Family as a small group

What is family? Social Institute of the four major. It allows you to constantly replenish the population. This is the first. And at the same time, the family as a small group is the most stable and strong cell of society. For all his life a person can simultaneously visit many groups, some leave, others leave, then return. And only the family remains the one that he never throws. The following definition is generally accepted. The family as a small group is based either on marriage, or on kinship by blood. Its members are linked by one to two by everyday, bilateral assistance, responsibility in the sphere 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. Since the legal registration of the marriage, it is born, and ends its existence after the official registration of the divorce. This shows that the family as a small social group consists of several life cycles. This is a chain of successive events of significance, from the registration of marriage to its dissolution. An example for highlighting the stages that make up the life cycle, the scientists were the families in which the spouses were 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 lasts until the last child 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 family.

The disengagement of the grown up children continues in the third stage. Its duration depends on the difference in age between children. The father and mother become at this time 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 grandchildren from the house of the grandparents.

The fourth stage lasts until the day of the death of one of the spouses (or both). At this time, the husband and wife are again alone, as at the time of marriage.

Also, based on certain criteria, different types of families are distinguished . First of all, they are classical (traditional), consisting of several generations, and modern nuclear, consisting of two generations.

In terms of the number of children born, they are large, childless, and single-child.

Another distinguish the family of origin (parental) and recreational, which is created by adult children.

If her husband dominates her, it is a patriarchal family, if the wife is a matriarchal one.

The leadership of a man in the family makes her paternal, the woman is a maternal one. If the head is considered to be both spouses on equal terms, she is an equal.

At this stage of the development of the society, the family is its cell, which, as a rule, consists of parents and a child. It is called nuclear, because parents and their children are the nucleus responsible for the emergence of a new generation. This is the center of the family. All the rest - aunts, uncles, grandmothers, grandfathers - already its periphery. A family in which several generations live together (three or four) is called extended. And branches of uncle-aunts, non-native siblings 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 away, and this continues all the time. If young people stay with their parents, an extended family is obtained. In both cases, families of two types are distinguished:

1) Primary (parent);

2) Secondary (newly formed).

A nuclear family is present only in a society where older children have the opportunity to settle separately.