FAMILY, THE

formerly Children of God, Teens for Christ, and The Family of Love millenarian Christian communal group that grew out of the ministry of David Berg (19191994) to the hippies who had gathered in Huntington Beach, California, in the late 1960s. It teaches a message of Christian love based on scripture and the prophecies of Berg. The focus of the first anticult organizationthe Parents' Committee to Free Our Children from the Children of God (FREECOG)The Family attracted attention for alleged child abuse and for its use of sex in missionary work. The group abandoned some of its more extreme sexual practices and has remained a moderately successful movement with an international presence. In 1969 the group, then known as Teens for Christ, left California because of Berg's prediction of a future earthquake. It reorganized as the Children of God (COG), and Berg became known as Moses David. Initially seen as part of the Jesus People revival then sweeping through hippie communities, the Children of God were distinguished by their belief that Berg was God's endtime messenger. In the early 1970s, inspired by his apocalypticism, members of the sect dressed in sackcloth and conducted demonstrations denouncing America's abandonment of God. By 1974, in accord with Berg's goal of creating an organization composed entirely of full-time missionaries, most COG members had scattered throughout the world to live communally and to spread Berg's message. Berg communicated his teachings through a series of Mo Letters (in recent years recast as a periodical, The New Good News). In 1978 he initiated a major reorganization that led the Children of God to disband and reconstitute as The Family. During this same period Berg led his followers to free themselves from sexual inhibitions and taboos. For example, in a practice called flirty fishing," he encouraged female members to use their feminine charms while witnessing God's love to lonely men, a tactic that often led to sexual activity. He also encouraged sexual sharing among the adults in The Family. This sexual activity led to problems in the early 1980s. Most significantly, herpes spread among Family members, and pedophiles within the group preyed upon the children. In 1983 and over the next several years, the group began to curtail this sexual activity. Child protection rules were instituted, and in 1987 flirty fishing was discontinued. The sharing of adult partners within the group continues and remains The Family's most distinctive and controversial practice. In the early 1990s the homes of Family members in several countries were raided by government agencies concerned about child welfare. However, extensive investigations discovered no cases of abuse; The Family had seemingly rid itself of this objectionable activity. Berg died in 1994 and was succeeded by his wife, Maria. The following year she introduced the Love Charter, a constitution spelling out rights and responsibilities for Family members. As the century drew to a close, The Family had more than 9,000 members in more than 80 countries, which made it the most successful communal group to emerge from the 1960s counterculture era. John Gordon Melton Additional reading James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton (eds.), Sex, Slander, and Salvation: Investigating the Family/Children of God (1994), is a valuable collection of scholarly essays that studies the history and teachings of The Family. The modern family Expanding the biologic family In many traditional societies, the more children a couple has, the better off is the family. Children have been valued both in their own right and for the labour they perform. In many modern societies, too, there remains a great desire to have children. While modern birth-control methods allow many couples to limit the size of their families, modern advances in medical technology enable those who cannot produce children naturally to do so artificially. At the same time, the legal mechanisms of fostering and adoption offer traditional alternatives for expansion of the family beyond biologic children. Artificial insemination While many couples use birth control to limit the number of children, others have taken advantage of changing mores and new technology to increase their chances of having children. One method is artificial insemination, which involves the implanting of semen into a woman's uterus by means other than sexual intercourse. The semen may come from the woman's husband or, if the husband is sterile or is suspected of carrying a hereditary disease, from a (usually anonymous) donor. Artificial insemination by donor, although still rare, is becoming more common and socially acceptable. Nevertheless, for many people there are moral or legal complications. Many modern Western legal systems fail to distinguish the pater (social father) from the genitor (presumed biologic father), while most traditional societies do make the distinction. Where it is not made, the law may regard the semen donor as the father of a child produced by artificial insemination and oblige him to bear financial responsibility for the child. Artificial insemination is even regarded by some people as a form of adultery. In order to prevent such difficulties, clinics that perform the insemination keep the identity of donors secret. Often they also mix donated semen with the semen of the prospective social father, in order to preserve the legal fiction that the pater and genitor are the same man. The modern family Marriage in modern society Legal aspects of marriage In nearly all cultures, marriage is distinguished from courtship or living together out of wedlock by a ceremony or series of ceremonies. These often involve bridewealth, dowry, or simply the giving of gifts, by anyone, to the newlyweds. Wedding ceremonies may be civil, religious, or a combination of the two. In Great Britain, for example, those who marry in a church must undergo a short civil ceremony (the signing of the register) at the end of their wedding in order to validate the religious ceremony in the eyes of the state. For couples who include a divorced partner, the reverse is sometimes true: the couple may undergo a religious ceremony, in which they repeat their wedding vows, in order to receive full recognition by the Church of England of the civil ceremony they have previously undergone. The main purpose of the legal validation of marriage in almost every society is to provide for the legitimacy of children. Marriage in most societies is required by custom in order to give children legal recognition as members of a family or wider kinship group and to allow them to inherit property from both parents. In some modern societies, natural children born to parents living out of wedlock are also given these rights, usually upon petition in the courts, but the norm is that the right of a child to inheritance is defined by the marriage of his parents. This is even more true when it comes to succession to titles of nobility in the male line or membership in patrilineal kin groups. Without marriage, the child belongs to the mother alone and is ineligible to inherit a title or membership in a kin group. In Western society these legal requirements date back at least to Roman times, and similar rules, distinguishing the children of wives from those of concubines, were also found in biblical times. Marital roles Marriage is important as the accepted institution for the expression of adult sexuality. A mutually satisfying sex life is important to both men and women, although social scientists point out that marital roles involve much more than this. Romantic love is only one of the reasons people marry. Social and economic security, and indeed social pressures, can be equally important. Relations between the sexes are to a large extent culturally as well as biologically determined. The image of the macho male is well-known and attributed commonly to Mediterranean and Latin-American cultures. In working-class British culture, too, tenderness in a sexual relationship has been traditionally regarded as unmanly. The public image that such men wish to project is based on sexual prowess rather than on emotional intimacy. This image may even be retained after marriage if manliness is defined by how completely a man can rule his household. In the past, women frequently took their social status from their husbands, but by the late 20th century there was an increasing tendency for women to be regarded as equal partners in marriage. The traditional norm, where women remained at home and men went out to work, has changed rapidly. As women gain status from their own occupations outside the home, they are beginning to achieve equality with men. Women's traditional sphere of influence has been the home, however, and in cultures as diverse as the Khoikhoin (Hottentots) of southern Africa and sections of the working-class population of modern Britain, women's economic authority in the home remains paramount. Even today it is not uncommon for the British husband to depend on his wife to give him spending money, even though it may originate in his wages. In a study of the family in a low-income area of London, British sociologists Michael Young and Peter Willmott found that what had previously been regarded as the typical late 19th-century family had survived into the 1950s. This type of family was centred on the economic separation of the roles of husband and wife, sometimes with both partners working and frequently with the wife sharing domestic tasks with female relatives who lived nearby. Young married women, for example, received help from their mothers in shopping, household chores, and babysitting. In further studies made in the 1970s, however, Young and Willmott documented changes toward what they called the symmetrical family, in which kin networks had ceased to be as extensive as in the past and husbands and wives shared domestic tasks between them. Social activities, too, had become more couple-centred, as in many cases men stayed home, perhaps to watch television, rather than to socialize with their male friends. In short, at least in London, there was a development of working-class marital roles toward a pattern similar to that found in most middle-class households. Indications are that the trend is a widespread one. The modern family There is no precise distinction between modern and premodern families. Some authorities consider the modern family to be identical with the Western family since the Industrial Revolution. Others take the notion of modern in a more literal sense, meaning the family as it is today in any part of the world. Certainly there is no reason to exclude the entire Third World and equate modern only with Western society. Yet too precise a definition is a hindrance rather than a help. In different contexts the word modern means subtly different things. Its definition depends on the contrasts and comparisons to be made. For the purposes of the following discussion, the modern family may be taken generally to refer to family organization as it has existed since the early 20th century. Special concern is directed, mainly but by no means exclusively, toward family organization in Western societies. Even so, cultural, subcultural, religious, and class differences create a variety of forms within the modern family, and this variety cannot be overestimated. The family cycle Courtship and mate selection In most societies adolescence is marked by social as well as biologic changes. Such social changes often include a new, more formal attitude toward parents and, more particularly, toward members of the opposite sex. In many societies the custom is for young people in the early stages of adolescence to spend time in same-sex groups. Boys may attend sporting events, and girls, overnight parties. Eventually the same-sex groups come into contact with similar groups of the opposite sex at social occasions. In some societies young people go out with mixed-sex groups before they begin dating, but in other countries the practice of dating emerges from the same-sex group phase, as individual young people meet and pair off. Often dating is followed by a stage of steady dating, in which a couple agree to date only each other, and their exclusive dating relationship may become recognized by their peer group and others, including their respective parents. If the couple gets along well together, the phase sometimes defined as courtship may begin. In its strictest sense courtship usually refers to an activity, such as dating, with intent to marry. Prior to the 20th century, and still today in some societies, courtship was practiced without dating in the modern sense. A young man might visit his intended bride in her parental home and bring gifts, discuss common interests, and perhaps go for walks. To nontraditional people these customs, if continued to courtship, may seem ridiculously old-fashioned, and it is frequently difficult in the modern era to make meaningful distinctions between going out, dating, and courting. The distinctions are further blurred by modern couples' living together, either before marriage or with no intention of ever marrying. More typically, though, the family begins with marriage, which grows out of courtship and is preceded by what sociologists call mate selection. Mate selection may be defined simply as the process, often unconscious, of choosing a mate. Usually the mate is the person's intended spouse, and the traditional definition of the term has this implication. Individuals often claim that their match is made on the basis of love, but statistical studies show that other factors are involved. For example, people usually marry within their social class and often to those of the same ethnic group or religion. This practice of like marrying like is known as homogamy. Mate selection is also frequently related to economic factors. For instance, before she will consent to marry him, a woman may want her intended husband to show that he is capable of supporting her. The modern family Forms of family organization The nuclear family The nuclear, or conjugal, family is the basic unit of family organization in virtually every society. It is generally defined as a married couple and their children (including adopted and fostered children, as well as the couple's natural children). Other forms of family organization, such as compound and joint families, are in a sense built upon the nuclear family or contain units comparable to it in their structure. In many modern societies the nuclear family is identical to the typical household unit. Members of the nuclear family share the same dwelling place, usually a single house or apartment. In agricultural societies the nuclear family is often the primary unit of production, sharing tasks and taking collective responsibility for the income that sustains them. In both agricultural and other types of communities, the nuclear family is almost always the primary unit of economic consumption. One or both parents, and sometimes children, earn money outside the home and then share at least some of the fruits of their labour with the family as a whole. The one-parent family A common variant of the nuclear family is the one-parent family. This form consists of one parent and his or her children. One-parent families may be formed through widowhood, divorce, or separation. They may also be formed when an unmarried person, usually a woman, raises children on her own. In many Western industrialized societies, the one-parent (especially the single-mother) family is becoming more common and tolerated. However, the extent to which it is as successful as the traditional nuclear family is a matter of conjecture. In many traditional cultures an unmarried mother is encouraged or even forced to marry, or else she is required to give up her child for adoption by another family. It is becoming increasingly common, however, for a mother to retain her children and raise them, often with the help of her own parents or of government social agencies. In many countries this type of arrangement is more socially acceptable than formerly. In some parts of Africa, for example, female-headed one-parent families are actually more common than nuclear families as the basic household unit. Sometimes such an arrangement is permanent, but similar female-headed households are also common in places where men are forced to leave their wives in order to find work. In southern Africa migrant labourers often have to leave their families for years at a time. This variant, however, is regarded by many sociologists as a form of nuclear, rather than one-parent, family organization. The man supports his family with wages earned away from his marital home but continues to regard it as his home, even though he may live for extended periods elsewhere. A somewhat different but related form of family organization is the West Indian matrifocal family (see below Universality of the family: The West Indian matrifocal family).