Detailed definition of family,

A group of relatives bound together by marriage and blood. It is the basic unit of society. The family is the smallest social life ****similarity formed with the relationship of husband and wife and parent-child relationship. It constantly maintains the continuity of the most immediate human society and forms the family system. During the period of interbreeding in primitive groups, families could not arise. During the period of matriarchal clan-communities, due to the polygamy of the male from the wife at this time, the matriarchal family is formed, and this kind of family is the great family; and during the period of patriarchal clan-communities, the polygamy of the female from the husband, the patriarchal great family is formed again. But at this time, due to the dyadic and exclusive intermarriage, the patriarchal family has included a number of patrilineal small families composed of individual families. Under the long feudal system in China, the feudal patriarchal extended family has always existed, and no matter how many small families and individual families are included in the extended family, the concept of one family with the same surname has always been maintained. After the establishment of China's socialist system, from the economic base of the elimination of private ownership, supported by private ownership of the patriarchal extended family of small families or individual families have been liberated from the feudal patriarchal system, the formation of a number of more simple blood relations into the combination of the family.

The family has both internal and external functions. Family internal functions: the family has to maintain *** with the livelihood of the mission, that is, with food, with housing, with the labor of the family's economic functions, to provide a family of material production and consumption to ensure that the continuation and expansion of the family to maintain the birth of children, spouses to become a family; to maintain cordiality between the family members, the management of the family members, constraints, the adjustment of internal members of the behavior of the function. The family's external functions: to provide labor force to the society; accordingly to provide intellectual and financial resources to the society, including the old, weak, sick, disabled, orphans, widows and orphans in the society's support obligations. The maintenance of the family's external relations is a very important function in the development of social relations, and the intricate social relations it has formed have become a link that contributes to the development of society. The family has a certain influence and constraints on society as a whole, becoming the smallest unit of social behavior.