Diversity in Families

Family and the Meaning of Family in a Diverse World

I love my family.  I am the baby in a family of five children.  I have a loving Father who provides and protects us.  He is an example of honor, strength, and service to God, and his role as a husband, father, as well as a grandfather.  I have a mother who loves, nurtures and supports me in all I do.  Her example of service and devotion to family is an example that I hope to follow.  I have one older brother and he is the best big brother I could ask for.  I have three beautiful older sisters who are all married now and raising beautiful families with their husbands.  I love my sisters so much.  Family plays a very important part in my life.  These individual relationships strengthen and help me become the person I want to be.  I haven't even mentioned, my extended family, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins who play a gigantic role in our family structure.  Of, course, not all families have two parents.  Some are composed of single parent homes.  There are mixed races and some with two adults of the same sex with or without children.  Which comes to my post about the diversity in families today.

 The question, what is meant by family?  In Marriage and Family, The Quest for Intimacy, chapter 2 it states, the way to define family is to identify its functions. Anthropologist have identified four functions that all families fulfill: sexual relations, reproduction, socialization of children, and economic cooperation, This view is somewhat lacking to me.  Another definition of family is a group united by marriage.  It's interesting to note that over 20 years ago, President Gordon B. Hinckley introduced The Family, A Proclamation To The World. Who could imagine how important it would become in defending marriage and family today?  Whatever type of family we belong too still needs some of the very same values to hold families together.  Love, respect, support, and sharing are vital in all types of families.  Every family has strengths as well as challenges. I know that diversity in families is a fact of life.  What matters most is love.