Family is a group of people related either by consanguinity or affinity. It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictability, structure, and safety as members mature and learn
Sauk family photographed by Frank Rinehart in 1899
Detail of a gold glass medallion with a portrait of a family, from Alexandria (Roman Egypt), 3rd–4th century (Brescia, Museo di Santa Giulia)
Mennonite siblings, Montana, United States, 1937
A German mother with her children in the 1960s
A nuclear family – also called an elementary family, atomic family, or conjugal family – is a family group consisting of two parents and their children, typically living in one home residence. The ter
Family
…organizations as matrifocal (a mother and her children), patrifocal (a father and his children), conjugal (a married couple with children, also called the nuclear family), avuncular (a man, his sister, and her children), or extended (in addition to parents, spouse and children, may include grandparents, aunts, uncles…
The Shumard family in Seattle, Washington, c. 1955 (during the mid-century baby boom), illustrating a nuclear family
P. E. Svinhufvud, the president of Finland (center), with his extended family on his 75th birthday in 1936
An employee of the Ford Motor Company with his family, car, and detached house in Detroit, Michigan, United States (1954). New social and economic realities have made nuclear families like this one less common.
Painting of an unknown nuclear family in Washington, D.C., dated 1850