The family represents the union between people who have blood ties, coexistence and based on affection.
According to the Brazilian Constitution, the concept of family encompasses various forms of organization based on the affective relationship between its members.
However, this is not a rigid or immutable concept. Throughout history, the concept of families has taken on different meanings.
Currently, after debates involving various sectors of society, Brazilian law assumed that the family constitution is based on affection. This understanding replaces the previous one, which based the family on marriage and procreation.
Types of family
According to article 226 of the Constitution of the Republic of 1988, the family is understood as the basis of society and receives special protection from the State.
Over the years, the meaning of family has changed. The traditional family, nuclear family, composed of the father, provider of the house; mother, family caregiver, and her children was being replaced by new types of family.
Currently, the legal understanding of the family encompasses several types of household and aims to account for the full complexity of the factors that unite people.
1. nuclear family and extended family
The nuclear family is understood in a restricted way, consisting of parents and their children.
In turn, the extended or extended family is understood as also being composed of grandparents, uncles, cousins and other kinship relationships.
2. matrimonial family
The matrimonial family comprises the traditional idea of family, constituted from the officialization of matrimony (marriage).
In the current law, the matrimonial family comprises civil and religious marriages, which can be straight or same-sex.
3. informal family
Informal family is the term used for households formed from the stable union between its elements. This type of family receives all kinds of legal support even without the formalization of the marriage.
4. single parent family
Single parent families are formed by the child or young person and only one of their parents (father or mother).
5. reconstituted family
A reconstituted family is formed when at least one of the spouses has a child from a previous relationship.
6. anaparental family
They are families that do not have the father figure, where siblings become responsible for each other.
The current law also covers the formation of a household from affective ties, as in the case of friends, where there is no parenting relationship.
7. one-person family
Single-person families fulfill an important legal function as they are people who live alone (single people, widows or separated). These people receive legal protection and cannot have their family inheritances pledged by justice.
See too: contemporary family
The evolution of the concept of family
Throughout history, the term family has taken on new meanings. Note that the term Family comes from Latin famulus, which was understood as the group of domestic servants.
In the Roman Empire, the concept of family came to designate the union between two people and their descendants. At that moment, the idea of marriage also begins. This ensured the inheritance of assets and social status (from parents to children).
During the Middle Ages, there was the establishment of the marriage union as a sacrament of the Church. This change is a mark of the relationship between Church and State.
The idea of marriage as a sacred institution, indissoluble and destined for reproduction, emerges. It was during this period that the concept of a traditional family consisting of father, mother and their children was consolidated.
In the period after the industrial revolution and the consolidation of contemporaneity, there was an increase in the complexity of relationships and the possibilities of forming different types of families. This change led to an evolution of the concept itself.
Issues related to marriage and reproduction lose strength and the determining factor for the formation of a family unit becomes affection.
The concept of family in sociology
In sociology, the family represents an aggregation of individuals united by affective or kinship ties (consanguinity). Within this relationship, adults are responsible for caring for the children.
The family is also understood as the first institution responsible for the socialization of individuals.
The concept of family takes on its complexity because it relates nature, from the birth of new individuals of the human species, to the culture and organization of social groups (family).
Several studies contradict the idea that family formation is a determination of nature. How individuals organize and give meaning to the family is fundamentally cultural.
This organization can take on several historical and geographic variations.
In anthropological studies, in turn, the human being must be considered in its social complexity, with the family as the central institution of this socialization.
Thus, the family as an institution is directly related to other concepts that underlie society:
- Affiliation, the descent relationship;
- Fraternity, relationship with others on equal terms;
- Conjugality, the association between two members of society;
- Maternity and paternity, the ability to leave descendants and transmit values and social constructions.
- From this, the family becomes the social institution that originates all others (State, religion, education, etc.).
Interested? Other texts that can help:
- Concept of family in sociology
- social groups
- Social Institutions
