CONCEPT OF FAMILY- UNIVERSAL?

According to George Peter Murdock's definition from 1949, a "family" is a social group

characterised by shared residence, mutual economic support, and reproduction. It consists

of adults of both sexes, at least two of whom keep a sexual relationship that is socially

acceptable, and one or more biological or adoptive offspring of the sexually cohabiting

adults. On the basis of his extensive research into kinship practises across a variety of

cultures, Murdock was able to provide evidence that supported this hypothesis. The

"nuclear" family is also universal, according to Murdock, and normally serves four purposes:

sexual, economic, reproductive, and educational. He looked at 192 societies and came up

with the concept that the family is a social organisation characterised by shared housing,

economic cooperation, and reproduction. He also emphasised that parents actively socialise

and teach the child.

His approach placed a strong focus on nuclear families and the idea that nuclear families are

shared by all human societies. Murdock believes that the nuclear family is always easily

differentiated as a separate subunit even when it is "enveloped" in more extensive domestic

units, and he indicates that it remains the more fundamental unit in relation to the universal

features of the family.

However, this definition and concept of universal families is highly debated, with many

exceptions as outlined below.

COMMUNAL LIVING IN THE KIBBUTZ- PARENTS DO NOT ACTIVELY REAR THEIR

CHILDREN:

Melford E. Spiro (1954) questioned if families are universal in his article "Is the Family

Universal?" when describing the Israeli Kibbutz. The majority of tasks that were usually

undertaken by a nuclear family are now carried out by the entire kibbutz community. A

Kibbutz (plural: Kibbutzim) is an agrarian collective in Israel. Its main features are communal

living, shared ownership of all assets without focus on profit, and raising children as a group.

The explicit guiding principle of a kibbutz is to share from each as per his ability, to each

based on his needs. The nuclear, polygamous, or extended forms of the "family," as that

term is understood in social theory, don't exist in kibbutzim.

A kibbutz couple resides in a single room that acts as a bedroom and living space. Their
children are raised in a common children's dormitory, and they share a community dining

area for meals. Both the genders work in the kibbutz. They can work in either one of the

agricultural or service types of work, such as office work, teaching, cooking and laundry.

However, the agricultural sector of the economy is dominated by men, while the service

sector is dominated by women. Women do not just care for their partners but also the entire

kibbutz when they cook, sew, wash, etc. Men create goods, but the financial benefits of their

labour are distributed to the Kibbutz rather than to their immediate family or friends, even if

they, like other kibbutz members, share in these benefits.

To become a "couple" (zug), a man and woman must request a room. When a couple

requests permission to share a room, the kibbutz assumes that they are doing it because

they are in love. This union is valid without the need for a wedding or any other formal

celebration. When a couple asks a room and the kibbufz approves the request, society

officially recognises their union. However, all "couples" eventually "get married" in line with

the state's marriage laws—typically immediately before or shortly after the birth of their first

child—because, under state law, children born outside of wedlock are not entitled to any

legal protections.

The fact that the "physical care" and the "social rearing" of the children are not the

responsibility of their own parents, however, is more crucial in establishing whether or not

the family exists in the kibbutz. These duties, however, are the most crucial ones that the

adults in the "family" have in relation to the children, according to Murdock's results.

This duty falls to the entire kibbutz for all of its children. The children spend their time eating

and sleeping in designated "children's houses," buying their clothing from a common closet,

and receiving medical attention from their "nurses" when ill. This doesn't mean that parents

don't care about their own children's physical health, but that a community institution has

been given direct responsibility of the care of all the children who learn to cooperate with

each other. As the child gets older, he/she moves to different "children's houses" with

children their own age, and are watched by a nurse. Most of the rules are set by the

nurse, who also teaches the child basic social skills, a responsibility that is not given to the

parents. The kids are gradually integrated into the kibbutz's economic life as they move

through the juvenile stage, pre-adolescence, and adolescence. Under the guidance of
adults, they work from one hour (for grade school children) to three hours (for high school

seniors) each day in any of the economic branches. Thus, adults other than their parents

teach kids economic skills as well as the majority of their early social skills.

THE ‘VISITING HUSBAND’ OF ASHANTI OF GHANA- NO COHABITATION OF

SPOUSES:

In his study of the Ashanti people of Ghana, Meyer Fortes wrote in 1945 that the husband

and wife continue to live with their own families after they get married. This is one reason

why Ashanti people seem to want to seek spouses in their own village.

Lucy Mair's 1997 article about Fortes's work includes a description of how, at sunset in an

Ashanti village, children carry hot dishes on their heads from their mothers to their fathers.

Sometimes, there is also an exchange among two houses.

In this kind of family system, the husband is just a visitor, and his only job as a father is to

produce children, and he does not live with his wife or children. The relatives of his wife are

in charge of raising his children, but he is in charge of raising his sister's children. This way

of living is called "Sibling Households," and each person in a married couple lives with his or

her own matrilineal kin. Married siblings live together.

Even though the family doesn't live together, they still do household chores and there is an

economic obligation. The man has to buy clothes for his wife and children at certain

occasions during the year, and the woman has to prepare meals for him and the children,

using food she grew herself.

NAYARS OF SOUTH INDIA- NO COHABITATION OR LONG TERM NUCLEAR FAMILY

UNITS :

Kathleen Gough also disagreed with Murdock's theory of the nuclear family. She defined

marriage as a relationship that included a woman and one or more people in which a child

born to the woman has full birth-status rights. Gough did research on the Nayar people in

1959. The “Tali” rite of Nayar girls required them to be married to an appropriate Nayar man.

According to this rite, husbands did not live with their wives or take care of their children.

Instead, the wife's only duty to the man was to mourn his death. Men could have as many

"sambandham" wives as they wanted, but women could only have up to twelve. Gough's

study shows that nuclear families do not represent the norm. For example, husbands in

sambandham have no responsibility to their wives and children, so they don't play the
fatherly role and don't help socialise their children. This would mean that Murdock's roles as

a teacher and provider for his family are not universal roles. Gough also came to the

conclusion from her study that the Nayar were a matrilineal family.

MUNDURUCU OF THE AMAZON - CO-RESIDENTIAL UNITS WITHOUT COHABITING

COUPLES:

Murphy (1960) described the Mundurucu people of the Brazilian Amazon Basin in South

America, who live in villages comprised of two types of co-living units: one is made up of

adult men, and the other is made up of women and children. The husband-father offers his

wife fish and meat, which makes the nuclear family a domestic unit. On this scale, then, the

nuclear family creates a domestic unit but is not a co-residential unit. Using the word

"household" in this context would be wrong, since the nuclear family only forms a household

in one way, not the other. However, while the nuclear family is a domestic unit symbolically,

it is not in practise. This is because most domestic tasks are done by both adult males and

adult females working together. That is, men usually hunt together, and all of the women in

each house work together to prepare food (sometimes a simple division of labour is

seen among the women). So, in a way, the men as a group gave the women meat and fish

that they hunted, which the women then processed as a group and gave to their children and

husbands. At this scale, the whole village itself acts as one domestic unit, with men and

women working on different tasks.

CHANGING RESIDENCES OF TROBRIAND ISLANDERS:

Lucy Mair wrote in 1977 that within the matrilineal Trobriand islanders it is common for a boy

to grow up with his father's family but to end up living in the village of his mother's brother

when he gets married and starts a family. In this system, both the domestic authority, which

belongs to the father, and the legal authority, which belongs to the mother's brother, which

has to do with things like property distribution, are met.

The Trobrianders can also marry their mother's brother's daughter. When a boy moves into

the village of his mother's brother, the bride doesn't have to move away from her family. In

the same way, Yao and Cewa men in Malawi have to live with their wives right after they get

married. Later, they can move into the village of their mother's relatives. In this case, by the

time a man's daughters are old enough to get married, he becomes the head of the family

where the husbands of his daughters will come from, as these men will be marrying their
mother's brother's (his) daughters.

HOUSEHOLDS AND FAMILIES:

According to Bender (1967), there are a variety of ethnographic contexts where families and

households are different. These contexts range from modern western societies where

families generally speaking occupy households together, and do so most of the time, to

societies where families and households are different both in theory and in practise. There

are other communities where father-husbands or children do not live with the other members

of the family on a regular basis, even in many modern nuclear households.

The most common scenario in which a family's members do not typically live together is

when the father-husband lives apart from the rest of his family. This situation arises in a

variety of social contexts, including those where sibling households are common, or where it

is advantageous for the husband-father to be separated from his family for long periods of

time due to economic or military considerations, or seen in settings where polygyny is

present. These situations reflect a clear social separation between both the males and

females during adulthood.

For instance, among the Caribbean families, the husband-father must live away from the rest

of the family due to work obligations even though he regards their place of residence as his

home (Solien de Gonzales, 1960)

Some polygynous couples share a home, while in others the husband and each of the wives

may live in separate but nearby households. These polygynous families do not create

common residential groupings when the wives live far apart from one another, such as seen

in the Navaho when a man is married to different women who are not related to each other

and live far apart from one another (Kluckhohn & Leighton, 1946).

Scholars like Bohannan, Keesing and others have tried to distinguish between different

types of households. They all say that the concept of a household has to do with proximity or

location. However, this is not exactly true.

Solien de Gonzales (1965) distinguished between two categories of households that

comprise kinsmen but are not families and provided a clear conceptualization of the

distinction between households and families. She uses the term "affinal household" to

describe families that solely include a married couple. She uses the term "consanguineal

household" to describe a co-residential kinship group in which there is no consistently

present male who takes the role of husband-father. This type of household is very common

around the world, especially in the Caribbean and South America.

NOT ALL FAMILIES ARE NUCLEAR, NOT ALL NUCLEAR FAMILIES INVOLVE

REPRODUCTION:

Murdock linked the nuclear family to the reproductive function, however Bender (1967)

pointed out that the nuclear family is not always associated with this function and that

nuclear families can function without it. The biological and social dimensions of reproduction

must be taken into account. In societies where premarital or extramarital relationships are

permitted for women, the nuclear family as a whole is not always the reproductive unit, but it

may be the unit responsible for producing children. This is because of biological

considerations. The same is true for polyandrous families, where it is impossible to establish

biological paternity. If, on the other hand, social factors are taken into account, it could be

said that it doesn't matter who the biological father is, only that a social father exists.

Additionally, there are nuclear families that do not engage in reproduction when children are

adopted.

In the area of marriage and family life, contemporary topics include various types of samesex

couplehood (civil partnerships, other forms of civil unions, same-sex marriage), whose

legal recognition varies across the globe. Children may be adopted and reproduction is not

involved. There are also other types of families, including those that have children and those

that establish biological parent-child relationships (like egg and sperm donation, surrogacy)

without any legal or social relationships.

ECONOMIC FUNCTIONS NEED NOT BE CARRIED OUT IN FAMILY UNITS ONLY:

The economic role is another one that Murdock claimed was always connected to the

nuclear family. Contrary to sexual and reproductive functions, Bender (1967) argued that it

may not be meaningful to link economic functions to the nuclear family, or even kinship

groups because almost every social organisation engages in some form of economic

activity. Murdock's argument also focuses on the alleged economic collaboration between

spouses (division of labour by sex), between parents and their children (division of labour by

age), and between siblings of the same generation.

But Bender argued that it is incorrect to claim that nuclear families always perform economic

functions because there is a division of labour by age and sex within that group. The division
of work by sex and age exists in society as a whole, and as a result, it also applies to any

social organisations that include members of both sexes and various ages, including all

different kinds of families. It is indeed possible that in some situations, specific economic

divisions of labour can only be performed by parents in connection to their children and not

by people without children. But, it is also true that almost any economic roles that parents

play in relation to the children can also be undertaken entirely outside the family setting,

such as in the Kibbutz.

SOCIALISATION CAN OCCUR OUTSIDE THE NUCLEAR FAMILY:

Socialization is the fourth universal nuclear family function that Murdock identified, which

some people believe to be the most fundamental. Bender (1967) says that there are two

aspects here, one that Murdock (1949) brought up and one that Parsons and Bales (1955)

brought up. Murdock argued that the nuclear family is the main socialising force everywhere.

Parsons and Bales, on the other hand, think that some parts of the socialisation process

relating to personality formation can only be done by a small group like a nuclear family. This

is why the nuclear family is so common, according to them.

But, it is highly debatable whether or not the nuclear family is always the main socialising

force. Especially in cultures where there is a clear social and physical divide between the

sexes, infants can be constantly with their mothers, but fathers have at most a relatively

modest direct role in their socialising. While it is true that young boys usually acquire skills

to perform male-oriented tasks from their fathers and girls via their mothers, the father may

nonetheless have a very minimal role in communities where boys live with the mothers apart

from their fathers. The nuclear family does not carry out socialisation in environments where

children are free to reside in households other than those of their parents, or where children

are in constant contact with a diverse range of kinsmen, or where children reside with their

peers. Additionally, socialisation may be taken over by nurses and servants in some

circumstances.

REFERENCES:

Bender, D. R. (1967). A Refinement of the Concept of Household: Families, Co-residence,

and Domestic Functions 1. American Anthropologist, 69(5), 493-504.

Levy, M. J., & Fallers, L. A. (1959). The family: some comparative considerations. American

Anthropologist, 61(4), 647-651.

Fortes, M., Steel, R. W., & Ady, P. (1947). Ashanti survey, 1945-46: an experiment in social

research. The geographical journal, 110(4/6), 149-177.

Kluckhohn, C., & Leighton, D. C. (1974). The Navaho (Vol. 72). Harvard University Press.

Lévi-Strauss, C. (1963) Structural Anthropology, Volume I. Basic Books, Inc.: New York.

Mair, L. 1997. An Introduction to Social Anthropology. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Murdock, George Peter. 1949. Social Structure. New York: Macmillan.

Murphy, R. F. (1960). Headhunter's heritage; social and economic change among the

Mundurucú Indians. University of California Press. Berkeley

Parsons, T. & Bales, R. F. (1955). Family: Socialization and interaction process. Clencoe Ill.

Free Press.

Solien de Gonzalez, N. L. (1960). Household and familyin the Caribbean. Socialand

Economic Studies 9:101.

Solien de González, N. L. (1965). The consanguineal household and matrifocality. American

Anthropologist, 1541-1549.

Spiro, M. E. (1954). Is the family universal?. American Anthropologist, 56(5), 839-846.