The History Of Definition Of Family And Main Values Of It

The word family is a really complex word nowadays to define. Its definition changed overtime and now people don’t really know the definition of it. The word family comes from the 15th century from the Latin word “familia”, which means “family servants, servants of a household”. That word didn’t really mean “parents with children” which was more used by the word domestic or in Latin “domus”. I will first of all explain what meant the word family earlier in time as well as describe the changes that happened with time in the definition of what a family is. Secondly, I will talk about the types of families present earlier in time compared to nowadays different types of families, and the acceptance of those diverse family types in our society.

The word family was in the 15th century when it appeared represented as what would nowadays be the word household. It meant a group of individuals living under the same roof, but not necessarily blood related individuals but also other people like servants for example. But the word started changing with time, becoming more blood related. It became more of a definition related to individuals having a common ancestor. This change in the definition, according to worldwidewords.org, appeared in the late seventeenth – early eighteenth century without completely changing until the nineteenth century. That is where in Britain, where the word first appeared, people started seeing servants as a separate group from other blood related members of the household. That change in meaning of the word family, as many believe, mostly happened as “results from a slowly developing physical and organizational separation between a man’s domestic affairs and those of his business or occupation”, with the servants being in a certain household because of work, it would be as they’re business affair or occupation while blood related members of the household would be there because they would live there. There is also the fact of property, the fact that the house would be under the name of members of the household not being servants, who would not have that property so the distinction would be made. Nowadays, it is not even a question that servants or people working in a household for whatever purpose are obviously not members of the “family”, being members of a household being blood related. Now, of course, there is the fact that family would also not stay defined as it being parents and children in one household, but also grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, living in other households, which is why we can define family in different ways, the family as it being parents and children, and the larger family, it including grandparents, cousins, uncles, aunts, etc.

Furthermore, nowadays, there is a totally new definition of family, or should I say, there are new types of families that emerged that were not really before. We saw that before, a family was represented as members of a household, including servants and that with time, it changed to it being blood related members, but nowadays, or in the last couple of decades, new types of families emerged such as: homosexual families, polygamy families, single-parent families, step families, or even grandparent families. The ones provoking the most debate would be the homosexual families as well as the polygamy families, with polygamy being prohibited in multiples states and countries all around the world. Homosexuality was always a delicate thing to talk about and even though laws passed about homosexual rights and for example I know that in France, homosexual marriage is authorized by the law, even if a lot of people are against it. Homosexuality is a real debate and even more if we talk about homosexual families. There is a great amount of people believing that it is not good and acceptable to have for parents two fathers or two mothers. It is the same as for polygamy, which represents a person having more than one partner or wife/husband at a time. Those are things that are seen as unacceptable in our society nowadays by many and it mostly for the children. Children can be really mean when young and the nuclear family (father, mother and two children) being still the model of family schools rely on when teaching or parents teaching their children that, it makes children react, and that not all the time in a good way when they see other children with two dads or two moms, or even two dads and one mom or two oms and one dad. It makes confusions and it can really harm a children mentally if other people or children’s laugh at him or criticize him for that, he may feel abnormal. There is also unfortunately other types of families such as single-parent families (with divorced parents) or step family (remarried families) or even grandparents families (no parents for whatever reason) that exist and that are not nuclear families. We can see that even if the nuclear family would be the one mostly seen as representing the definition of a “family”, other types of families start to be seen as normal. We can see that for example in the movie business, there is more and more movies and television shows including homosexual people and families, single-parent families, step families etc because people start to understand that a family doesn’t only represent a mother, a father and children.

The word “family” really evolved, changed its meaning in time, starting by representing a group of individuals living in the same household, including servants, to now having diverse types of families, not being only nuclear type families as it was considered as the model type of a family for a long time all around the world. Even though a big part of people don’t accept all those types of families even nowadays in our society, the acceptance still rises as we can see it becoming more and more normal to see all those on television or even in our everyday lives.