ABSTRACT
The natural family populates professional and religious texts and defines what is to be considered both ideal and sacred. The pervasiveness of the sexual-family-as-natural imagery qualifies it as a "metanarrative" a narrative transcending disciplines and crossing social divisions to define and direct discourses. The sexual family simultaneously exists in our social imagination both as a legal institution and as a cultural ideal with divine credentials. The nuclear family has an assumed "naturalness", venerated in law, institutionalized as the appropriate form of intimacy and secured against defamation or violation by unsanctified alternatives. The sexual family is also viewed as functionally efficient from an economic perspective and necessary for app.
