ABSTRACT
A family has many tasks. It formalizes the relations between men and women; it provides for the birth and upbringing of children; it houses and feeds its members; it is the primary human group through which social relations are made and maintained. It is the focus of the love and hate, reassurance and anxiety, security and insecurity, that are the fundamentals of social culture. In different societies, different laws, customs, and behaviour govern the roles taken by the members of the family; and family organizations extend all the way from matrilineal and even polyandrous structures, in which the role of husband and father is barely relevant, to the more common patrilineal structures in which, in the extreme, women are regarded, and accept themselves, as inferior to men.
