Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 3 views

    Nuclear

    Uploaded by

    ardelia.vidal
    nuclear family

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Nuclear

    Uploaded by

    ardelia.vidal
    3 views2 pages
    nuclear family

    Original Title

    nuclear

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    nuclear family

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    3 views2 pages

    Nuclear

    Uploaded by

    ardelia.vidal
    nuclear family

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    You are on page 1of 2

    nuclear family, in sociology and anthropology, a group of people who are

    united by ties of partnership and parenthood and consisting of a pair of


    adults and their socially recognized children. Typically, but not always, the
    adults in a nuclear family are married. Although such couples are most
    often a man and a woman, the definition of the nuclear family has expanded
    with the advent of same-sex marriage. Children in a nuclear family may be
    the couple’s biological or adopted offspring.

    Thus defined, the nuclear family was once widely held to be the most basic
    and universal form of social organization. Anthropological research,
    however, has illuminated so much variability of this form that it is safer to
    assume that what is universal is a “nuclear family complex” in which the
    roles of husband, wife, mother, father, son, daughter, brother, and sister
    are embodied by people whose biological relationships do not necessarily
    conform to the Western definitions of these terms. In matrilineal societies,
    for example, a child may be the responsibility not of his biological genitor
    but of his mother’s brother, who fulfills the roles typical of Western
    fatherhood.

    More From Britannica

    family law: The two-parent family

    Closely related in form to the predominant nuclear-family unit are


    the conjugal family and the consanguineal family. As its name implies, the
    conjugal family is knit together primarily by the marriage tie and consists of
    mother, father, their children, and some close relatives. The consanguineal
    family, on the other hand, typically groups itself around a
    unilineal descent group known as a lineage, a form that
    reckons kinship through either the father’s or the mother’s line but not
    both. Whether a culture is patrilineal or matrilineal, a consanguineal
    family comprises lineage relatives and consists of parents, their children,
    and their children’s children. Rules regarding lineage exogamy, or out-
    marriage, are common in these groups; within a given community,
    marriages thus create cross-cutting social and political ties between
    lineages.
    The stability of the conjugal family depends on the quality of the marriage
    of the husband and wife, a relationship that is more emphasized in the kinds
    of industrialized, highly mobile societies that frequently demand that
    people reside away from their kin groups. The consanguineal family derives
    its stability from its corporate nature and its permanence, as its
    relationships emphasize the perpetuation of the line.

    You might also like