Excerpt from http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/ATLAS_EN/html/marriage_and_the_family.html These few observations may suffice to show that it makes little sense to talk about marriage and family in the abstract, as if they had the same meaning for everyone. There are simply too many different forms of marriage and too many different types of family in the world. In short, there are too many exceptions for any rule that we might set up. Marriage and family are actually very difficult to define and even more difficult to explain. Nevertheless, scholars have often tried to explain marriage and family by pointing to some of their obvious functions. After all, it is a biological fact that sexual intercourse between men and women can produce children, and that these children need adult care and protection for many years before they can fend for themselves. Thus, it has been suggested that, with all of their possible variations, marriage and family are natural and inevitable institutions which provide for the proper raising of children, i.e., ultimately for the survival of the human species. Indeed, the two institutions have been found to serve many additional useful functions, such as providing sexual satisfaction and companionship for the spouses and economic cooperation between all family members. The larger community has also been said to profit from the arrangement since marriage tends to restrict, regulate, and refine human sexual behavior which might otherwise become promiscuous and barbaric. By the same token, a stable family life has often been seen as the best guarantee of social peace. Yet, upon closer examination, it becomes clear that all of these worthy goals can also be accomplished without marriages and families. Children do not have to depend on their parents, but can very well be raised by other adults in professional nurseries, daycare centers, schools, and similar institutions. Sexual satisfaction and companionship can be found outside of marriage, and economic cooperation can be achieved in all sorts of ways between all sorts of people. Sexual behavior can be regulated by religious and secular authorities, and social peace can be preserved even in societies which downgrade the family as an institution and subject everyone directly to some totalitarian control. quote from Levi Strauss Levi-Strauss's... conclusion about the place of the family in society seems indisputable: "The small family of parents and children is not the natural elementary component, cornerstone, or building block of society, as is so often thoughtlessly assumed. In fact, a society does not consist of families any more than it consists of individuals."