nuclear family
n.
A family unit consisting of a mother and father and their children.
[From NUCLEAR, basic, cardinal, central.]
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A family unit consisting of a mother and father and their children.
[From NUCLEAR, basic, cardinal, central.]
A family unit consisting of the biologic parents and their offspring. The nuclear family is less inclusive than the extended family. Although the nuclear family is a relatively recent product of Western society, it is threatened by the increasing dissolution of marriage.
The small family unit of parents and children. This is not the most frequently occurring household unit; in the UK, for example, more households contain one person than any other category, and there are increasing numbers of single-parent and step-parent families, while, in other parts of the world, the extended family is a common household unit.
A family group consisting of wife, husband (or one of these) and dependent children.
A type of family made up only of parents and their children. (Compare extended family.)
The term nuclear family developed in the western world to distinguish the
family group consisting of parents (usually a father and
mother) and their children, from what is known as an extended
family. Nuclear families can be any size, as long as the family can support itself and there are only parents and children
(or the family is an extended family.) According to
In its most common usage, the term "nuclear family" refers to a household consisting of a father, a mother and their children (siblings).[4] George Murdock also describes the term in this way:
Some also use the term to describe single-parent households and families in which the parents are a "non-conjugal" couple.
Around the world, the structure of family norms are different. Ideas of what constitute a family changes based on culture, mobility, wealth, and tradition. In many cultures, the need to be self-supporting is hard to meet, particularly where rents/property values are very high, and the foundation of a new household can be an obstacle to nuclear family formation instead of extended family forms (or people remaining single while living longer with their parents).
In India, legislation promoting the nuclear family has been decried as eroding the traditional Hindu joint family. [1]
Sociology studies families and their formation, attempting to detail the difference between families. The numerical decline of the nuclear family is highlighted by:
In The United States nuclear families now constitute a minority of households with rising prevalence of other family arrangement such as blended families, binuclear families, single-parent families. Today nuclear families constitute roughly 24.1% of households, compared to 40.3% in 1970.[3] Roughly 75% of all children in the United States will spend at least some time in a single-parent household.
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"The nuclear family... is the idealized version of what most people think when they think of "family..." The old definition of what a family is... the nuclear family- no longer seems adequate to cover the wide diversity of household arrangements we see today, according to many social scientists (Edwards 1991; Stacey 1996). Thus has arisen the term postmodern family, which is meant to describe the great variablity in family forms, including single-parent families and child-free couples."- Brian K. Williams, Stacey C. Sawyer, Carl M. Wahlstrom, Marriages, Families & Intimate Relationships, 2005.[3] |
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