A sibling is a relative that shares at least one parent with the subject. A male sibling is a brother and a female sibling is a sister. A person with no siblings is an only child. While some circumstances can cause siblings to be raised separately (such as foster care), most societies have siblings grow up together. This causes the development of strong emotional bonds, with siblinghood considered a unique type of relationship unto itself.
Complementarianism is a theological view in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, that men and women have different but complementary roles and responsibilities in marriage, family life, and religious leadership. Complementary and its cognates are currently used to denote this view. Some Christians interpret the Bible as prescribing complementarianism, and therefore adhere to gender-specific roles that preclude women from specific functions of ministry within the community.
A husband is a male in a marital relationship, who may also be referred to as a spouse. The rights and obligations of a husband regarding his spouse and others, and his status in the community and in law, vary between societies and cultures, and have varied over time. In monogamous cultures, there are only two parties to a marriage, which is enforced by laws against bigamy and polygamy. Traditionally, the husband was regarded as the head of the household and was expected to be the sole provider or breadwinner, a role that continues in some cultures (sometimes described as paternalistic).
A housewife (also known as a homemaker or a stay-at-home mother/mom/mum) is a woman whose role is running or managing her family's home—housekeeping, which includes caring for her children; cleaning and maintaining the home; making, buying and/or mending clothes for the family; buying, cooking, and storing food for the family; buying goods that the family needs for everyday life; partially or solely managing the family budget—and who is not employed outside the home (i.e., a career woman).
Marriage law is the legal requirements that determine the validity of a marriage, and which vary considerably among countries. See also Marriage Act. Rights and responsibilities of marriages in the United States A marriage, by definition, bestows rights and obligations on the married parties, and sometimes on relatives as well, being the sole mechanism for the creation of affinal ties (in-laws). Over 2.3 million weddings take place in the U.S. each year.
An ancestor, also known as a forefather, fore-elder, or a forebear, is a parent or (recursively) the parent of an antecedent (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent and so forth). Ancestor is "any person from whom one is descended. In law, the person from whom an estate has been inherited." Two individuals have a genetic relationship if one is the ancestor of the other or if they share a common ancestor. In evolutionary theory, species which share an evolutionary ancestor are said to be of common descent.
Legitimacy, in traditional Western common law, is the status of a child born to parents who are legally married to each other, and of a child conceived before the parents obtain a legal divorce. Conversely, illegitimacy, also known as bastardy, has been the status of a child born outside marriage, such a child being known as a bastard, a love child, a natural child, or illegitimate. In Scots law, the terms natural son and natural daughter carry the same implications.
Eskimo kinship or Inuit kinship is a category of kinship used to define family organization in anthropology. Identified by Lewis Henry Morgan in his 1871 work Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, the Eskimo system was one of six major kinship systems (Eskimo, Hawaiian, Iroquois, Crow, Omaha, and Sudanese). The system of English-language kinship terms falls into the Eskimo type. The joint family system places no distinction between patrilineal and matrilineal relatives; instead, it focuses on differences in kinship distance (the closer the relative is, the more distinctions are made).
Hawaiian kinship, also referred to as the generational system, is a kinship terminology system used to define family within languages. Identified by Lewis H. Morgan in his 1871 work Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, the Hawaiian system is one of the six major kinship systems (Eskimo, Hawaiian, Iroquois, Crow, Omaha, and Sudanese). Within common typologies, the Hawaiian system is the simplest classificatory system of kinship. Relatives are distinguished only by generation and by gender.
Crow kinship is a kinship system used to define family. Identified by Lewis Henry Morgan in his 1871 work Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, the Crow system is one of the six major kinship systems (Eskimo, Hawaiian, Iroquois, Crow, Omaha, and Sudanese). The system is somewhat similar to the Iroquois system, but distinguishes between the mother's side and the father's side. Relatives on the mother's side of the family have more descriptive terms, and relatives on the father's side have more classificatory terms.
