A family has been the basic and fundamental cell of any kind of society since the first society took place. There are a lot of definitions for a family that was given by different philosophers and sociologists in different periods of our history. Some of them are practically identical and use the same criteria for defining family-like cohabitation and children. Others use absolutely different approaches. The main two streams in theories that define the family are functionalism and structural.
Functionalism describes a family as a set of social and individual functions that provide development and balance of the whole societal structure. For instance, the family has to provide economical resources for itself and for society. Or the family has to provide a platform for developing individuals that are preparing to become functional parts of the social system. The structural approach tries to show that the number and the quality correlation of family members is the most important factor in defying a family. For example, a male and a female bonded by marriage and having a single child or many children are considered to be a family. Other structures are considered to be inappropriate.
Article 16(3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that a family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the state. This definition is vague, but at the same time, it’s full of meaning. So what is a family?!
My opinion is that a family is a mixture of all of the functions and structures described by different scientists in different time periods. This question is more of a philosophical field than strictly scientific. In different periods of our history, a family was defined differently. For example, in Middle Ages, it was not possible for any given society to take a gay couple as a family. In a lot of societies, it is still so, but on contrary in a lot of them, less conservative, things are absolutely opposite.
For me family as a structural unit is traditionally a couple of individuals( not specifically different sex) that are bonded with different connections like cohabitation and most important moral and psychological satisfaction from their union. Its functions are directed into the prosperity of the bigger unit, like a commune or a society. Ordinary family is doing it through raising children, giving them education, etc. Families, that are not able to reproduce, like gay families or families having problems with fertility are doing their deposits by strengthening the economic situation by means of work and consumption.
When getting to a more classic understanding of the family is when a man is working and the wife is doing the chores around the house. But in my understanding, a modern family is a compromise between working the entire time father and babysitting mother. The modern society brought out a lot of possibilities for this structure to shift. My understanding of this issue is that everyone in the family who is functional as a person should contribute to its general prosperity by working, creating a microclimate inside of the formation, and giving other members of the family a chance to realize themselves as a personality while performing their roles.
Another important issue is the number of family members, meaning the absence of some people performing their roles. For example, I consider a family as a stable structure even when there is a single parent, because even if there is no mother or no father the unit is still performing its role in the society: growing children and developing in all terms. The level of efficiency while performing these roles might be different because it is a lot harder for a single parent to raise a child or children, but still, the process is not inert. We have to understand that a family has a meaning only when it is considered to be a part of something bigger: society or nation. Otherwise, my opinion is that this is just a group of individuals trying to maintain their existence.
The emotional state of the unit is also important when qualifying it as a family. When people are emotionally attached to each other by bonds like friendship or love, then this group is also considered to be a family. Without feelings uniting the group, this is just the incorporation of people having the same goals and uniting in the struggle to reach them. We often hear from people playing basketball, that their team is their family. Or from people working together in a company, that their staff is their family. This is because a person intuitively searches for similarities between a family and their surrounding individuals. As you can see these similarities are not so hard to find.
According to G. Murdock, there are four essential goals for a family in order to be itself. The first one is sexual. I agree with this statement because the first step in the creation of a lot of families was taken thanks to the sexual drive and it doesn’t really matter, whether it is a heterosexual family or not.
Another function is reproductive. I agree with that because this is one of the most important functions of any society: reproduction and development. Families that are not able to reproduce nowadays are able to adopt children, sometimes gay and lesbian couples are allowed to do that, which also proves their role in society.
Socialization is also considered to be a function of a family by Murdock. It is true for families having kids. For families with no children, the social process is involving interaction with other people.
The fourth function by Murdock is economic. Any family, whether heterosexual or not, performs that function because all of the people need to eat something, wear something, and in order to do that they have to work.
To sum up my opinion on the definition of a family I would like to add that a family is: a domestic group of people. This group is usually united through a birth of a child or a marriage. Or any other kind of relationship that can be compared to stated before in any other suitable way. This should include cohabitation, domestic partnership, adoption, or even surname. Also in many countries and cultures, the definition of a family does not only consist of a plain scientific term. My opinion is that families also created through blood connection, meaning genetic correspondence. Family is what you put into this word. A lot of cultures acknowledge family as all of the people that have the same ethnic roots or skin tone or even the shape of their eyes.