3 Reasons Why All Types of Families are Important

Families are so important because we are born into them, marry into to them, and even create them among the people we love. 

They come large and extended or small and nuclear. But whatever their size or wherever they live, strong families give us the nurturance and strength we need in order to survive.

1. Family of Orientation 
To expand upon the above, throughout our lives, most of us find ourselves living in two types of families -- our family of orientation and our family of procreation. 

Our family of orientation is the family in which we were born into. We had no choice as to who our parents would be nor the genes we would inherit. In addition, we had no say in our early intellectual stimulation or in how our emotional or survival needs would be met.

Our family of orientation, nevertheless, is the institution that hopefully gave us the sense of stability and protection that we all need. We had to rely on our family of orientation to provide the nourishment, shelter, and assistance in learning how to walk, talk, and eat. In the context of early stimulation, we also relied on the family of orientation to learn the basics of our language. In America, it's our basic alphabets, our basic numbers, how to formulate simple sentences, and how to build on our vocabulary throughout childhood and the rest of our lives. At best the family teaches the finest things human beings can learn from one another -- generosity and love. But, it is all too often where we learn nasty things such as hate, rage and shame.

2. Family of Procreation. 
The difference between the two is substantial. The choices which led up to this family of procreation is solely yours. When you married, you had to choose the one you married. Included with that individual's looks, personality, abilities, knowledge and interests was all of his relatives and perhaps even his children. Hopefully, that individual did not bring with him baggage from his family of orientation or previous relationships, but rather positive experiences from one of the other or both.

Foundation of Society

The institution of the family is decisive in determining not only if you have the capacity to love another individual but in the larger social sense whether you are capable of loving your fellow man collectively. The whole of society rest upon this foundation for stability, understanding, and social peace. But however the forms of family life have changed and the number expanded, the role of the family has remained constant and it continues to be a major institution to which children pass en route to adulthood.

Children thrive in a variety of family forms; they develop normally with single parents; with unmarried parents; with multiple caretakers in a communal setting; and, with traditional two-parent families. What children require is loving and attentive adults, not a particular family type.


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