ABSTRACT
“The family” is one of the major political issues of our time, in large part because of the incredible changes technology fosters in this ancient institution. What is a family? Who may have one? What exactly constitutes a healthy family? Social scientists define families around shared meanings, relationships, gender, and kinship. Legal definitions include relationship, emotional and financial commitment, everyday life, and mutual reliance. Average people have definitions that are broader than any of these, or much stricter. What this boils down to is that what “family” means is socially determined and currently very contested. This contestation about the family has been particularly obvious in the lamentations over the last few centuries about its decline.
