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Staff Article

Family

In human society, family (from Latin: family) is a group of people related either by
consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship).
The purpose of families is to maintain the well-being of its members and of
society. Ideally, families would offer predictability, structure, and safety as
members mature and participate in the community. In most societies, it is within
families that children acquire socialization for life outside the family, and acts as
the primary source of attachment, nurturing, and socialization for humans.
Additionally, as the basic unit for
meeting the basic needs of its

members, it provides a sense of
boundaries for performing tasks in a
safe environment, ideally builds a
person into a functional adult,
transmits culture, and ensures
continuity of humankind with
precedents of knowledge.

Anthropologists generally classify

most family organizations as
matrifocal (a mother and her children)
; patrifocal (a father and his
children); conjugal (a wife, her
husband, and children, also called the nuclear family); avuncular (for example, a
grandparent, a brother, his sister, and her children); or extended (parents and
children co-reside with other members of one parent's family).Members of the
immediate family may include spouses, parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters,
sons, and daughters.

Members of the extended family may include aunts,
uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces, and siblings-in-law.
Sometimes these are also considered members of the
immediate family, depending on an individual's specific
relationship with them, and the legal definition of

Sanjana Katoch "immediate family" varies. Sexual relations with family
PRINCIPAL members are regulated by rules concerning incest such
Suraj School, Bawal as the incest taboo. 10