Niger averages 6.76 kids; Singapore 0.81
Family, from Latin familia, groups people by birth or affinity and anchors social order. Anthropologists sort matrifocal, patrifocal, and conjugal nuclear patterns. As of 2015, fertility ranged from about 6.76 births per woman in Niger to 0.81 in Singapore—many rich countries sit below replacement.
Beyond the mother-centred, father-centred and conjugal types, anthropologists also recognise the avuncular family of a man, his sister and her children, and the extended family that adds grandparents, aunts, uncles or cousins. The term matrifocal was coined in Guiana for households centred on a woman and her children, with fathers only intermittently present. Seen from a child's side, the family is one of orientation, placing them in society; from a parent's side, it is one of procreation. Early Western scholars assumed kinship always meant blood, but later research found many societies define it through living together, shared food such as milk kinship, and shared care.
Historically the commonest household held grandparents, parents and children together, such as farm owners living with an adult child, that child's spouse and the grandchildren. In the US that arrangement shrank after the Second World War to about one person in eight by 1980, then climbed to one in five by 2016. Canada's share was only about 6 percent in 2016 but rising fast, pushed by Aboriginal and immigrant families and costly housing. Steven Ruggles's census analysis suggests 19th-century Northwest Europe and North America were not unusually nuclear.
Single-parent families grew as divorce rates soared between 1965 and 1995, and about half of American children will spend time in one before turning 18. Shared-parenting arrangements that keep children in touch with both parents can improve their well-being compared with sole custody.
The idea of a chosen family is common among LGBT people rejected after coming out, veterans, abuse survivors and twelve-step groups. Without legal recognition, such families can struggle with hospitals, schools and government agencies.
Source: Family
