Unit II, Lesson 2

The Family Today:

Declining or Changing?
Learning Objectives
At the end of this lesson, the students are expected to:

♦ Explain the functions of the family

♦ Discuss and appraise why the definition of the family is crucial to society

♦ Explore and explain the different types of families

♦ Summarize recent changes in the family as an institution

♦ Describe the various alternative family arrangements in contemporary societies

THE PROBLEM OF DEFINING THE FAMILY

This family centeredness supplies a basic

sense of belonging, stability and security.
It is from our families that we Filipinos
naturally draw our sense of self-identity.

The traditional view of the family leads many people

to think that the family is an indispensable unit or
institution within a society. Today, however, many
experts who study the family raise doubts about the
future of the family.
Today, however, many experts who study the family raise doubts about the
future of the family. Consider the following statistics:

 Declining Marriages and Increasing Rate of Cohabitation

There were 476,408 marriages registered in 2011, down by 1.3
percent from 482,480 recorded in 2010, the NSO said in a
report posted on its website, adding that the number of
registered marriages has been declining since 2009.

 Annulment Rate in the Philippines

The number of marriage annulment cases in the
Philippines has risen by 40% in the last decade with at
least 22 cases filed everyday, according to a report by
the Catholic bishops’ news agency. Citing data from
the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG), CBCP News
said the number of annulment cases had risen from
4,520 in 2001 to 8,282 in 2010.
 Increasing Family-related Violence.
The 2008 National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS)
conducted by the National Statistics Office (NSO) revealed that one in
five women aged 15–49 has experienced physical violence since age
15; 14.4 percent of married women have experienced physical abuse
from their husbands; and more than one-third (37%) of separated or
widowed women have experienced physical violence, implying that
domestic violence could be the reason for separation or annulment.

 Increasing Number of Women Entering the Labor Force.

The number of employed and unemployed Filipinos in October 2008 was
estimated at 34.5 million and 2.5 million respectively. Female employment
was estimated at 13.3 million compared to 21.3 million males. Female
unemployment rate for the same year was relatively lower at 6.5% which
is equivalent to 929,000 compared to male at 7.0% which is estimated at
1.6 million. Of the 2 million OFWs in 2008, female OFWs were estimated
at 968,000 (48.4%) or an increase of 13 percent from the 857,000
estimated female OFWs in 2007. Male OFWs accounted for 51.6 percent
or roughly 1 million of the total OFWs in 2008.
Experts on family therefore agree that “there is no single correct
definition of what a family is” (Fine 1993, p. 235). A definition of
the family will vary according to one’s personal experience,
cultural background, sexual orientation, and moral outlook.
The shortest, but probably the most controversial, definition of the
family can be found in Mike Morris’ Concise Dictionary of Social
and Cultural Anthropology (2012): “A group of people who have a
common residence and/or relationship, and who share economic
and reproductive ties” (p. 92). This definition is often found in
government census’ definition of the family.

The best way to look for the definition

of the “family” is to look at the
government census definition.
The United Nations uses the term “nucleus family”:

A family nucleus is of one of the following types (each of which must

consist of persons living in the same household):

a. A married couple without children,

b. A married couple with one or more unmarried children,

c. A father with one or more unmarried children, or

d. A mother with one or more unmarried children.

All definitions of the family will have to
address three components: residential,
biological, and functional roles.

The family as a basic unit of society performs several

important functions or roles for
Society:

(1) for biological reproduction;

(2) as the primary agent of socialization of children;
(3) as the institution for economic cooperation through
division of labor; and
(4) to care for and nurture children to become
responsible adults.
WHY THE DEFINITION OF FAMILY MATTERS

In social science discourse, the concept of the

family is politically and ideologically ‘loaded’, or
imbued with sets of politically and culturally
contested ideas about the correct or moral
ways in which people should conduct their
lives, and the people with whom they should
conduct them.
The Philippine Family Code Article I
fixes the definition of marriage and the
resulting family based on the union:
Marriage is a special contract of
permanent union between a man and a
woman entered into in accordance with
law for the establishment of conjugal
and family life. It is the foundation of the
family and an inviolable social
institution.
The Philippine Family Code therefore
excludes same-sex marriage and
polygamous unions.
When the Philippine Family Code was enacted in 1989, it
declared that “illegitimate” children must use the surname
of the mother. They were not allowed to use the surname
of their biological father so it created a class of children
that have no middle names or having the surname also
as their middle name. Article 176 was largely ignored by
fathers who recognized their child and allowed their
surname to be used even if there was no benefit of
marriage.

Congress saw it fit to amend article 176 through Republic

Act 9255 enacted in 2004. Now illegitimate children can
use the surname of their biological father as long as the
latter formally recognizes the child.
Another case is the support for an illegitimate child. An
illegitimate is entitled to receive support from his/her
biological father provided that the latter recognized the
child as his own. If the biological father did not recognize
the child as his own, then support cannot be demanded
unless a court order is obtained for that matter.

Cohabitants are couples who share a

common residence with a child, just like
a nuclear family, but without the benefit
of marriage. In some countries,
cohabitants are not recognized as
“official” families. They are therefore not
accorded health benefits, social security,
and retirement benefits of the partner.
 FAMILY AND HOUSEHOLD
The UN differentiates household from a family:
The differences between the household and the family are:

a. that a household may consist of only one person but a family

must contain at least two members; and

b. that the members of a multi-person household need not be

related to each other, while the members of a family must be
related.
While they often overlap, it is also frequently the
case that households consist of members who
are not family, such as servants or lodgers,
while family membership, in terms of shared
consumption, production and ties of intimacy,
often extends over several households.
TYPES OF FAMILIES
Nuclear and Extended Families
The nuclear family is the most basic family form and is made
up of a married couple and their biological or adopted children.

Figure 1: The Nuclear Family (from http://www.fotosearch.com/illustration/nuclear-family.html)

Extended families are families that include the
other members of the kinship group like your uncle,
grandparents, and cousins.

Nuclear and extended families

can either be classified as
family of orientation or family of
procreation. The family to
which one belongs is the family
of orientation. When one
establishes a new family
through marriage it is called
the family of procreation.
 FAMILIES AND RULE OF DESCENT
Families can be classified according to their basic
rules of descent. As a social organization, the family
is a descent group.

Descent-group members believe they

share, and descend from common
ancestors. The group endures even
though its membership changes, as
members are born and die, move in and
move out.
Descent groups can be of two types:
unilineal and ambilineal

Some societies trace their descent through the unilineal descent

either through the father or mother. With a rule of matrilineal
descent, people join the mother’s group automatically at birth and
stay members throughout life. With patrilineal descent, people
automatically have lifetime membership in the father’s group
(Kottack, p. 454).

In ambilineal descent rules, the children

can opt to either claim lineage on their
father or mother’s family group.
Neolocal residence: the couples have
the freedom and option to live
separately and independent of their
respective families. Much more
common in non-western societies is
patrilocality: A married couple move
to the husband’s father’s community,
so that the children will grow up in their
father’s village (Kottack, p. 455).
Patrilocal
Matrilocal
MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY

Human marriage is a socio-sexual institution, a part of

the wider institutional complex of the family. Marriage is
also an arrangement of procreation, a way of caring for
the offspring of sexuality, defining their legitimate
descent, and the main or ultimate responsibility for
their upbringing.

Edward Westermark (1891) in his famous book History of

Human Marriage defined marriage as “a relation of one or
more men to one or more women which is recognized by
customs or law and involves certain rights and duties both in
case of parties entering into the union and in the case of
children born of it.”
Marriage is at the center of the kinship system. Marriage
creates alliances and “fictive kinship” among members of
clans and tribes. Kinship consists of three aspects: (1) it
comprises forms of nomenclature and classification; (2)
rules which affect people’s kinship behavior, covering
everything from criminal laws to ideas about good
manners; and (3) what people actually do (Kottack, 2008).
Each society in the world has a set of words used to refer
to relatives called kinship terminology.
Endogamy is the practice of marrying within a
specific ethnic group, class, or social group, rejecting
others on such a basis as being unsuitable for
marriage or for other close personal relationships.
Exogamous is the practice of
marrying outside one’s group.
Marriage as a union of individuals also establishes
consanguineal (“blood relation”, from the Latin
consanguinitas) relations and relations of affinity.

Two people are related to each other by consanguinity

if they have a common ancestor or one is a descendant
of the other. Two people are related by affinity if they
are married, or if one person is related by blood to the
other person’s spouse. These links between kin groups
established by marriage are called affinal links. People
also rely on social relationships made by means of
ritual observances, which are known as
godparenthood, or compadrazgo.
POLYGAMOUS AND MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGES
Polygamy is a marriage that includes more than two partners.

When a man is married to more than one wife at a time, the relationship
is called polygyny; and when a woman is married to more than one
husband at a time, it is called polyandry.

If a marriage includes multiple husbands and wives, it can be called

group or conjoint marriage.

In the case of Jacob in the Old Testament, a man marries several

sisters. This practice is known as sororal polygyny.

Monogamy includes one/single partner.

ROMANTIC LOVE, MATE SELECTION
AND THE FAMILY
In modern societies, monogamy is often associated with romantic love.

Romantic love originated with the Chivalry

during the Medieval period. Romantic love
triumphs in the modern period because
industrial capitalism promoted individualism,
free choice, and equality.
Homogamy as a rule in marriage and
mate selection. That is, people tend to
marry people who share the same
characteristics they have –personality,
class, lifestyle, family background, etc.
(David Knox and Caroline Schacht,
2010, p. 182).
EMERGING ISSUES ON FAMILIES

Families and Domestic Violence

Family violence encompasses not only

violence between female and male
partners or game sex partners but also
child abuse and elder abuse. Domestic
violence, more specifically, refers to the
abuse by one person of another in an
intimate relationship.
Violence against women and their children “refers to any act or a
series of acts committed by any person against a woman who is his
wife, former wife, or against a woman with whom the person has or
had a sexual or dating relationship, or with whom he has a common
child, or against her child whether legitimate or illegitimate, within or
without the family abode, which result in or is likely to result in
physical, sexual, psychological harm or suffering, or economic abuse
including threats of such acts, battery, assault, coercion, harassment
or arbitrary deprivation of liberty.”
According to World Health Organization, recent global
prevalence figures indicate that 35% of women, or more than
one in three women, worldwide have experienced either intimate
partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime.
On average, 30% of women who have been in a relationship
report that they have experienced some form of physical or
sexual violence by their partner. Globally, as many as 38% of
murders of women are committed by an intimate partner.
DIVORCE AND REMARRIAGE
Divorce is a court order saying that a man and woman
are NO LONGER husband and a wife. Annulment is a
judicial statement that THERE NEVER WAS A
MARRIAGE between the man and the woman. It is the
cancellation of marriage as if it never happened.

Legal Separation, on the other hand, is a

decree that gives the husband and wife
the right to live separately from each
other, although they are not allowed by
the law to re-marry.
NEW INTIMACIES, FAMILIES IN THE
AGE OF POSTMODERNITY

Love in the post-modern world also produces

post-modern families and similar relationships.
Post-modern families are families that are very
different from traditional and modern families
and marriages. Post-modern families include
same-sex marriages, single-mothers, a lone
individual with adopted child, various forms of
polygamous relationships, and open marriages.
The rapid advancement of information and communication
technologies (ICT), which is both reflective and constitutive of the
transformative effects of the mobile era, is also giving rise to new,
or reconfigured, forms of interpersonal interactions including
finding intimate partners. A contemporary Polish sociologist,
Zygmunt Bauman (2003) prefers the term “liquid love” to
characterize this condition. Liquid love” corresponds to “liquid
modern” conditions in which everything becomes fleeting,
transient, and disposable.

Polyamory is an invented word for a different

kind of relationship. Poly comes from Greek
and means “many.” Amory comes from Latin
and means “love.” Mixing Greek and Latin roots
in one word is against the traditional rules, but
then so is loving more than one person at a
time when it comes to romantic or erotic love.
 THE LGBT FAMILIES
There are four dominant ways individuals in same-sex
partner households come to parent children:

1. Through a prior relationship with a different-sex

partner that resulted in the birth of a child/children;

2. Through adoption;

3. Through the use of assisted reproductive

technologies; or

4. By becoming a partner to someone who has done

one or more of these things.
TRANSNATIONAL FAMILIES,
VIRTUAL CONNECTIONS
In the Philippines, fathers traditionally pursue their
careers and act as the breadwinners of the family.
Fathers are called HALIGI NG TAHANAN. Haligi or pillar
refers to the foundations of the house.

With the advent of Western intrusion into our

cultural life, poverty, and the rising opportunities
to be educated, more and more women and
mothers are now entering the labor force. As
more women are now educated, more women
also enter the labor force. As a result, many
mothers are now working fulltime