Social Construction of Family

The family is a natural and important part of a foundation of a strong society. An extended family is important because it allows skills and traditions to be passed down by each generation. It provides mutual support, including financial support, and gives each member a feeling of stability and belonging.
An extended family is two or more adults from different generations of a family, who share a household. It consists of more than parents and children; it may be a family that includes parents, children, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, foster children etc. The extended family may live together for many reasons, help raise children, support for an ill relative, or help with financial problems. Sometimes children are raised by their grandparents when their biological parents have died or no longer can take care of them. Many grandparents take main responsibility for child care, especially when both parents work. Extended families can be found all over the world in different communities and countries. The number of these families has increased by forty percent in the past ten years.
Historically in Canada, the Huron people lived in extended families in tribal villages based on social class or membership.   These extended families consisted of the descendents of senior women, unmarried children and married daughters and their husbands.   The women were left in charge of agriculture and food trade when the husbands were absent from the village during hunting trips or war.   Extended families provided the women with economic security and family stability during the men’s absence.   In the early twentieth century, many immigrants to Canada also relied on extended family to relieved economic problems, housing issues and
        2
language.   In these immigrant families, both the men and women worked to contribute to the household as a whole.
Though there has been a decrease in extended families because of industrialization and Western education bringing...