The Difficulties in Defining the Family

The Oxford dictionary that defines the difficulty of families assigns the meaning of "family" to "including parents and their children, sometimes grandchildren and other human relations". Murdoch defines his family as follows. 'Families are social groups characterized by cohabitation, economic cooperation and breeding. It includes at least two men and women maintaining a socially recognized sexual relationship, and one or more homosexual adult children who are possessed or adopted. Writing may be satisfactory, but changing time and social standards means that we should rethink our family definition.

The Oxford Dictionary defines the family as "families, parents, children, servants, ... gathering parents and children, living together." This definition touches on the core of defining family difficulties as people identify two main ways to explain families. Elliott states that the family is defined as "a unit made up of a husband and a wife and its children", which is a concept belonging to modern Western society. She highlights and points out that society usually defines families through a series of value-based assumptions rather than careful and accurate analysis:

Defining families is not easy. This difficulty may be due to myths surrounding this institutional concept. People usually think of it as a group of undaunted people who act on the principle of harmony and love if one wishes to define a family. Also, the entire family believes that the family is a safe place, and people tend to think that the physical needs and emotional needs of each member are satisfied. However, this understanding is incomplete and does not reveal the complexity of the family concept.

Institutionists define families as "traditional", "biological", "reproductive ability", and "child rearing" structures and emphasize the biological relationship between families. Interactiveists, on the other hand, define families based on spontaneous assumptions about family behavior related role behaviors. Institutionists are interested in the existence of biological mothers, fathers, and biological descendants for defining families. The interactive activist only defines the group as a family in front of the mother, father, and child. For example, if one or more siblings act as a mother or father in a group, the interactor defines a group of isolated siblings if the family does not have adults. To the interactor, it is important to play a family role, not a biological or marriage relationship.