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• FAMILY has been the most basic unit
• The United Nations (UN) defines family “as the basic unit of society” (2011).
• The U.S. Census Bureau (2011) views family as “a householder and one or more other persons living in the same household who are related to the householder by birth, marriage, or adoption.
• ✓ Kaakinen et al. (2010) defines family as “two or more individuals who depend on one another for emotional, physical, and economical support. The members of the family are self-defined” (p. 6).
• FAMILY AS SOCIAL SYSTEMS - Offers some insights about how families operate as social systems.
• Interdependence among Members - each member’s actions affect the other members, and what affects the family system affects each family member.
• Family Boundaries - Families as systems set and maintain boundaries that can include outside influences (permeable) or not (limiting)
• Energy Exchange - Family boundaries are semipermeable; although they protect and preserve the family unit, they also allow selective linkage with the outside world.
• Adaptive Behavior - Families are adaptive, equilibrium-seeking systems. Families never stay the same.
• Goal-Oriented Behavior - Families exist for a purpose—to establish and maintain a milieu that promotes the development of their members.
• FAMILY AS SOCIAL SYSTEMS

  1. Interdependence among Members
  2. Family Boundaries
  3. Energy Exchange
  4. Adaptive Behavior
  5. Goal-Oriented Behavior
• FAMILY CULTURE - An acquired knowledge that family members use to interpret their experiences and generate their behaviors that in turn influence their actions
• two general categories of family

  traditional and contemporary
• SOCIAL CLASS - often shapes a family’s access and choices to work, educational, and health care opportunities
• TRADITIONAL FAMILIES - are those that are likely most familiar to us. They include the nuclear family—husband, wife, and children living together in the same household.
• nuclear dyad family consists of two adults living together who have no children or who have grown children living outside the home
• A single adult family is one in which one adult is living alone by choice or because of separation from a spouse or children or both.
• Another variation of the traditional nuclear family is the blended family. In this structure, single parents marry and raise the children from each of the previous relationships together.
• CONTEMPORARY FAMILIES - Variations from traditional family pattern; often treated as deviant and abnormal.
• Single-Parent Family - One of the most common contemporary family structures is the single-parent family mostly headed by a woman
• Adolescent Parents - Specific factors related to teen birth rates are poor performance in school, growing up in a single-parent family, having parents with low levels of education, living in poverty, lack of access to contraception, and being sexually active
• Cohabitating Couples - Another form of nontraditional families are couples that form a family alliance outside of a legal marriage. Cohabitating couples may be heterosexual or gay/lesbian; they may or may not share a sexual relationship. In some instances, these couples have their own biologic or adopted children.
• Gay and Lesbian Families - Gay and lesbian families have many of the same fears and concerns regarding parenting that any family may have. In addition, they experience the stress that accompanies being stigmatized by much of a society. L
• Older Adults - Most elders live independently, well into their 80s, and maintain healthy contacts with family and friends.
• Foster Families - Many children are removed from their homes of origin because of abuse, violence, or neglect.
• Homeless Families - Typically homeless families are young single mothers with two children. They typically have poorer health than other women; one half with a recent history of major depression and one third have a chronic physical condition
• Family health refers to the health status of a given family at a given point in time
• Family health is concerned with how well the family functions together as a unit. It involves not only the health of the members and how they relate to other members but also how well they relate to and cope with the community, outside the family.
• Recreation – is an activity of leisure; leisure is being discretionary time,