FAMILIES AROUND THE WORLD

Families in Mexico

Human beings in their conformation as social entities have structured links of

relationships that have allowed not only their survival but also the possibility of
forming and developing societies as they exist today. In these societies individuals
develop their lives in family groups, composed of kinship, cultural, political and
economic systems, among others.

The concept of the family must include qualitative and quantitative variables that
refer to the sociocultural, historical, political and economic contexts in which the
institution is inserted, as well as aspects that refer to issues such as its structuring,
its components and its forms of organization. Then, the family institution should be
defined according to the context in which it is developed.

We have to recognize that for some time now, families have been restructured. They
have changed their models, their types and composition and internal integration.
Therefore, it is necessary also to modify the concepts used to define them, and thus
to account for the new diversity of this fundamental institution of society.

The INEGI recognizes only 5 family types: Nuclear, Extended, Composite, Co-
resident, Single-person. None of the definitions specifies or clarifies a refusal to
recognize a family type according to the sexual orientation of its members, although
INEGI does not have a specific classification for the type of homoparental family
which gives rise to a problem of measurement and visibility in national statistics.

Also In the seventies of last century in our country significant changes were
generated in the structure and the number of members of the family, thus we
witnessed an increase in the number of couples who opt for free union, the decision
both of Men and women to postpone marital union, the increase of children born out
of wedlock, as well as greater marital instability. Therefore, it opens the way to the
implementation of more complex family structures such as reconstituted families, or
simpler structures such as single-parent families. These are new ways of organizing
everyday coexistence.
The definitions adopted are as follows:

Family homes

Nuclear: formed by a family nucleus. It includes marriages without single children,

marriages with single children, single parents with single children and single mothers
with single children.

Extensive: integrated by a nuclear home and one or more people related to the boss.
Relatives may be married children or any other person in the vertical or collateral
kinship line, whether they form another family nucleus or do not. This category also
includes households formed by a boss and one or more relatives.

Compounds: formed by a nuclear home or extensive to which is added one or more

persons unrelated to the boss, whether they form another family nucleus.

Unipersonales: they are composed of a person who lives alone without relatives or
non-relatives.

Co-residents: includes households formed by two or more persons who are not
related to each other.

References

Vivir en familia: hogares y estructura familiar en Mxico, Rodolfo Tuiran, PDF

El concepto de familia en Mxico: una revisin desde la mirada antropolgica y

demogrfica, Reynaldo Gutirrez Capuln, Karen Yamile Daz Otero y Rosa Patricia
Romn Reyes, PDF

http://www.trabajosocial.unam.mx/web2015/comunicados/2016/mayo/infografia_F
AMILIAS.pdf