Many people believe that the cure for certain failures in society today is to do something different instead of correcting the causes of failures. Perhaps this tendency is responsible for the changing concept of family from the traditional Christian mode to various modern life-styles. We hear about experiments with communal groups, about the aggregate family, professional parenthood, polygamy, temporary marriage. And when theory gets started on the subject of genetics and bioparents, one wonders where the family is heading.
In the human sense of existence concepts have evolved gradually, and this is true of the family. When primitive man first built a hut of boughs and reeds, he must have done this to shelter a family. A child must have been involved, and naturally there was also the need to watch over the slow process of its development. Loyalty to offspring is prevalent even among animals, and such loyalty hints the divine shining through the mortal.
In the agricultural age large families were customary. Many tasks needed many helpers. Furthermore, the household was a haven for the detached aunts, cousins, orphans, and even grandparents. So the family could then be described as extended, and it took the place of the nuclear family we often find today, limited to parents and a child or two.
