spouse in one and has a status of being a parent in the other. This dual nature is the characteristic feature of every family. 
•  The family is also based on the foundations of emotions like love, mutual affection etc. This emotional basis of the family makes it an ideal primary social group.
•  The intellectual basis of the family manifests in the rational and reasoned responsibilityamong the members of the family, guarantees smooth working of the family and thus society as a whole.
•  Family is the basis of the regulation of the social life.  It is through the family that every society ensures a wide range of network of relationships and thus regulates and orders life for its mmbers. In a society, a family is in a nuclear position which prepares the child to participate in all the other social groups; The family enlarges to form a lineage and two brothers form two different lineages and these in turn can establish a clan and ultimately the society itself.
•  cornerstone of the human society.