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Family versus Familia, Historical Definitions of the Family

© Rachelle Hughes

The amazing thing about history and language is how the social, cultural and emotional meanings of words continue to change throughout the ages. Thus it is with the word family. And so, before delving into the fascinating subjects of the history of the European family, it is important to explain some of the definitions of historic family structures and groups and how they compare to our present-day concept of the family.

Our modern day response to the word family conjures up the almost cliché images of parents and children, or a single-parent and children or in some cases an extended group of related individuals including grandparents, uncles and aunts, cousins and so on. Of course, it is easy to see how the definition of the family is once again shifting to include all types of groups of related and semi-related people living in the same household.

Historically, the Latin term familia meant household. For example, the king's familia would have included everyone living in his household, including servants and slaves. A household could be one home or several homes on the same property. The lord of a geographical area would have included his vassals and his serfs as part of his familia. In addition, the Latin terms pater and mater did not refer to natural fatherhood and motherhood. The pater familias was actually the master of the household, the person who had the authority over wife, children, servants, slaves, etc. who belonged to the household.

Quite simply our modern usage of the word family as a unit of relatives is relatively new. It was not until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that family began to connote the intimacy of a nuclear family. During this time many social changes contributed to the shift from the concept of the familia household to the German term familie and the French termfamille, which referred to a household or an extended family of blood relations only. Some of the major shifts in society that have been cited as contributors to this shift in family structure included: The separation of the dwelling from the place of work, the Reformation, Counter-reformation and the Enlightenment, the release of servants from the household, and the emergence of more nuclear family homes among the working class. Despite the difficulty in applying the modern definition of family to historical family units, it is possible to define the several types of historical family groups which existed from the early stages of our history. Many of these terms are still relevant today.

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