Family has many different meanings; one of its definitions from Merriam Webster Dictionary is “a group of people united by certain convictions or a common affiliation.”You can be in a family because you are all related by blood, but you can also be an acting part of a family because you are all united. The unit of people known as family doesn’t have to be related physically, just in purpose. Family has grown and changed throughout the years and as of now there are many different kinds of family.
Family, like people, come in all types, shapes, colors and sizes. There are normal family, bi-racial or multi-racial family, single parent family, adoptive family, etc. Bi-racial or multi-racial family is a family where the parents are members of different racial identity groups. An example of this is the family of Paul Rusesabagina, in the movie, Hotel Rwanda; his family is composed of two different races, Paul who is a Hutu, and his wife, Tatiana, who is a Tutsi. Single parent family is a family that can be either a father or a mother who is singly responsible for the raising of a child. They may be a single parent by choice or by life circumstances. An example of this is Chris Gardener from the movie The Pursuit of Happyness, which in the later part of the movie became a single dad. Adoptive family is a family where one or more children have been adopted. An example of an adoptive family is the family of Gru in the movie Despicable Me.
Finally there is the “normal” family which contains a mom, a dad and one or several children. Even though this is considered the ideal family they have differences as well. Some are dysfunctional, like the Simpson family from The Simpsons. Even though they fight all the time they are still a family and still love each other. On the other hand there are the “perfect” families, obviously most families are not like this, there are occasional fights, but everyone in a family loves each other because they are bonded and united.