ABSTRACT
Traditionally the family has been regarded as a normative form of social being, a morally regulative category of social life over and above a sociobiological fact of the matter. The family is a part of the fabric of social reality that is phenomenologically immediately given; it is given before any judgment and even before one explicitly categorially thinks its unity. Family is a de facto category of social reality. The family is also an epistemic category. Invoking the category of family allows one to recognize the reality and character of a whole nexus of social relationships and human interactions. The biological reproductive family is a constitutive domain of the living social world; it delimits and characterizes social reality. The family as a normative form of social being constitutes the higher truth of the sociobiological data regarding the sex differences between men and women, their biological relationships, and the importance of inclusive fitness.
