Towards a new concept of family: the individual family

Abstract

The purpose of this document is to carry out an analysis on the concept of family, examining, firstly, the etymology of the term ‘family’, then various transformations that the family structure has undergone are exposed, so its definition has been continuously transmuted; some types of family are defined immediately, both from the 20th century and what is going on in the 21st. Subsequently, the debate is opened on whether or not the traditional or patriarchal family is currently in crisis, and it is analyzed how concepts of this type of family such as marriage, head (man) of family, woman mother and housewife; where procreation is called into question. Finally, the importance of integrating within the categories or types of family is raised what can be called the individual family, based on a review and subsequent analysis of the literature that talks about single-person households.