Ezi Na Ulo: the Extended Family in Igbo Civilization

Extended middle-class Midwestern U.S. family of Danish/High german extraction

Extended family refers to the family members who extend across the immediate or nuclear family of parents and their children. The term may exist used synonymously with consanguineal family. An extended family may live together as a single household. Often there could exist many generations living under the same roof, depending on the circumstances. Alternatively, in societies dominated by the bridal or nuclear family unit, it is used to refer to kindred in addition to those firsthand family members, and who live in unlike households. Generally, the extended family is contrasted with the nuclear family.

Contents

• ane Definitions
• ii Roles and responsibilities
• three Effectually the world
  • 3.one Asia
  • iii.two Australia
  • 3.3 Balkans
  • 3.4 Republic of india
  • 3.5 United States
• iv Is there an ideal family structure?
• five Value of the extended family
• 6 Notes
• 7 References
• eight External links
• nine Credits

Regardless of whether they alive together in a single household or separately, the three- or four-generation extended family, including grandparents in addition to parents and children, provides a rich network for human relationships and great support for the raising of children and continuation of the lineage.

Definitions

The extended family consists not merely of the basic family unit of parents and their children but extends to include other adults and children with kinship ties. Extended families can include, bated from the parents and their children:

• grandparents
• spouses of children
• cousins, aunts, uncles

In cases where there have been 2d (and more) marriages producing children, the extended family includes step-children and their kin.

A conjugal or nuclear family consists of a father, mother, and their children. This kind of family is common where families are relatively mobile, as in modern industrialized societies. Usually at that place is a division of labor requiring the participation of both men and women. Nuclear families vary in the degree to which they are contained or maintain close ties to the kindreds of the parents and to other families in general.

A consanguineal family consists of a married man and wife, their children, and other members of either the husband'southward and/or wife's family. This kind of family is common in cultures where belongings is inherited. In patriarchal societies where important property is owned past men, extended families unremarkably consist of a husband and wife, their children, the husband's parents, and other members of the hubby's family. In societies where fathers are absent and mothers practise not have the resources to rear their children on their own, the consanguineal family may consist of a mother and her children, and members of the mother'south family unit.

In a joint family, parents and their children's families often alive under a unmarried roof. This blazon of family often includes multiple generations in the family.

Complex family is a generic term for any family structure involving more than two adults. The term can refer to a joint family, consanguineal family, or to a polygamy of whatever type. It is often used to refer to the group marriage form of polygamy.

Roles and responsibilities

In cultures where the nuclear family is the norm for establishing a household, members of the extended family live in separate homes, frequently at significant distances. In societies where the consanguineal or joint family predominates for living arrangements, members of the extended family will live in the same home.

In the cultures where the extended family unit is the basic family unit, growing upwardly to adulthood does not necessarily hateful severing bonds between oneself and one'south parents or fifty-fifty grandparents. When the child grows upward, he or she moves into the larger earth of machismo, withal does not, under normal circumstances, constitute an identity separate from that of the customs. The network of relatives (including biological, adopted, and foster) that forms the extended family unit acts as a close-knit customs.

In the joint family setup the workload is shared among the members, often unequally. The women are often housewives and cook for the entire family. The patriarch of the family (commonly the oldest male member) lays down the rules and arbitrates disputes. Other senior members of the household volition guard infants when their female parent is working. They are also responsible for didactics the younger children their mother tongue, manners, and etiquette. The members of the household also wait afterward each other and take over their responsibilities in situations where a member is ill or otherwise disabled.

Effectually the world

Charles Sprague Pearce, Family (1896). Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington, D.C.

In many cultures, such every bit in those of many Africans, Koreans, Heart Easterners, Jewish families of primal Europe, Latin Americans, Indians, Due east Asians, and Pacific Islanders, extended families are the bones family unit. Even in the U.s., the extended family has a meaning role.

Asia

In traditional Asian families, in Red china and Korea for instance, the extended family unit shares a household consisting of the nuclear family of the head of the household, his unmarried daughters, and his sons and their families. When daughters marry they join their hubby'due south family unit.

It is common for the senior members of the extended to choose an appropriate spouse for children when they reach the age of spousal relationship. In such bundled marriages, the qualities sought for in a spouse include social condition, ability to piece of work, wealth, and so forth.

Australia

Australian Aborigines are a grouping for whom the concept of family extends well beyond the nuclear model. Ancient immediate families include aunts, uncles, and a number of other relatives who would exist considered "afar relations" in context of the nuclear family. Aboriginal families besides accept strict social rules regarding whom they can marry.

Balkans

The Balkan zadruga (Cyrillic: задруга) is a type of rural community historically common among South Slavs. Generally formed of one extended family unit consisting of married brothers and their families, members of a zadruga lived in a single household and functioned as an agronomical and economic unit of measurement. The zadruga held its holding, herds, and money in mutual, with the oldest capable patriarch normally ruling and making decisions for the family. Because the zadruga was based on a patrilocal system, when a girl married, she left her parents' zadruga and joined that of her husband. Within the zadruga, all of the family members worked to ensure that the needs of every other member were met.

The zadruga in this form eventually went into decline beginning in the tardily nineteenth century, as the largest started to get unmanageable and broke into smaller zadrugas or formed villages. Subsequently Globe State of war 2 and increasing industrialization, the zadruga lost its economical significance. However, rather than disappearing, the zadruga transformed itself from the horizontal extension of brothers to a vertical extension between generations. Thus, a significant proportion of the people (around 70 per centum), continue to alive in extended family households.^[1]

The zadruga continues to color life in the Balkans; the typically intense concern for family institute among South Slavs today is partly due to centuries of living in the zadruga organisation. Many mod-day villages in the Balkans have their roots in a zadruga, a large number of them carrying the proper name of the one that founded them.

India

In India, the family is a patriarchal society, with the sons' families often staying in the same house. A joint Hindu family, otherwise chosen equally "Hindu Undivided Family" (HUF), is an extended family unit organisation prevalent among Hindus of the Indian subcontinent, consisting of many generations living under the same roof. All the male person members are claret relatives. The household consists of persons lineally descended from a common ancestor, and includes their wives and unmarried daughters. A daughter ceases to exist a member of her father's family unit on marriage and becomes a member of her husband's family.

An undivided family unit, which is the normal condition of a Hindu guild, is usually joint. The joint family status beingness the result of birth; possession of the joint string that knits the members of the family together is not holding just the relationship. The family is headed by a patriarch, usually the oldest male person, who makes decisions on economic and social matters on behalf of the entire family unit. The patriarch'southward married woman generally exerts command over the kitchen, kid rearing, and small-scale religious practices. All money goes to the mutual pool and all property is held jointly.

Businesses carried out past Hindu joint families in Bharat are governed past the Hindu Law, where the liability of the entire concern is borne out by the oldest surviving male member, who is the caput of family unit and is also the head of the business by default. The lack of joint liability often leads to disputes and splits and is one of the prime causes for the breakup of the joint family unit system in India.

The states

Although industrialization and the proliferation of ideas of individualism have led to the increment of nuclear families as the unit of many societies, the extended family continues to play an important role. The extended family unit becomes valuable in gimmicky society when immature adults face up unemployment or divorce, or when older adults become widowed or face up declining health and consequent lack of ability to care for themselves and their house. Social welfare provisions made the extended family unit less essential for the elderly in the twentieth century.

Nonetheless, reductions in regime funding for such services may make the role of the extended family unit accept on greater importance again in the twenty-outset century.^[two] Low income urban groups, including single-parent households, benefit profoundly from the interest of grandparents. Extended family networks have also been found of assistance in the assimilation of immigrants.^[2]

In fact, past the end of the twentieth century the proportion of extended family unit households in the United States has been found to exist on the increase.^[3]

Is there an ideal family unit construction?

Comparison of family unit arrangements in the Us in 1970 and 2000.^[iv]

People in the Western world in recent history have tended to idealize the 2-parent nuclear family unit. The homo typically is responsible for income and support, the adult female for home and family unit matters. However, in the latter part of the twentieth century, family arrangements in the United States have become more than diverse, with no particular household arrangement representing the bulk of the U.S. population.^[4] Some have expressed business organisation over a purported decay of the family unit and come across this every bit a sign of the crumbling of gimmicky social club. Nevertheless anthropologists have pointed out that these are merely variations on family types that have existed in other societies.

Families universally are built effectually the matrimony bond and the responsibilities for raising children. Flourishing cultures recognize the value of committed relationships between adults equally the foundation of successful families. Matrimony, and the families it engenders, tin can thus exist considered a "social proficient."^[v] As James Q. Wilson has stated:

In virtually every society in which historians or anthropologists have inquired, 1 finds people living together on the basis of kinship ties and having responsibility for raising children. The kinship ties invariably imply restrictions on who has sexual access to whom; the child-intendance responsibilities invariably imply both economic and not-economic obligations. And in virtually every lodge, the family is defined by marriage; that is, by a publicly announced contract that makes legitimate the sexual wedlock of a man and a woman.^[6]

In other words, while single-parent families grade a recognizable type, they are non the offset choice where there is the possibility of forming stable two-parent families. However, where men are non strongly bound to the family unit, where a civilization does not support lasting union, or where economic hardships cause men to be apart from their wives for long periods of time, this family blazon becomes prevalent.

In many cultures, the need to exist self-supporting is difficult to see, and the foundation of a new household tin be an obstacle to nuclear family formation. People remain unmarried and live with their parents for a long period of time. Mostly, the tendency to shift from extended to nuclear family structures has been supported by increasing mobility and modernization.

Nevertheless, some argue that the extended family, or at least the three-generational family including grandparents, provides a broader and deeper foundation for raising children as well as support for the new parents. In particular, the part of grandparents has been recognized as an important aspect of the family dynamic. Having experienced the challenges of creating a family unit themselves, they offer wisdom and encouragement to the young parents and become a reassuring presence in the lives of their grandchildren. Abraham Maslow described the love of grandparents as "the purest love for the being of the other."^[7]

The emotional pull of these intergenerational encounters remains strong even for those who have split off to grade nuclear families. Individuals who leave their extended families for the economic benefits of life in a afar city may feel a sense of isolation and a longing for the relationships and warm love of the extended family of their origin. This suggests that, economic bug aside, people are happiest living in extended families, or in nuclear families that treasure shut bonds with their kinfolk, their extended family.

Value of the extended family

Extended family in South Africa, Christmas 2000

A strong family provides a haven of love and intimacy. In developing 1'south power to chronicle to others it is important to feel honey from caring adults. Although the formation of a secure attachment to the primary caregiver, often the mother, is paramount, expanding the range of experiences with a variety of trustworthy adults develops one'southward power to love. The extended family provides a number of adults with whom such relationships are possible. It offers maximum opportunities for personal growth through its matrix of relationships—with spouse, parents, grandparents, siblings, and children.

In such an extended family 1 is also challenged to relate to a variety of people. Shut contact with those of different personality types provides valuable grooming in relating harmoniously with a variety of people.

It helps ingrain the lesson that although people differ, they are fundamentally related and may nonetheless treat ane another with respect, appreciation, and beloved based on their common bonds.^[8]

A strong family provides a social support network that its members are able to rely on in times of stress. The extended family provides a superior alternative to the nuclear family in many cultures, expanding the family unit dynamic inter-generationally. Grandparents offer a unique form of support to the family unit, both to the parents and to the children. When a newly married couple moves far away from their parents, establishing their own nuclear family unit, isolation from their extended family may prove stressful. Families in which iii generations interact in close harmony provide greater back up for successfully raising children, connecting them to their family traditions and giving value to their lineage.

Notes

1. ↑ J. M. Halpern and D. Anderson, "The zadruga: a century of alter," Anthropologia 12 (1970):83-97.
2. ↑ ^{two.0 2.i} J. E. Glick, "Nativity, duration of residence and the life course design of extended family unit living in the Usa," Population Research and Policy Review 19 (2000):179-1998.
3. ↑ J. E. Glick, F. D. Edible bean, and J. V. W. Van Claw, "Clearing and changing patterns of extended household structure in the U.s.: 1970-1990," Journal of Marriage and the Family 59 (1997):177-191
4. ↑ ^{four.0 4.1} Brian Williams, Stacey C. Sawyer, and Carl Thousand. Wahlstrom, Wedlock, Families, and Intimate Relationships (Boston: Pearson, 2005, ISBN 0205366740).
5. ↑ Institute for American Values, Why Marriage Matters: Xx-six Conclusions from the Social Sciences, second ed. (New York, NY: Institute for American Values, 2005).
6. ↑ James Q. Wilson, The Moral Sense (New York: Free Press, 1993).
7. ↑ Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality, 3rd ed. (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1987, ISBN 978-0060419875).
8. ↑ International Educational Foundation, Educating for Truthful Love (New York, NY: International Educational Foundation, 2006, ISBN 1891858070).

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Dasgupta, Sanjukta and Malashri Lal (eds.). The Indian Family in Transition. Sage Publications, 2007. ISBN 978-0761935681
• Plant for American Values. Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-six Conclusions from the Social Sciences, 2nd ed. New York, NY: Institute for American Values, 2005.
• International Educational Foundation. Educating for Truthful Love. New York, NY: International Educational Foundation, 2006.
• Maslow, Abraham. Motivation and Personality, 3rd ed. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1987. ISBN 0060419873
• Williams, Brian, Stacey C. Sawyer, and Carl M. Wahlstrom. Marriage, Families, and Intimate Relationships. Boston, MA: Pearson, 2005. ISBN 0205366740
• Wilson, James Q. The Moral Sense. New York, NY: Free Press, 1997. ISBN 978-0684833323

External links

All links retrieved August 8, 2017.

• Extended Families - Study Of The Extended Family unit Marriage and Family Encyclopedia.

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