Unit 2 FD
2
The American Family Today
The majority of American families, especially young families, have been under economic stress for almost three decades. No longer is it normative for mothers to be home, preparing a midday meal for returning husbands and school children; most adults are working full time outside the household, even in families with infants and preschoolers. Women have become equal partners in family life and in the workplace.
Shaping of Current Family Forms
The economic downturn in the early twenty-first century and high rates of bank foreclosures meant that many middle-class families with all adults working still struggled to keep a roof over their heads, much less maintain a middle-class standard of living (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008). Even before the economic downturn, 15% of families with children were living below the poverty level. As a consequence of the downturn, almost half (41%) of homeless families include children, and they are the fastest growing segment of the homeless population in the United States (Institute for Children and Poverty, 2009). Mandatory retirement disappeared, and retirement itself became an option only for those who could afford it.
Over the past half century, adults increasingly delayed marriage or chose not to marry at all, and childbearing in the middle class is now often delayed or foregone completely. As a consequence of these and other factors, the nuclear family is no longer the dominant American family structure. In 1970, more than 40% of households were married couples with children in their homes; today that number has dropped by half, to only 21%.
Garland, D. R. (2012). Family ministry : A comprehensive guide. InterVarsity Press. Created from liberty on 2026-10-26 21:15:25.
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Moreover, less than half of American households (49.5%) are headed by a marital couple (first and later marriages). Unmarried adults now head the majority of American households (50.5%). More than 45% of American “families” are actually adults living on their own. About half of these single adults are raising children, about the same number of households as married couples with children (U.S. Census Bureau, 2005).
In the 1990 U.S. census, the relationship category “unmarried partner” was added for the first time. The definition of this category is “a person who is not related to the householder, who shares living quarters, and who has a close personal relationship with the householder.” This category differs from the “roomer/boarder” and “housemate/roommate” categories, where the person is not related to the householder and shares the living quarters primarily to reduce housing expenses (Saluter, 1994, p. 4). It still does not clarify whether or not the adults are committed to one another or merely friends sharing a household for a period of time. Nor does it clarify whether or not they are sexual partners. Unmarried partners living together constitute 5.4% of American households.
As far as the ages of American families, they are relatively evenly spread across the lifespan: About one third (34.3%) of households have children under the age of 18; another one third (31.6%) have one or more senior adults (over age 60), meaning that about one third of households consist of one or more adults between ages 18 and 60. We can expect in the coming decades for the proportion of older adult families to continue to increase and the proportion with children to continue to decrease (Wisensale, 2003).
What do all these statistics mean? The dramatic changes being reported in the diversity of families today actually reflect a mix of factors that involve both changes in our ways of seeing and interpreting our social world, as well as changes in the world itself. A closer examination reveals that: (1) we are seeing diversity in family types that has existed all along, though perhaps not openly nor as widespread; (2) changes in mortality and birth rates are contributing to a changing distribution among family types; and indeed, (3) the increasing opportunities for choices within families and society are creating new family forms and are altering the development and endurance of families. All of these changes have evolved over time as a
Garland, D. R. (2012). Family ministry : A comprehensive guide. InterVarsity Press. Created from liberty on 2026-10-26 21:15:25.
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consequence of social forces—particularly economic forces—that are continuing to give shape to our social and physical world.
Diversity
Despite the powerful images of the nuclear family, there have always been births outside of marriage, nonmarital cohabitation of heterosexual and same-sex couples, childless marriages, working wives, and separation and divorce. Even in the mid-twentieth-century heyday of the “traditional” family, for example, almost half of families with children were not characterized by stay-at-home mothers and breadwinning fathers (Bianchi, Robinson & Milkie, 2006). Just because something exists, however, does not mean that it is part of a culture’s self-consciousness. Examining television entertainment provides a fascinating window into how our society has viewed itself over the past 50 years. Television indicates what is valued and recognized in our culture. Because it is such a pervasive presence in American lives, it also influences our societal values. Television characters are more familiar to many Americans than characters in Bible stories. More people share in the institution of television than any other institution of our society.
Even the institution of television has undergone dramatic changes. During my teenage and young adult years, there were three networks, and there was no broadcast at all during the late night and early morning hours. “Everybody” watched the same shows. The shared cultural experience of the 1950s and 1960s of such shows as All in the Family and The Carol Burnett Show have splintered into hundreds of channels broadcasting 24 hours a day. Television shows produced in the 1950s reveal how today’s senior adults saw family life. Shows like Father Knows Best, Lassie and Leave It to Beaver portrayed homemaker mothers, fathers as heads of household, and their dependent children. What television did not portray also provides an interesting perspective on how our culture saw itself. For example, The Andy Griffith Show was a favorite in the 1950s that continued to be popular in reruns long after, presumably because of its humor, character development and homespun wisdom. Even though it was situated in a small town in the South, it is notable that African Americans rarely appeared in the series. During the 1950s, racial diversity was not a part of
Garland, D. R. (2012). Family ministry : A comprehensive guide. InterVarsity Press. Created from liberty on 2026-10-26 21:15:25.
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how Americans thought of their culture. Dominant White middle-class culture was the culture; others were invisible.
Of course, this same show exemplifies a nontraditional family. The lead character is a widower raising a son alone with the help of live-in Aunt Bea and Cousin Barney. However, Andy’s status as a widower does tie the family to a traditional structure; the situation of single parenting was not created by divorce or birth outside marriage, and the presence of a maiden aunt gives the family the functional equivalents of a nuclear family.
Another television series of the era, My Three Sons, presented the family of a widower raising three sons with the help of a live-in “Uncle Charlie.” This family stretched the definition a bit further because the household was all male. Nevertheless, Uncle Charlie was a full-time homemaker, gruff but lovable, wearing an apron and very much a “Mr. Mom.” Then as well as now, few families probably could identify with having an uncle willing and capable of moving into the household to devote his full energies to raising three children. Part of the humor of this show came from its contrast with reality.
Those families contrasted with more recent television families that have challenged the normative image of the nuclear family. Murphy Brown was initially considered scandalous; the lead character was a never-married career mom, and the show’s focus was balanced between the home and the workplace. Grace in Grace Under Fire was a divorced working-class mother; Friends and Seinfeld portrayed groups of young single adults living together in a mix of sexual and nonsexual family-like relationships with no children anywhere; and Ellen was a lesbian bookstore owner whose “family” seemed to be her cousin, her employees and her patrons. Frasier depicted quite an assortment: a divorced father, whose son lived on the other side of the nation, shared an apartment with his father and a live-in female physical therapist. With the exception of Grace Under Fire, children put in only rare appearances in these shows. More recent decades were marked by television families that depicted nuclear families, such as Home Improvement, Roseanne and Cosby, that had working women. In each of these shows, the action was much more likely to be in the home setting rather than the workplace, and children had central roles.
The dramatic changes Americans were experiencing in their understanding of families were not so much that new family forms were
Garland, D. R. (2012). Family ministry : A comprehensive guide. InterVarsity Press. Created from liberty on 2026-10-26 21:15:25.
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developing, but that forms that in the past were either relatively rare or closeted were becoming much more common and visible. Though not portrayed on television, there were African American families somewhere in Mayberry, and the women in these families were probably employed outside the home because their income was needed for the family to survive. Poor women of all races have always worked outside the home to support their families. Although the majority lived in nuclear families with their husbands and children, significant numbers of African American and White women were single parents even during the 1950s heyday of the nuclear family. At the end of that decade, 1 out of 3 Black children and 1 out of 10 White children were not living in two-parent families. The proportion of Black children living with only one parent almost doubled by 2007, when 65% of Black children lived with only one parent, compared to 24% of Anglo children, 34% of Hispanic children and 16% of Asian children (Child Trends, 2009).
With the erosion of the iconic television family during the past twenty years, perhaps today’s show that has best captured the interest across the generations is The Office. Symbolizing the shift in how the economy defines primary relationships, almost the entirety of every episode takes place in the work environment, and the drama and comedy are defined by workplace relationships. Even romance and pregnancy and childbirth, right up to the time of the delivery of the only child that figures into the narrative, take place at the office, not in a home environment.
Some alternative family systems still are virtually invisible in our culture, even though they have been present as long or longer than nuclear families. For example, many Native American cultures have historically viewed families as three generations, with parental functions delegated among aunts and uncles as well as grandparents (Attneave, 1982). African American families have also been characterized by three-generation extended kinship networks. These kinship networks carry the responsibilities White middle-class Americans assume to be part and parcel of the nuclear family, including sharing economic resources and the responsibilities of childcare and child rearing (Hines & Boyd-Franklin, 1982). Mexican American families have traditionally included compadres, godparents who share in the responsibilities of child rearing, contributing
Garland, D. R. (2012). Family ministry : A comprehensive guide. InterVarsity Press. Created from liberty on 2026-10-26 21:15:25.
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financially as well as providing security and support in times of crisis (Falicov, 1982).
Changing Mortality and Birth Rates
Some of the changes in American family life are being created by changes in the mortality and birth rates that indirectly shift the proportions of family types. The biological family is elongating, as measured by the number of living generations of which it is composed. In 1900, life expectancy was little more than 47 years. By the early twenty-first century, it had increased to age 78 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2009). A century ago, the combination of high mortality rates and immigration made the three-generation family a rarity. Many people died before they could be grandparents, much less great grandparents. Today, four-generation families have become commonplace, although they seldom all live in the same household. Historically, stepfamilies have been common. Until relatively recently, however, they were more likely to have been created through the death of a spouse than through divorce, which is the most common origin of stepfamilies today. It was not until the 1970s that the number of marriages ending in divorce exceeded the number of marriages ending in widowhood (Spanier, 1989).
The birth rate has dropped dramatically in the last 200 years. In the late eighteenth century the average family had eight children; by 1900 this had dropped to three (Grabill, Kiser & Whelpton, 1973). American families, including those who remain childless, now average fewer than one child per family (0.9), fewer than needed to replace the current adult population. Also contributing to the decreased birth rate is the plague of infertility affecting an estimated one in four adults who want to parent, and the trend of young adults waiting longer, with the help of birth control, to try to conceive a child. Of those who do have children, the average number of children is 1.86 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2004). Because families are choosing to have fewer children, the number of years that are dedicated to raising dependent children has decreased. To raise all a family’s children to age 18 today takes only an average of 19 years. Raising the average of 8 children in a family 200 years ago filled the entire adult lifespan. Today adult households that bear children have no children in the home far longer than they are actively
Garland, D. R. (2012). Family ministry : A comprehensive guide. InterVarsity Press. Created from liberty on 2026-10-26 21:15:25.
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parenting. Parents have two to three times more years in relationship with their children once they are adults than when they are young children.
Increasing numbers of children remain “only” children; relatively few have more than one sibling. An only child marrying an only child serves as the extreme example of this shrinking family; their children have no aunts, uncles or cousins—only the generations before and after them. Their family tree looks more like a tall thin poplar than a spreading chestnut. These families appear nuclear in structure, but the limited membership of these families creates a small pool of resources on which to draw, particularly for peer adult support. Family support more likely comes from one generation to the next than from siblings and cousins. Consequently, many of these small families develop family-like relationships with friends and work colleagues that supplement the resources of the family. Thus, the limitations of the nuclear family in this time of dropping birth rates leads indirectly to exploration of new forms of primary relationships that can supplement or even replace the shrinking family membership of like-age peers.
The Role of Choice
There are multiple forces at work creating new family forms. Divorce has had a dramatic impact on many families that otherwise might be characterized as “lean and long.” Because couples are waiting longer to have children, many marriages end childless. The ex-spouses can anticipate a traditional-looking family in a second marriage, with little or no ties to the first spouse.
It is the other half of divorcing persons for which families may become complex and wide, with an array of stepsiblings, stepgrandparents, and assorted stepaunts and stepuncles. Nevertheless, these relationships are more a matter of choice than ascription. Some persons choose to relate to these step-relations as “family”; many others do not, as indicated by the fact that even stepparents and stepchildren do not necessarily consider one another “family.”
Indeed, the subtle but growing role of choice about who is and is not one’s family may be the most significant theme underlying seemingly diverse family types. When a pregnancy occurs outside of marriage today, the partners experience far less pressure to marry than they would have fifty
Garland, D. R. (2012). Family ministry : A comprehensive guide. InterVarsity Press. Created from liberty on 2026-10-26 21:15:25.
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years ago. They may choose to marry, but they may also choose single parenting or abortion, or even placing the child for adoption. Consequently, parenting is much more a voluntary choice. The increased options of effective birth control technologies enable women to time pregnancy according to their own choices.
Remaining married is also an increasingly voluntary choice. Before 1975, a spouse who wanted a divorce had to prove that the other had committed an act incompatible with marriage, such as infidelity, abuse or cruelty of some kind. “No fault” divorce laws removed this element of having to make a case against the marriage; spouses can simply choose to end the marriage without having to legally defend their decision.
Another possible choice for today’s families occurs when spouses have career opportunities in different communities. Families may choose to establish a two-household marriage, a choice that would have created major community consternation 30 or 40 years ago in middle-class America. But the economy drives family forms today, and with the advent of households in which all adults work, it was only a matter of time until following one’s work or career meant that family members would not necessarily live together.
Most significantly, parenting no longer defines family relationships as it has in the past, although purpose and common goals are still highly relevant. It would be virtually as unthinkable today for a spouse to seek divorce because his or her partner is infertile as it was two centuries ago for spouses to divorce because they “could not communicate.”
It is not only parenting that no longer defines family relationships; neither does marriage, which is no longer the norm for many adults. Singleness now characterizes a significant portion of the lives of most adults and the path for many persons all of their lives. Many adults make the choice to live with a partner without making the commitment of marriage. Movies and television characters demonstrate that our culture no longer expects sexual activity to be limited to marriage; increasingly, sexual coupling takes place on the first or second date—at least according to our cultural icons. Marriage limits sexual activity to the life partner, rather than providing the only culturally accepted location for sexual activity.
All of these cultural shifts mean that (1) families are increasingly defined by those persons chosen to be family; (2) many families no longer
Garland, D. R. (2012). Family ministry : A comprehensive guide. InterVarsity Press. Created from liberty on 2026-10-26 21:15:25.
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define their primary purpose as birthing and raising children; and (3) marriage is no longer the exclusive social location for sexual partnering. The process of choosing family is one that takes place over time and is revisited throughout our lives. We choose to marry, and when times are difficult, we choose to continue, or not continue, the marriage. We choose to “be close” to family members who may be geographically distant by making efforts to visit, to phone, to “stay in touch”—or we choose not to make the effort.
More than 20 years ago, a poll found that Americans no longer saw the family in structural terms, that is, as defined by blood relationships, marriage or adoption. Instead, they defined their families in emotional terms, as a group of people who love and care for one another. One out of ten respondents included friends when listing close family members. Half of those who had stepchildren did not consider them family members (M. U. O’Brien, 1989). Increasingly, family relationships are not defined by the roles they represent (mother, father, sibling, etc.) but by the functions they serve (nurturance, discipline, intimacy, cooperation). Nor are families defined by living in the same household, with increasing numbers of families spread across households because of divorce, singleness, remarriage and immigration; the number of children not living with both parents is now 40% (Cherlin, 2010).
In Barbara Kingsolver’s novel Pigs in Heaven (1993), a young single woman, Taylor, is living with a man named Jax and working in a tire store. She is mothering Turtle, a child who was abandoned to Taylor’s care after being sexually abused by her own family. Taylor finally has been able to adopt Turtle. Taylor is talking to her mother, Alice:
“When the social worker asked Turtle about her family today, you know what she said? She said she didn’t have one.”
“That’s not right! She was confused.” “Yeah. She’s confused, because I’m confused. I think of Jax and Lou
Ann and Dwayne Ray, and of course you, and Mattie, my boss at the tire store, all those people as my family. But when you never put a name on things, you’re just accepting that it’s okay for people to leave when they feel like it.”
Garland, D. R. (2012). Family ministry : A comprehensive guide. InterVarsity Press. Created from liberty on 2026-10-26 21:15:25.
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“They leave anyway,” Alice says. “My husbands went like houses on fire.”
“But you don’t have to accept it,” Taylor insists. “That’s what your family is, the people you won’t let go of for anything.” (p. 328)
Taylor names the people she works with at the tire store and her friends, as well as her mother, as people she thinks of as family. Apart from her biological relationship with her mother, these are people who have become family to her through intended and unintended choices. Nevertheless, once people have become family, they are supposed to act like family, which for Taylor—and for most Americans—means an ongoing committed relationship that “you won’t let go of for anything.” Nevertheless, even people in traditional family relationships do let go, as her mother’s wry comment on her multiple marriages indicates.
Barbara Kingsolver’s character is not the only one confused by the changing way we define families. Choosing to be family means not letting go of one another, no matter what other choices later present themselves. At least, that is the idea. But the reality is that many people do make the choice at some point to “let go.”
Perhaps the only family relationship that does not allow at least a moderate level of continuing choice is that of parenting children. Once a child is birthed into a family, whether by choice or by accident, that child and parent have few choices about whether or not to be family for one another. Immediately after a child’s birth, a parent may choose to place the child for adoption by another family. This is a very difficult choice that becomes even more difficult and socially unacceptable as the child grows and attaches to the birth parent. This attitude is based on our understanding of children’s dependence on family for health and well-being. Adults are able to maintain a “single” status and survive, but this is not possible for children. They must have a family, or in situations of abuse or neglect, a substitute family of some kind, in order to survive. Even in the case of infant adoption, our society expects the biological parents to keep a secret place in their hearts of love and attachment for their child and to want eventually to be reunited in some way.
Finally, the role of choice is directly related to the American ideal of mobility, which frequently involves moving away from extended family
Garland, D. R. (2012). Family ministry : A comprehensive guide. InterVarsity Press. Created from liberty on 2026-10-26 21:15:25.
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and, for some, even from spouse and children. The pull of economic opportunities in other places has historically been more compelling to the American mind than the tie to an extended family rooted in a particular place. America was—and still is—a society of immigrants. Often, older generations were left behind in countries of emigration—earlier in Europe and Asia, in Africa by involuntary emigrants, and from Central and South America. The westward movement in the United States lured young families toward a better life on the frontier and away from families in the East. African Americans from the South migrated north seeking work, sometimes leaving children behind with relatives until economic viability could be established. Farm children migrated to the city. This mobility as a feature of American family life has continued. As one indicator, census data show that the percentage of the population that is foreign-born has almost tripled since 1970 to 12.5%—it is now at its highest level since prior to World War II—and almost 20% of American families speak a language other than English at home (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008).
Why Defining Family Is Important
Defining family not only names reality; it also shapes reality. If we believe a family relationship exists, then it does. Believing you are my brother leads to actions quite different on my part than believing you are a potential sexual partner, or employer, or friend. The definition of family communicates what is considered “normal” and “right.” It reflects subtle but very significant indicators of social acceptance.
Every society privileges certain activities and practices because they are valued by the society. The definition of family matters because it is the basis for social privileges, which are concretely represented in social policies. Grieving adults have been excluded from the bedsides of their terminally ill lifelong partners because they were not “family.” Stepparents are unable to obtain needed medical care for a stepchild because they are not “family.” A stepmother may have functioned as mother for the entire life of her stepchild, but should her husband die, she may lose custody of the child to the paternal or maternal blood relatives because she is not “family” to the child. Zoning laws may keep two young single mothers from establishing a household together to pool their incomes and help one
Garland, D. R. (2012). Family ministry : A comprehensive guide. InterVarsity Press. Created from liberty on 2026-10-26 21:15:25.
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another raise their children. They are not related to one another and thus not legally allowed to share the same single-family dwelling, even though their “family” is no larger than a nuclear family with two children. Social assistance programs and publicly financed medical care are all determined by family status. Tax codes may or may not give special allowances to families because they share a household, or deductions to “families” who have “dependent members” to support.
Defining Family in the Church
In the church, the definition of family out of which we operate shapes our programs and ministries. It privileges those recognized as families by providing attention to their issues and needs. By ignoring other kinds of primary relationships not considered “family” by our definition, we by default exclude them from the faith community. They do not receive the support and resources provided to other families.
Churches have been using the traditional family as their definition for several decades, as reflected in the organization of family ministry programs in the categories of “married couples,” “parents” and “single adults.” Two sisters who share a household and are providing care for an old friend of the family with Alzheimer’s disease will probably not receive the same level of support and care as a married couple who is providing care for a parent in a similar health situation.
It should not surprise us, then, that congregations have proportionately fewer young adults than does society in general. More than 15 years ago, a survey compared family demographics of 72 Protestant congregations with the overall U.S. population. The study concluded that “the family structure of the Protestant church is primarily comprised of two rather complimentary cohorts: people who are in traditional families and those who used to be” (Marler, 1995, p. 50). If anything, that trend has strengthened. Church life is often designed primarily for families composed of married couples and their children, or of the remnants of the nuclear family—empty-nest couples and widows. The “singles ministry” is sometimes considered a ministry to a group in the congregation’s neighborhood, and not so much within its own community.
Garland, D. R. (2012). Family ministry : A comprehensive guide. InterVarsity Press. Created from liberty on 2026-10-26 21:15:25.
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Rodney Clapp (1993) has commented that most churches treat their singles ministries as “sanctified substitutes for singles bars” (p. 89). Despite social trends, there seems to be a pervasive attitude within Christian congregations that “normal” people will sooner or later marry, and that divorced persons are simply looking for the next mate. This is evidenced in the too-cute label given to some Sunday school classes that mix single and married adults: “Pairs and Spares.” As one woman told me, “I feel like a spare tire, something extra, just taking up space in the back of the car, as though I don’t really matter since I don’t have a man.” Perhaps one of the primary current contributors to this attitude toward single adults among Protestant congregations has been the preference for married adult males as church leaders. Leaders tend to shape the attitudes of those they lead. If those leaders consider their own lifestyle to be normal and “best,” then inadvertently the attitude is communicated that singleness is less than the best.
No attitude could be more unbiblical. The teachings of the New Testament clearly honor singleness (Mt 19:10-12), and Paul, without denigrating marriage, even holds singleness up as the best life choice (1 Cor 7:6-9). We turn biblical teaching upside down by marginalizing those who remain single. Paul was of the opinion that the unmarried person was less burdened by the anxieties of trying to please a spouse and by worldly affairs. The single person could be more devoted to pleasing the Lord (1 Cor 7:32-34).
Paul understood, however, that the choice to remain single may be a sacrificial choice. Stanley Hauerwas (1981) points out that the “sacrifice” singles make is not only the loss of sexual partnership, but the even more significant loss of children. In Judaism, children were the hope for the future, the heritage that lives on. Hauerwas said that “there can be no more radical act than this (singleness), as it is the clearest institutional expression that one’s future is not guaranteed by the family, but by the church. The church, that harbinger of the Kingdom of God, is now the source of our primary loyalty” (p. 190).
Both singleness and marriage can be Christian callings. Both can testify to the truth of the gospel working itself out in the lives of individuals. For many adults who are single, remaining unmarried may not be an actual choice they make, but a circumstance that they learn to embrace. By the
Garland, D. R. (2012). Family ministry : A comprehensive guide. InterVarsity Press. Created from liberty on 2026-10-26 21:15:25.
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same token, many find themselves married in circumstances they did not choose. Few choose to be married to someone who will become an alcoholic, or develop Alzheimer’s disease, or simply become unpleasant to live with. According to Paul, we are to live in the conditions in which we find ourselves as witnesses to something that transcends marital status (1 Cor 7:24).
Congregations do indeed provide support and care for a diversity of families, but they do so in informal ways. Insofar as congregations are communities, much of what happens in support and care for families takes place informally. I interviewed a single mother of older teenage and young adult children who serves as an important lay leader in her congregation. At the time of our interview, she had been divorced for thirteen years and her ex-husband had lived in another city. Even the fact that she was a divorced woman in a position of church leadership indicates the changes in recent dec ades in congregational acceptance of diverse family structures. Seven years after their divorce, her ex-husband committed suicide after his second marriage ended. This mother experienced enormous stress as she tried to help her children cope with the death of their father and her own anger that he would create this grief and loss for his own children. The death of an ex- spouse who is not a church member and not known by the congregation is not a “typical” situation calling for family ministry. Because they had been divorced for many years, many persons might not recognize the intensity of stress this situation presented for this mother and her children; she was, after all, not technically “widowed.” Yet she described an outpouring of care from her congregation in ways that would be typical if she had been widowed:
Everybody has been there for me. Our church was incredible. They helped in every way imaginable, from just being there to notes of encouragement, food. . . . Even now somebody will ask, “How are you? Are you really doing okay?” And it’s wonderful to know that there’s a history there, that those people are really concerned and caring.
The challenge for church leaders may be to recognize and support with our programs and church policies what congregations already informally
Garland, D. R. (2012). Family ministry : A comprehensive guide. InterVarsity Press. Created from liberty on 2026-10-26 21:15:25.
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are doing to care for the diversity of families in their circles of care.
Structural Definition
As we have seen, definitions of the nuclear family and the traditional family have been extremely significant not only in the study of families but also in shaping social responses to those primary groups defined as families and those that are not. The sociological study of the family has taken two different approaches to defining families—one begins with a structural definition based on the ways persons are related to one another biologically and/or legally; the other begins with a functional definition based on the ways persons relate to one another, or function in one another’s lives, in ways expected of family members.
The nuclear family is the prototype of the structural definition of family. The patterns (structures of relationship) created by marriage, adoption and parenthood define what a family is. Persons are family because of legal relationship (marriage or adoption) or biological relationship with one another, regardless of the strength or quality of the relationship. It may have been 20 years since a person has seen a sister or parent, but that person is still defined as family, and that definition carries with it certain rights and responsibilities. For example, that sister can show up in town and be within acceptable behavioral norms to call and see if she can stay overnight—or a week or more. By contrast, an acquaintance who has not been seen for 20 years would have much less social license to ask for such hospitality (although she still might ask!).
A structural definition of the family defines other types of families in addition to nuclear families, such as “extended families,” “stepfamilies” and “fictive kin.” Extended family is the kinship network that extends beyond the primary relationships of marriage and parenthood and is defined by its relationship to either the marriage or parental status: grandparents, in-laws, aunts, uncles, cousins. Extended family is the “family tree.” The stepfamily consists of those “grafted” into a family tree—the sections of family that did not originate there. This grafting takes place through the process of divorce and remarriage and usually is dependent on the presence of children from the first marriage of one or both marital partners. If there are no children, frequently the divorce dissolves any family ties to one another’s
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families as well. When there are children present, however, a remarriage results in the new roles of stepparent, stepsibling, stepgrandparent and other steprelative relationships. Like the nuclear family, all of these relationships are defined by the marital and parenting relationships.
Finally, fictive kin are persons who relate to the family as if they are nuclear or extended family members, when in fact they are not actually related either by blood or marriage. This is the “Aunt Suzy” to whom the children relate as a relative, who participates in family events, who may even live in the family household, but the relationship is structurally one of friendship, not of marriage or parenting. Perhaps she was Grandmother’s best friend and gradually became more family than friend. The operative word here is fictive: this person may act like kin and may even be mistaken by others for kin, but the kinship is a fiction from a structural perspective. Undoubtedly, Aunt Suzy would not consider her family membership a fiction, nor would others in the family. Nevertheless, if pushed a little, they might acknowledge that Aunt Suzy is not really a family member, because the structural definition of family permeates our culture’s thinking about how to define family relationships.
Functional Definition
The structural definition is not the only way to define families. Families can also be defined by the ways persons behave toward one another, or how relationships function in the lives of people. Instead of statuses to which one is assigned, a functional definition of family looks to the roles persons take with one another. How people relate to one another in family-like ways determines family membership, not the formal and biological statuses they hold. In a functional definition of family, Aunt Suzy is indeed really a family member. In the same way, two single adults who have lived as roommates for many years may share their tangible resources and support and care for one another in ways we associate with family. From a functional perspective, they are family, not just fictive kin. A grandmother who has custody of and is raising her grandchildren because the children’s parents cannot do so for whatever reasons is really “mother” more than she is “grandmother.” In fact, it takes both definitions to understand the complexities of families.
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The lack of terms for defining relationships presents a major challenge for a functional definition of family. The only family terms we have come from the structural definition of family relationships—parent, grandparent, spouse, brother, sister, aunt, uncle. Functional family relationships that are not overlays of existing structures thus have to modify these terms to communicate. For example, the structure of the biological relationship between two sisters becomes the term they use to describe their bond as adults living together as a family—sisters. Two adult women who do not have this underlying biological relationship but who are also bonded together as adults in a nonsexual relationship have no corresponding term to use to describe their bond, so they use the term sister with a qualifier such as like—“like sisters.” This is a significantly different way of thinking about this relationship, however, than the structural term that would be relevant, fictive kin. It points to the similarity of the relationship (“like”) to what one would expect in the named biological relationship (“sisters”) rather than highlighting the dissimilarity (“fictive”).
The subtle but important distinction that the functional definition can make in defining family relationships can be seen in the case of families formed by second marriages with children from first marriages present. Some students of the family choose the term blending, with its implication of ongoing action, over the terms blended, which assumes the process is complete, and step, which defines the family structurally. This subtle difference in terms actually indicates the dramatic difference between the structural definition of family and the functional definition. The terms blended and step both imply that this relationship is created by the legal act of marriage. Blending, on the other hand, is a functional term. The action of blending is an ongoing process, not completed by the legal action of remarriage. Indeed, in many blending families, the process may take years and may never be fully completed.
One of the families I interviewed described the blending process they experienced, which extended more than 15 years. Ann’s father died when she was twelve. Through Ann’s teenage years, Ann’s mother, Ruth, dated Sam, a family friend. They finally married when Ann was twenty and out of the home. The first years of Ann’s relationship with Sam were rocky; both of them resented the attention Ruth gave the other. They tended to avoid one another and did not consider one another “family,” but rather “my
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mother’s new husband” and “my wife’s daughter.” It was only after Ann married and had children, and Ruth and Sam began caring for the children while Ann and her husband worked, that they began to feel like family to one another. Even though Sam is not biologically related to the grandchildren, the children call him Grandpa and clearly he functions in that role. And now that Sam is functioning as a grandfather to her children, Ann calls him “father.”
The functional definition of families requires defining the functions that family plays in persons’ lives that are distinct from other interpersonal relations. Functionally a family is defined as the organization of relationships that endure over time and contexts, through which persons attempt to meet their needs for belonging and attachment and to share life purposes, help and resources. A family is thus defined by observation of behavior, not by role designations. Who does one share troubles with? Share money with? Who lives together? Eats together? Who takes care of each other during sickness? Who sticks together year after year, moving from one town to another to live with or be close to one another? The words attempt to in the definition communicate that families are not always successful in fulfilling these functions. Nevertheless, these are the relationships through which persons continue to attempt to live out what it means to be family. Each of the functions embedded in this definition needs further explication.
Organization of relationships. A family is a group of people characterized by (a) roles, (b) rules and (c) the distribution of power.
Members take on roles, both chosen and assigned, which they enact with another. These roles change over time, but as they are enacted and changed, they define relationships with one another. For example, one member takes responsibility for the family finances, or it is a shared responsibility taken on together. However it is defined, if the family member who is not ascribed the role “financial manager” decides to reconcile the checkbook or pay the bills, there will probably be surprise and even protest.
The family has spoken and unspoken rules. When family members break the rules, there are expected repercussions. Both children and adults may be disciplined by other family members. Adults may be disciplined by withdrawal of affection or the use of other interpersonal sanctions. A few
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examples of rules include (1) appropriate ways of expressing positive and negative emotions; (2) what items of clothing and household goods are for anyone’s use and what are “owned” and require another’s permission before using; (3) acceptable volume levels of music in private and shared spaces; and (4) what children and adults are allowed to watch on television.
Family rules and roles are related to the distribution of power within the family. Power in families is often distributed in relationship to the gender and generational relationships in the family. Men tend to have more power than women, and adults have more power than children. In our culture, middle-age adults (who are the economic providers) may have more power even than senior adults, although there are ethnic and cultural differences. Not only is the economy highly influential in defining family forms, but also the distribution of power within families. Our cultural values dictate that family members use power in benevolent, nurturing ways that contribute to the well-being of all other family members. Nevertheless, power can be and sometimes is abused, meaning that those with power use it to shape life according to their own needs or desires rather than the family as a whole.
Enduring over time and contexts. Family relationships are not transitory. They last across time and space, whether there is frequent contact or not. Children are never adopted for a limited period of time, nor are marriages defined as temporary, although both kinds of relationships can indeed be disrupted and terminated. Siblings may be furious with one another, and may even cut off contact, but they remain siblings. The exceptions only underscore the expectations for permanence. The very sense of the terms disrupted and terminated indicate that these relationships were expected to continue for a lifetime.
Permanence distinguishes the often subtle boundary between friendship and family. The boundary is a fuzzy one, but it is still a “real” boundary. Friendships are usually more a matter of convenience than of lifetime commitment. Friendships are location-specific; retirees often attest to their surprise that long-term friendships in the workplace often fade on retirement. Obviously, sometimes extraordinary lengths are taken to maintain friendships, and sometimes friends become more like family members than some biological relatives. For example, we allow relationships with unfavorite cousins or aunts and uncles to drift for years,
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perhaps losing addresses and phone numbers. Alternatively, some relationships between family members may take on salient characteristics of friendships. One young single mother exclaimed to me, “My parents aren’t just parents; they are my best friends.” Again, these overlapping descriptions simply indicate that the boundaries between friendships and family are not crisply defined, not that there is no difference between the two kinds of relationships.
It is the cross-country move, the major interpersonal conflict or the drifting of interests that often define the difference between friends and families. A defining moment in determining family membership comes when one family member considers moving to another city or state because of employment. In contrast with persons designated “friends,” family members expect to be consulted, or at the very least included in decisions and plans for such a move. If the family does not live in the same household, there are intentional and sometimes elaborate processes for maintaining the family relationships. Adult children employed in cities away from parents spend great amounts of time and resources to “go home” on a regular basis. Part of the cost of college is considered to be the transportation to be “home” for holidays and school recesses.
Friends, on the other hand, may be informed and even consulted about a cross-country move, but they do not expect to be included in the actual move, nor is it typical for elaborate plans and significant expenditures of family resources to be invested in maintaining a long-distance relationship. Phone calls, e-mail or letters, and a visit while back in town on business or on the way to somewhere else are typical ways friends work at maintaining their relationships. Families, on the other hand, are more intentional— phone calls and e-mail are regular, and regular visits are not as likely to occur because they are “on the way,” but rather with the specific purpose of being together.
Meeting needs for attachment and belonging. One of the most important functions of the family is providing what John Bowlby has called a “secure base” (Bowlby, 1969, 1988). Its members can venture out into the world more securely because they know that, when they return home, they will be welcomed, nourished physically and emotionally, and comforted if distressed. We can see the importance of attachment most overtly in toddlers, who play happily and independently so long as parents are nearby,
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perhaps checking in periodically with a verbal exchange or even a quick run for physical contact and then back to their play again. If they are frightened, tired or hungry, however, they seek out the parent.
In this respect, the family functions much as a military base does, from which an expeditionary force sets out and to which it can retreat if trouble is found. Only the military officer who is confident that the base is secure can press forward and take risks (Bowlby, 1988, p. 11). Of course, it is not only children who need such a base. Adolescents and adults, too, need a place that feels secure, a place where they feel welcomed and where they belong. Indeed, such a secure base allows them to engage in work and play with much greater single-mindedness, creativity and even courage. I am fine and can be focused on my work as long as I think I know where my family members are. But if I call around the house and cannot seem to locate my partner, who is supposed to be here somewhere, or if I e-mail and call but cannot track down a family member living somewhere else, I become anxious and may virtually drop all other tasks as insignificant until the lost family member is found.
We can define a person’s family by determining who the population of that person’s “secure base” is. One of the most telling ways to determine who family is for someone is to ask who they would be first concerned to locate in the event of a disaster. For example, in a tornado or hurricane that obliterates a community, who would they search for first? Obviously, there is also concern for neighbors and friends, but there is a qualitative difference in the level of panic created by separation from family than that created when separated from friends. Family members are attached to one another; the family members feel like appendages of, a part of, the self. To lose that appendage is to lose a part of the self, and thus separation is a significant personal threat.
John Bowlby (1988) defined attachment as “any form of behaviour that results in a person attaining or maintaining proximity to some other clearly identified individual who is conceived as better able to cope with the world” (pp. 26-27). As we become adults, it may be that the other is not necessarily able to cope better, but that together we can cope with the world better than one can cope alone, often expressed in song lyrics and on T- shirts such as “you and me against the world.” Obviously, adults become attached to children just as children become attached to adults. Although
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the child may seem to contribute little to the coping, the meaning and purpose they give to an adult’s life may indeed be central to that adult’s ability and style of coping with life circumstances.
John Bowlby, the most significant theorist of attachment theory, distinguished attachment from dependency. Dependency is a characteristic of children that they will outgrow, and of adults who have not “matured.” Dependency alludes to not being able to do for oneself what is needed for survival—feeding, clothing, keeping sheltered and safe. When a child is hungry or cold, any older person can meet the immediate need. Dependent adults communicate that they cannot take care of themselves; they may be considered clingy and even smothering by friends, family and even acquaintances.
In contrast, attachment manifests itself in a few emotionally charged relationships with very specific others and is not readily transferred to other relationships. Attachment takes time to develop, and the loss of an attachment figure is a major source of grief and despair. Attachment relationships are vital to healthy, functional, productive adulthood. When we are upset by something, the first thing we often want to do is seek out the persons to whom we are attached. The very presence of the other is comforting, regardless of whether they can actually make any difference in the problem that confronts us. An anxious surgery patient may want the person to whom he is attached to hold his hand while he is prepped for surgery, or at least to be nearby—not just any hand will do.
Also true of attachment relationships is that separation from and inability to be reunited with the persons to whom we are attached creates enormous anxiety. We recognize attachment in the agitation a small child expresses when parents leave her for the first time in a new church nursery or daycare center. Not just any comforting figure will do; the child longs for Mommy or Daddy, who alone can provide the needed comfort. The grief over the loss of a lifetime partner is another painful expression of attachment; no one else can replace the attachment figure or comfort the loss. One widow I know grieved and found some small comfort in wrapping herself in her husband’s old robe because it smelled like him and felt like him. No person or thing could take his place. Even loving children’s arms were not as comforting as the sleeves of that old robe that helped her imagine his presence wrapped around her.
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Attachment takes place over time; it is perhaps the most significant indicator that a caregiving relationship has become a family relationship, whether that relationship is marriage, adoption or “friends who are like family.” A marriage, for example, may be primarily a sexual relationship and/or a friendship, but the partners do not necessarily experience “attachment” with one another until long after the wedding. Young spouses may still turn to earlier attachment figures (e.g., their own parents) for comfort in times of stress, or at least may experience a greater sense of being “at home” in the parental home than in the new household they have founded. In the attachment process, couples gradually transfer their sense of “at-homeness” to the new household. New attachments do not replace previous ones; attachment figures can never be replaced. Spouses may find comfort in one another’s presence but also seek out parents for comfort in times of great distress, even after the marital attachment is firm. A 50-year- old adult happily married for a quarter of a century may still long for the mother’s comfort during a time of great distress. Elderly persons with dementia may call out anxiously for parents or spouses long dead.
It is interesting to conjecture that attachment may help explain the much higher divorce rates during the early years of marriage, when we can hypothesize that attachment has not fully developed. After the couple has become family for one another, divorce means the loss not only of the partner but also of the secure base that partner represents.
Obviously, attachments also continue to be formed throughout life, and they are not a characteristic only of the parent-child and marital bonds. In my own life, I experienced this development of attachment with my father- in-law, Ned. My mother-in-law, Ruth, developed cancer when I was pregnant with our second child; she died two years later. My husband is an only child, and we were Ned’s only family. Ned moved to an apartment near us, and as his health began to fail, my husband and I took on more and more active roles in caring for him, with daily phone contact and almost daily transporting him to our home for the dinner meal and evening hours with us.
As the years passed, he had to give up driving, so we provided transportation to doctors, the store and church. Although Parkinson’s disease gradually made it challenging for him to carry on conversations with strangers because of his difficulty in putting thoughts into words, his
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mind remained sharp and we had long talks about our daily lives as we did the chores of living together. He sat in the kitchen and talked with me or just watched while I prepared dinner or folded laundry. He listened to the joys and frustrations of my work. As a retired missionary and church pastor, he was a compassionate supporter of my work with congregations. I also listened to him as he talked about his own experiences and sometimes gave me advice. He was proud of me, and that made me happy. I washed his clothes, fussed over his not eating enough, paid his bills and balanced his checkbook. He treated me like a daughter, and he felt like a father to me. In absent-minded moments in the last months of his life, he sometimes called me “Ruth,” his wife’s name. I felt honored, taking this as a sign that I was important to him and that I was doing the “family thing” as I needed and wanted to do. In short, we became attached to one another.
Ned died twelve years after Ruth. For more than two years, I experienced impulses to pick up the phone and call him to talk over the little events of my days, as I had for years. I experienced his absence at the dinner table and in our daily lives as something palpable. I still miss him daily, and at major events in our lives, like the birth of his first great granddaughter, I grieve.
We come to terms with losing attachment figures over time, but they are always a part of us. Even when we lay down relationships by choice, as in divorce, we cannot end the attachment. Like a tree on a mountainside that twists itself to fit around a boulder and retains that shape long after the boulder has been washed downhill by a torrential rain, each partner has been shaped by living as a family with the other. Carl Whitaker, a renowned family therapist, stated flatly that there is no such thing as divorce. The trust of one’s self to another can be disrupted or become destructive, but according to Whitaker, it can never cease to exist. Almost 40 years ago, he wrote:
The craziest thing about marriage is that one cannot get divorced. We just do not seem to make it out of intimate relationships. It is obviously possible to divide up property and to decide not to live together any more, but it is impossible to go back to being single. Marriage is like a stew that has irreversible and irrevocable characteristics that the parts cannot be rid of. Divorce is leaving part of the self behind, like the
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rabbit who escapes the trap by gnawing one leg off. (Whitaker & Keith, 1977, p. 71)
I would suggest a small amendment: one can end the marriage through divorce, but one cannot erase the attachment that developed, and as a consequence, the family that attachment defined. Chapter 7 will explore in more depth how attachments form and deepen.
The word intimacy describes the sense of attachment and closeness one experiences with family members for whom one provides and from whom one receives physical and emotional care. It is expressed in the little acts of bodily care for one another in infancy, illness and disability. Intimacy also develops when persons share meals or other resources, and when persons see one another’s private selves not generally shared with others. I laugh to remember a camping outing in the Rocky Mountains my husband and I took with several children, our own and the children of friends. During a burping contest as we enjoyed wonderfully cold soft drinks after a long hike one hot day, one little girl said, “My dad can out-burp any of you.” Her father is a distinguished theologian and church leader whom I will not name here. I had not considered that he might have that particular talent. Families see the “other” side of us.
The result of attachment is the sense of belonging and “at-homeness” family members experience in one another’s presence. We can be “ourselves” and still be accepted with these people. Although there are expectations that we fulfill certain roles with one another, we are more than simply roles in each other’s lives. This is quite different from settings in which relationships are much more defined by the role assignments of persons: student-teacher, employer-employee and so on. Even friendships may be role specific: the persons who share a Sunday school class, who play softball together, who work in the mail room.
When family members are treated as roles, however, there is a sense of being “used” or even mistreated. There are few spouses who want to be considered just as sexual partners, or parents who want to be considered just as the family cook or launderer, or grown children who want to be seen as just the one who takes an elderly parent to the doctor or balances the checkbook. Family members fulfill roles, but in our culture, they expect
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these roles to be incidental in the regard and concern they feel from others in the family.
Sharing life purposes. One of the most significant functions of a family is the integration and mutual care of the generations. Every child must be attached to a family to survive and thrive, and this responsibility is unique to families, even though not all families currently or historically have cared for children. Even childless families, however, often carry responsibility for generational care, because every person has parents who almost inevitably will be dependent in the last phase of life.
This responsibility for caregiving is most visible at the interface of family with community. Families are expected to contribute to the community through the socialization and support of members, both adults and children. We expect workers to go home to families and be refreshed and strengthened there for the next day’s work. We expect children to come to school with the experiences and nurture they need to prepare them adequately for formal learning.
Caregiving includes family members not living in the same household. Nonresident children take down and put up screens and storm windows, paint, and in other ways maintain an older parent’s home, or take the parent to the doctor or shopping, or bring in prepared food. In turn, older adults provide respite or after-school care for young children or financial help for young adults with the purchase of homes, autos or large appliances. They come to stay and help out in times of childbirth, illness and other crises when more adult assistance is needed.
Caring for and bearing responsibility for one another is not the only social purpose of the family, however. Families also have responsibilities beyond their own boundaries for the social and physical world in which they are embedded. We expect families to tend to and perhaps beautify the land or corner of the building or front door leading to the space they occupy. We expect them to participate in the community in ways that strengthen it, whether through community organizations, informally looking out for the needs of neighbors or simply paying taxes. Families—and their members—carry responsibility not simply for themselves but also for their “piece” of the community and world. We will explore that sense of purpose more fully in chapter 12.
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This emphasis on both mutual caregiving and care for the social and physical environment points to the different way families relate to time than do other social institutions. In the workplace or on the sports field, people focus on doing one or a few related things at one time. They work toward specified or implicit goals. The time orientation tends to be monochronic, with an emphasis on activities organized linearly. In contrast, families have a polychronic time orientation, in which people are doing several things simultaneously—caring for children, doing housework, talking to a friend on the phone. The physical tasks of cooking and cleaning are interwoven with interpersonal, emotional and affectional tasks of caregiving. Family activity normally consists of interruptions, messes, disarray, starting and stopping, and partially completed tasks (Beutler, Burr, Bahr & Herrin, 1989; Wigger, 2005). In family life, the processes of life are just as important as reaching established goals.
Obviously, the linear attitudes of the workplace often seep in, but these intrusions of a linear orientation are often met with dissatisfaction and frustration, as when burdened parents worry that they are so busy marching their families through the routines of their days that they don’t have “quality time” together. They perceive that the processes of daily activities may take more time and energy when done “well,” like talking with a child sitting in the child seat of the grocery cart, teaching the child the names of vegetables and counting or reading labels, and enjoying one another’s company at the same time. These processes are just as important as the outcome—stocking the kitchen with needed groceries. The goal is not to purchase groceries as efficiently as possible, but simultaneously to instruct and nurture children.
Sharing help and resources. When persons need help, our culture expects that they turn first to their family, and that the family will help to the extent that it can. In sickness, financial need or emotional distress, families help one another. Obviously, they do not always achieve this ideal, but when they do not, this is seen as a failure of the family, not a critique of the ideal.
Family help is supposed to be mutual, but often not in the short term. Children are not expected to repay parents for the cost of their rearing. Family members do not expect repayment for help they render one another. Instead, there is the expectation that family members who give help can also call on the family when they themselves are in distress. Or, family
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members are expected to “pass it on” to the next generation. The message of parents to their children is often at least implicitly, “As we have helped you as much as we can, so help your own children when that time comes.” Again, the distinction between friendship and family is important. Friendships tend to be a source of social support and limited tangible support. It is expected that a friend will loan a relatively small sum of money, but it is also expected that it will be paid back. A friend can be expected to buy your lunch once in a while, but probably cannot be counted on for support for four years of college.
Although adults may retain separate checking accounts, and teenage children are often allowed to keep at least a portion of their earnings from part-time jobs to spend as they see fit, families are expected to share their financial and other resources. Families purchase groceries, toilet paper, laundry soap and other household supplies from the family budget. Cars, refrigerators and media equipment often belong to the family, not to single individuals. Even when family members do not share a household, there is still often a sense of “what is mine is yours.” They give or swap cars back and forth in ways that would be considered highly unusual for friends. Even in the unusual event of “selling” things to one another or loaning one another money, families may not charge the interest rates one would expect from a financial institution.
Conclusion
These five characteristics—the organization of relationships, enduring over time and contexts, meeting needs for attachment and belonging, sharing life purposes, and sharing help and resources—are what persons in our society expect from family relationships. They do not necessarily portray reality for all families; no family fulfills all these functions equally well, particularly at any given time. In that respect, almost every family is at one time or another “dysfunctional” with regard to one or more of these characteristics.
The structural definition of family runs the danger of excluding those who do not relate to one another in the requisite statuses, even though they function as family for one another. The functional definition runs the danger, on the other hand, of excluding those who may have the status of spouses, parents and children, but nevertheless do not fulfill all the
Garland, D. R. (2012). Family ministry : A comprehensive guide. InterVarsity Press. Created from liberty on 2026-10-26 21:15:25.
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functions of a family. It seems that neither of these definitions is adequate by itself. Together, however, structural and functional definitions complement one another and provide keys for understanding families in our culture.
Most family ministries have been conceptualized using a structural definition of family. Therefore, we have ministry with married couples, with parents, with single parents, with single adults, with empty-nest couples and so on. No doubt, these ministries have been helpful to families dealing with the various life-stage issues. On the other hand, this structural approach tends to cut a congregation into chunks of homogenous groups, so that all the married couples are grouped for ministry, and all the singles, and so on. It also has the tendency toward congregational specialization, so that some congregations become known as the congregation for young families, or for single adults, or for senior adults. Inevitably, some types of families do not find a specialized ministry for them, because most congregations do not have enough specialized staff and other resources to maintain a host of specialized ministries for the diversity of family types included in the congregation. Perhaps even more problematic is that families are deprived of relationships with others of different ages and life experiences, and the image of an inclusive community of all kinds of people—the people of God —is lost.
Tempering the structural definition with a functional definition of family has a number of implications for family ministry.
We expand our vision to seeing all the ways persons in our congregation and community live in family groups. “Family ministry” becomes sensitive to the life experiences of everyone, not just those living in nuclear families.
We cannot always know who families are by looking at the church role and seeing who is married to or parenting whom. Instead, we have to know people and who functions as family for one another.
Christian teaching has much to say concerning the choices we make about including persons in our families and continuing to be family for one another when the going gets rough. These are issues of Christian discipleship.
Congregations can give recognition to functional family relationships that do not have “names” in our cultural language, publicly recognizing and
Garland, D. R. (2012). Family ministry : A comprehensive guide. InterVarsity Press. Created from liberty on 2026-10-26 21:15:25.
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supporting families and strengthening them by giving them social significance.
Because being defined as a family carries with it rights and responsibilities, those groups who consider themselves family but are denied family status in social policies suffer a variety of losses. Congregations can speak out on behalf of more just social policies when they believe that the denial of family status is unjust.
This chapter and the previous one have explored the historical and current cultural contexts for understanding what “family” means in American society. Chapter 3 traces the history of Christian teaching about family life. Within the context provided by these three chapters, then, chapter 4 will explore biblical teachings that are relevant to how we think about family in the life of Christians in the United States in the twenty-first century.
Garland, D. R. (2012). Family ministry : A comprehensive guide. InterVarsity Press. Created from liberty on 2026-10-26 21:15:25.
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