This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Bryan Derksen (talk | contribs) at 10:10, 16 April 2002 (taxonomy (merging my own edit-conflicted contribution)). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 10:10, 16 April 2002 by Bryan Derksen (talk | contribs) (taxonomy (merging my own edit-conflicted contribution))(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)In sociology and common useage, a family is a group of people, affiliated by blood (i.e. biologically related) or by legal ties such as marriage or adoption. While the most common form of such legal ties has been the marriage of a man and a woman, historians and sociologists have recorded countless variations of the family.
A nuclear family, in common useage, consists of a married couple and their offspring.
An extended family adds other close relatives. In America, before the term nuclear family gained currency, the term family generally had the meaning of the more modern term extended family.
Compare: household
Family is one of the levels of taxanomic classification of organisms. It lies between the less-specific order and the more-specific genus; ie, an order will contain one or more families, and a family will contain one or more genuses. Humans, for instance, are of family Hominidae.