Family: Perspectives Household and/ or Family?

A household is any single person or group of people who make up the people at a common residence and who share facilities or have a meal a day in that place. They may or may not be a family. They allow a label for when there is no family resident.

It is important to realize that some people live in destitution, without a home, living on the streets and in poverty, moving from shelter to shelter. They often seek an address in order to improve chances of getting work. They may need help from social services and other agencies.

There are four main types of families:

Nuclear family.

This is limited to two generations of a mother, father and child or children. It is what people often imagine a family to be, but it is often not the reality.

Extended family.

This is where generations are added on to the nuclear family. It can be extended horizontally to brothers and sisters or cousins. It can be extended vertically to include a grandparent or more, with three or even four generations.

Lone parent family.

Here there is one parent only and his or her children.

Reconstituted family.

Here we have social parents (raising the children) who may not be the biological parents for all or some of the children. There are a high number of reconstituted families due to separations, divorces and adoptions of children.

What do families do?

Families carry out important roles of providing physical (actual), emotional and economic support.

According to functionalists, the family plays a very important positive role in raising the next generation.

• Families reproduce and raise the next generation. Not only do they carry out this rather obvious point, but they show how to do it. They pass on and display a model of rearing children, through (often) a monogamous sexual relationship and techniques of child rearing. This model is passed on to the next generation and is seen as the way to do child rearing by others in society.

• Families nurture children into the values and norms of society. They transmit the culture of society and how to conform. It is said that family is the essential bedrock of society: if families are in harmony then society will be in harmony. This is called primary socialization because it is a crucial, early and continuing part of socialization for the child.

• Families give emotional and psychological support. They are safe places (when they work properly). One expects comfort, sympathy and support from other family members regarding the stresses of going to school, college and work, and through all the difficulties of ill health and life crises.

• Families offer structures of economic support. This can be physical support, such as shelter and food, but also allows for economic development, such as families offering each other work or money for businesses, as well as support for when times are hard.

Exercise 1

Find in the text English equivalents of the following words and word combinations:

семейство (домочадцы); жить в нищете; приемная семья; развод; усыновление; производить на свет; показывать пример воспитания детей; приобщать к ценностям и нормам поведения в обществе; основа (фундамент) общества.

Exercise 2

Complete the sentences:

1. A household is any single person or group of people who …

2. Families carry out important roles of providing …

3. A nuclear family is limited to …

4. An extended family is …

5. Families pass on and display a model of …

Exercise 3

Answer the questions:

1. Is there any difference between a household and a family?

2. What main types of families can you name?

3. What are the main functions of the family?

4. What kind of support do families give?