Families of orientation vs families of procreation

The argument

Sociology distinguishes between the family a person is born into and the family a person forms. The first, the family of orientation, is where someone begins: parents and siblings, a household not chosen, typically defined by blood relation and the setting in which socialisation first takes place. The second, the family of procreation, is entered as an adult and formed through marriage, and its defining bond is not descent but a relationship deliberately established. The distinction does more than label two stages of a life. The two groupings are constituted differently and do different things. One is given and the other is chosen; one is held together by kinship and the other by a contract and the commitment behind it; the obligations each generates, and the point at which a person can be said to have joined or left, are not the same in the two cases. Most people belong to both, often at the same time, and occupy a different position in each — child in one, spouse or parent in the other. This is why the question of what a family is resists a single answer. A definition narrow enough to capture one of these groupings precisely will exclude or distort the other, and a definition loose enough to cover both tends to be too loose to do analytical work. The discipline's response is not to pick a winner but to specify which grouping is in view and on what criteria, and to accept that the term covers several distinct sociological objects rather than one. On this reasoning the sociological definition of a family depends on the type of family being described and the approach being taken to it, and the distinction between families of orientation and families of procreation is one of the clearest demonstrations of why.

Context

There are two types of families and each one has its own sociological definition.

Premises

Counter-arguments

While the distinction between families of orientation and procreation makes sense on an individual level, it does not make sense on a macro level. Beyond the individual, both families likely function the same way. They probably interact with society in the same way, and have many similar characteristics. Therefore, a sociological definition can be developed that is inclusive of both types of family.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The two types of family are different from the perspective of the individual, but not in the way they function or interact with wider society.