The family in historical and psychological aspects

Although early Western cultural anthropologists and sociologists believed that family and kinship were universally associated with "blood" relationships (based on ideas shared in their own cultures), more recent research has shown that many societies instead understand family through the ideas of living together, eating together (for example, dairy kinship) and joint care and upbringing. Sociologists are particularly interested in the functions and status of family forms in stratified (especially capitalist) societies.

Under certain specific historical conditions (the slow development of production, the dominance of subsistence farming, the peculiarities of land relations), the patriarchal family often persists in class society. In this case, it is imbued with class principles, in some cases it establishes the unlimited despotic power of the head of the family, who has turned into a private owner of all property. An example of such a family is the ancient Roman surname with its all-powerful father of the family. Along with the patriarchal family, other remnants of primitive communal family relations often persist in class society, undergoing a corresponding transformation: polygamy, levirate, cousin marriage.

The small monogamous family was the dominant form of the family in the slave-owning, feudal, capitalist socio-economic formations. Throughout history, the dominant position in the family of a man, who is engaged, as a rule, in productive work, and the belittled, subordinate position of a woman, resulting from her role in the household, remained unchanged. In the 18th and 20th centuries, the feminist movement was gaining strength: the desire for equal rights between women and men in all spheres of society.

The class position of the parties was of great importance in the conclusion of marriages. In the Middle Ages, marriage for a feudal lord was a political transaction through which they sought to increase their power and strengthen or establish new political ties. It was not so much personal sympathies that were crucial in the conclusion of marriages, but rather political and economic interests. Even in the family of townspeople and artisans in the Middle Ages, when marrying, the interests of the family, limited by various guild rules, were mainly taken into account. In the era of capitalism, marriage, especially among the bourgeoisie, often became dependent on the economic situation of the future spouses. According to the works of scientists Max Weber, Alan MacFarlane, Stephen Ozment, Jack Goody and Peter Laslett, the huge transformation that led to modern marriage in "Western democracies" was fueled by a religious and cultural value system represented by elements of Judaism, early Christianity, Roman Catholic canon law and the Protestant Reformation. Historically, the most common type of family was one in which grandparents, parents and children lived together as a unit. For example, a household may include the owners of a farm, one (or more) of their adult children, the spouse of an adult child, and the adult child's own children (grandchildren of the owners). Extended family members are not included in this family group. Sometimes families of the "missed" generation are included, such as grandparents living with their grandchildren.

In the United States, this order declined after World War II, reaching a low in 1980, when about one in eight U.S. residents lived in a family of several generations. Since then, their number has increased, and as of 2016, one in five people in the United States lives in a multigenerational family. The growing popularity is partly due to demographic changes and economic shifts associated with the boomerang generation.

In Soviet times, it was argued that in the USSR marital relations based on the mutual inclination of those who marry are more common among working people, mainly proletarian strata of the population. And the family in a socialist society was the cell of the communist education of people. Relations between family members were based on the principles of mutual love, equality of men and women, unity of interests of the individual and society, labor cooperation and mutual assistance. The family in the Soviet state was surrounded by comprehensive attention. Taking care of the family and strengthening it has always been one of the most important tasks of the Soviet state. The State provided families with comprehensive financial assistance: the maintenance of a huge network of maternity and child protection institutions, benefits for mothers and other numerous types of assistance.