The Role of the Family

Family systems, like biological organisms, evolve with time and circumstance. It seems readily evident from an examination of the nature and role of the family in the developing world that form may indeed follow function. Many sociological studies conducted in recent years have indicated that the nuclear family is found at both the primitive and modern stages of economic evolution. The nuclear family predominated in early societies with subsistence hunting and gathering economies where food …

…more fragmented families in developing societies of the Third World. This does not mean the end of the nuclear family, however, since people continue to form relationships, and children continue to be raised primarily by their own parents. The basic family unit has always been extremely important, and although many changes in the family?s role and importance have occurred as modernization spreads across the world, the traditional family structure appears to be very durable.