OMNIPRESENCE OF THE INSTITUTION OF FAMILY

Recruitment by birth as the principal mode of enlisting membership is common to all societies. It is this aspect of recruitment that has given prominence to the institution of the family. Apart from religion, family is the only institution that is universally found in all societies. It is the family towards which every individual seems to be oriented. The individual carries out assigned tasks as a member of the family.

While most individuals marry, it is not compulsory for them to do so. People can choose to remain bachelors/spinsters. Widowers and widows of marriageable age, and without children, can also prefer widowhood to remarriage. Unmarried people (chronic bachelors and spinsters) still belong to the family to which they are born; only they will not have a family of their own. In many societies, ascetics who decide to remain celibate are treated with respect for their ‘sacrifice’; while some persons may become their disciples, they do not preach celibacy to all their followers. Those who renounce the world for higher religious goals also depend on the families in society for their sustenance. They return from their hermitages to the towns and villages to beg for alms.

It is in this sense that: ‘Family is the fundamental instrumental foundation of the larger social structure, in that all other institutions depend on its contributions’ (Goode, 1964: 4). It is the family that performs the functions of ‘reproduction of the young, physical maintenance of family members, social placement of the child, socialization, and social control’ (ibid.).

The family is regarded as universal in three different aspects:

• An arrangement to meet a universally defined biological need or drive;
• Understood as the smallest group consisting of people related through blood or marriage, who takes care of the children; this is found in all societies; and
• The family fulfils some universally applicable functions of society, such as replacement of members, socialization and social control.

It will be seen that in the first meaning, the emphasis is on the biological need for sex; in the second, the focus is on the group; while in the third, it is the functions that the family performs for the wider society that are regarded as crucial. In other words, family is universal because it provides a group setting where both the biological needs of individuals and the functional requirements of society are fulfilled.

So as to not overstress the significance of the biological need in the creation of the family, scholars have advanced the argument that sexual gratification need not always require a family setting. Literature is replete with instances of sexual gratification with casual acquaintances or with prostitutes (who agree to a conjugal congress on contract), of forcible intercourse (rape), of adultery, etc. All these negate the insistence on the indispensability of the family for this purpose.

It is true that in most societies, children are taken care of by the family as the human infant cannot survive without the help and support of elders. However, instances abound in several societies where such help is rendered by people who are not biologically related to the child. Orphanages, for instance, take care of abandoned children in several societies.

Similarly, one can talk of various other functions of the family vis-a-vis society. For example:

• If a couple is unable to reproduce, it can ‘adopt’ a child to ensure the continuity of the group. This is how a distinction is made between the genitor (biological father) and the pater (socially acknowledged father). Since in our society both the genitor and pater roles are played by the same person, we may not appreciate the distinction, but in a polyandrous² society it has immense significance because it is the social father who is responsible for the child born to the common wife. In Zulu society in Africa, there is a system of ghost marriage, where the fiancee of a dead person marries the latter’s kinsman and bears the child for the deceased—thus, the dead person becomes the sociological pater for the child of ‘the widow’ for all social purposes.
• In modern societies, much of socialization takes place outside the family. If the family is the first school, the school is the second family.
• Not all members of society need be natives, born to other members. A society can also get new members through the immigration of aliens.
• Social control can be exercised by other institutions of society, such as religious or law and order institutions.

All this is said here to limit our over-enthusiasm for the role of biological factors. This is not to deny that the raison d‘etre of the family depends on biological preconditions, but only to insist that society and culture also play an important role in defining statuses and role-responsibilities even within the context of the family. Had family been rooted simply in biology, it would have been the same everywhere without any distinction.

Family, understood as a group of people of both sexes, of different age groups, with some sexual relationships within the group permitted while others are tabooed, is universally present. But its uniqueness ends there. Each society has a distinctive family culture that is defined not by biology, but by the sociology of the society in question.