The Family Formation

The Family Formation

The family institution has existed for a long generation now and has formed a fundamental component of society today.  Blood, adoption and marriage influence the existence of persons in a particular lineage. Marriage has been the main factor that has contributed to the formation of families. It is the union of people who have a relationship either through a contract or agreement or a legal union which is recognizable by the law. Traditionally, marriage was composed of people of different sexes who came together for companionship and procreation. The union was meant to unify them and bring them into a common belief and practice. However, recently, marriage composition has changed and included people of the same sex and some even choosing to stay single without the option of marrying. The move, according to sociologist, has impacted on the family, which forms the basic unit in the society. The change has also influenced kinship and conjugality in family lineages.

The existence of family from a marriage perspective has in the past been a matter of debate with some people suggesting that family is not only formed by marriage. However, many people around the U.S agree that wedding in a pillar to the existence of families. According to research conducted by the Pew Research Centre in the U.S in 2014, 53% of the adults in the U.S who were not married wanted to be married some time in their lives. While this number would prefer marriage, in their lifetime, 73% of the spouses had similar ideas about having and raising children (Wendy & Kim, 2014). From that research, cohabitation is a significant issue on the rise with many couples choosing to share homes but not marriage.

Based on the statistics, I would characterize many homes as typical nuclear families. Many families are composed of a father, a mother and children either one or utmost two, which is a characteristic of nuclear families. Recently financial stands, urbanization, development of technology and education have contributed immensely to the existence of nuclear families.

Lineage has been a significant factor in determining the kinship of a particular family. It is a unilineal descent where members claim a common ancestral origin (Samadhan, 2015). Family members connect to the relationship through marriage, blood and adoption. In the kinship tie, members are classified according to the ancestry they share which includes patrilineage where members within a lineage share a common male ancestor, Matrilineage where members share a common female ancestor and ambilineages which involves sharing of any of the ancestries depending on the situation. The naming of children within the kinship, therefore, depends on the ancestry group that a family belongs in (Samadhan, 2015). When it comes to the places of residences, the kinship group also applies.  The patrilocal residence, for example, stated that the wife was to live with the husband’s relatives and matrilocal home, required the man to live with the wife’s blood relatives.

However, with the changes that occur in society today, the kinship tie is slowly being broken. The existence of marital families; the family of orientation and family of procreation, has impacted on the culture between lineages. The way a member enters into a kinship influences their functionalism and how they interact with the members of the same lineage. When self-centeredness members exist within a family, people loss the belonging to a particular lineage which may threaten the kinship balance. The failure of the kinship tie impacts adolescents in a significant way. Many adolescent get affected by their exposure to other harmful culture through their interaction with their peers. The feeling of independence causes some to engage in risky behaviors due to the lack of attention offered to them (Leblanc et al. 2015). It may also be hard for such parent to offer marriage decisions to these adolescents concerning their marriage life since some will feel a disconnection from the emotional and physical tie to the family.  Conversely, the couple may choose to cohabitate instead of conjugality and live together. The move will allow for family development and also serve in the upbringing of their children allowing for better interaction with the society.

The family unit has been a cornerstone in society for long. Marriage has served to bring people of different ethical background together to share a common ancestry. It has influenced how kinship relationships appear in society today. Marriage, however, has also served to break the kinship ties that exist in lineages leading to erosion of behavior among the youths. The break in kinship has leadto many finding it hard to make decisions on their own concerning different aspects in the society.