Definition Essay On Family

Growing up, my mother was not my best friend. Each time I would rave about other mothers of my friends being cool or letting their kids get away with certain things, my mother would simply say, “my purpose in life is not to be your best friend. It is to be your mother.” Over the years, I thought she was being unfair and cruel but as I have grown, I recognize the important lessons that my own mother taught me by not being my best friend but instead, giving me the gift of loving mother who didn’t always want to be on my side, but was always in my corner teaching me lessons I didn’t always want to learn, but needed to be taught in order to grow in to the woman I am today. (B. Williams, 2015) As my mother taught to me to be confident, bold and

By our cultural standards, the definition of family is constantly changing. Although just a few decades ago, family could have been defined as a man, woman and their children, today the definition can be looked at from many different perspectives to include many different groups of people. Most often, different family definitions are offered from three perspectives: role, sociolegal and biogenetic. Each perspective states a different emphasis on a different part or relationship of the family system. As no two families are alike, these definitions are just skeleton structures and can greatly vary between each family. The role perspective puts family in terms of how people act and feel like a family and the extent to which this relationship is practiced. The sociolegal perspective is a more formal grouping of the family, in which members are drawn together by legal ties, laws and regulations that clearly define what the family is, and what it is not. Lastly, the biogenetic perspective focuses on two specific criterions: if/the extent to which the relationship is reproductive and whether or not the relational partners share genetic material. (Galvin, Bylund, & Brommel, 2012) With these three structures laid out by scholars, families today choose many different routes in which to define