What is family? Social Institute of the four main. It allows you to constantly replenish the population. This is first and foremost. And at the same time, the family as a small group is the most stable and strongest unit of society. Throughout his entire life, a person can visit many groups at the same time, leave some, leave in others, then return. And only the family remains the one that he never abandons. The following definition is considered generally accepted. The family as a small group is based either on marriage or on kinship by blood. Its members are interconnected by one for two life, bilateral assistance, responsibility in the field of morality and law to each other.
In addition, the family as a small group has such an important feature as the ability to recover in a new generation. From the moment of legal registration of marriage, it is born, and ends after the official registration of a divorce. This indicates that the family as a small social group consists of several life cycles. This is a chain of successive events of importance, from the registration of a marriage to its dissolution. An example to highlight the stages that make up the life cycle, the scientists served as a family in which the couple never divorced. If this fact took place, it is harder to build this scheme.
Registration of marriage - this is the initial stage of the family, the so-called stage of growth. It continues until the last baby is born.
In the second stage, the family as a small group experiences the birth of the last child. It ends with the resettlement of the first child, who decided to create his own family.
Detachment of matured children continues in the third stage. Its duration depends on the age difference between the children. Father and mother at this time become grandfather and grandmother, often engaged in the education of grandchildren. The duration of the third stage also depends on the country in which the family lives. It ends with the departure of the grandchildren from the home of the ancestors.
The fourth stage lasts until the day of the death of one of the spouses (or both). In this period of time, the husband and wife are left alone again, as at the time of marriage.
Also, based on certain criteria, various types of families are distinguished . First of all, they are classical (traditional), consisting of several generations, and modern nuclear, consisting of two generations.
By the number of children born, they are large, childless and one child.
They also distinguish between a family of origin (parental) and a procreative one, which is created by adult children.
If the husband dominates in it, this is a patriarchal family, if the wife is matriarchal.
The leadership of a man in the family makes her paternal, and the woman maternal. If both spouses are considered to be the head on an equal footing, she is equalitarian.
At this stage of development of society, the family is its cell, consisting, as a rule, of parents and a child. It is called nuclear, since parents and their children are the core responsible for the emergence of a new generation. This is the center of the family. All the rest - aunts, uncles, grandparents - are already its periphery. A family in which several generations live together (three to four) is called extended. Moreover, the uncle's aunt branches, step-brothers-sisters do not belong here.
A related group is created by two generations. When children grow up, they separate, form their families. Then their children grow up and also move out, and so it goes on all the time. If young people stay with their parents, an extended family is obtained. In both cases, two types of families are distinguished:
1) Primary (parent);
2) Secondary (newly formed).
The nuclear family is present only in a society where mature children have the opportunity to settle separately.