Definition Essay About Family

What is a family? Many of us have asked ourselves this question and some of us have never thought of it before. Either way, even if until just now, we desire an answer. Many people may say that a family constitutes a group of individuals that provide for you, such as a home, food, water, clothes, etc. Others claim that your family are people in your life that love you unconditionally, offer support and advice, care for you, etc. Most people would simply say that your family consists of people that are related to you. However, what if you were adopted? Are your adoptive parents not considered your family? This is why the definition of family goes beyond biology and is much more than just the things they do for you.
What constitutes a family varies from person to person. We all have our own ideas of what a family is or what it should be. For people that grew up in abusive homes, they may not even consider the people that mistreated them their family. They may now surround themselves with people that genuinely care for and love them and those are the individuals that they refer to as their family. There have also been many cases where someone has felt as if they did not “fit in”
and have asked themselves if these people that are biologically related to them constitute their actual family. Individuals such as these may feel like they are completely different from the people they live with. They search for other people that can understand them and relate to them on another level that makes them feel as if they have finally found their real family. Family is much more than just being related or having someone to provide you with a place to live. We will never have a perfect and concise definition for what a family is or what it consists of but, there may be key things such as unconditional love and support, understanding, and mutual respect that make up what a family is.
Usually when we speak of our families, we always bring up the things they have sacrificed for us and how as adults, we owe them everything.
Many of us have said, “If it were not for my family, I would have never been able to accomplish the things I have”. We may feel that we are in some sort of debt to our families and because of the things they did for us when we were younger, we now owe them something in return. However, when did our relationship with our parents or families become one that was filled with debt that had to be repaid? When did our parents change from doing things for us because they loved us and out of genuine care for us to doing it to gain something in return? A relationship that is built on obligations and “debts” is a dysfunctional one and does not constitute a
family.