The Good-Family and its Social Functions

Abstract

In a society where the family suffers attacks from many different sides, a culture of the family is needed that will be also for the family. The tendency of identifying as a family any aggregate of individuals regardless of their sex or of the link that joins them, gives rise to a semantic chaos, which not only hurts the family but society also. In spite of the changes of the last few years, traditional family is still the social institution with more influence on the formation of persons, and the most able to generate individual and social capitals –mutual trust, a shared understanding of common good, hope for the future, the sense of belonging to a generational line or tradition, the development of a true democracy– the lack of which makes it very hard to conceive (the idea of) a society worthy of that name.