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Family

Family · Kinship
Siblings · Cousin
Marriage
Husband · Wife

Friendship (romantic)
Significant other
Boyfriend · Girlfriend

Casual · Cohabitation
Same-sex relationship
Sexual partner

Monogamy · Non-monogamy
Open marriage · Polyamory
Polyfidelity · Polygamy

Cicisbeo · Concubinage
Courtesan · Mistress

Activities

Bonding · Courtship
Dating · Mating
Meet market · Romance
Singles event · Wedding

Ending of

Breakup · Divorce
Separation · Widowhood

Emotions

Affinity · Attachment
Compersion · Intimacy
Jealousy · Limerence
Love · Passion
Platonic love
Unconditional love

Human practices

Bride price (Dower · Dowry)
Hypergamy · Infidelity
Sexual activity · Transgression
Repression

Abuse

Child · Dating
Domestic · Elderly

In human context, a family (from Latin: familia) is a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, affinity, or co-residence. In most societies it is the principal institution for the socialization of children. Anthropologists most generally classify family organization as matrilocal (a mother and her children); conjugal (a wife, husband, and children, also called nuclear family; and consanguinal (also called an extended family) in which parents and children co-reside with other members of one parent's family.

There are also concepts of family that break with tradition within particular societies, or those that are transplanted via migration to flourish or else cease within their new societies. As a unit of socialization the family is the object of analysis for sociologists of the family. Genealogy is a field which aims to trace family lineages through history. In science, the term "family" has come to be used as a means to classify groups of objects as being closely and exclusively related. In the study of animals it has been found that many species form groups that have similarities to human "family"—often called "packs." Sexual relations among family members are regulated by rules concerning incest such as the incest taboo.

Extended from the human "family unit" by affinity and consanguinity are concepts of family that are physical and metaphorical, or that grow increasingly inclusive extending to community, village, city, region, nationhood, global village and humanism.

Procreation

One of the primary functions of the family is to produce and reproduce persons, biologically and socially. This can occur through the sharing of material substances (such as semen, blood, and food); jural ties of rights and obligations; and moral and sentimental ties. Thus, one's experience of one's family shifts over time. From the perspective of children, the family is a "family of orientation": the family serves to locate children socially and plays a major role in their enculturation and socialization. From the point of view of the parent (s), the family is a "family of procreation," the goal of which is to produce and enculturate and socialize children. However, producing children is not the only function of the family; in societies with a sexual division of labor, marriage, and the resulting relationship between two people, it is necessary for the formation of an economically productive household.

I leave the governor’s office next week, and with it public life ... [which] has been on the whole a pleasant one. But for ten years and over my salaries have not equalled my expenses, and there has been a feeling of responsibility, a lack of independence, and a necessary neglect of my family and personal interests and comfort, which make the prospect of a change comfortable to think of.
— Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

A "conjugal" family includes only the husband, the wife, and unmarried children who are not of age. The most common form of this family is regularly referred to in sociology as a nuclear family. A "consanguineal" family consists of a parent and his or her children, and other people. Although the concept of consanguinity originally referred to relations by "blood," cultural anthropologists have argued that one must understand the idea of "blood" metaphorically and that many societies understand family through other concepts rather than through genetic distance. A "matrilocal" family consists of a mother and her children. Generally, these children are her biological offspring, although adoption of children is a practice in nearly every society. This kind of family is common where women have the resources to rear their children by themselves, or where men are more mobile than women.

History of the family

The diverse data coming from ethnography, history, law and social statistics, establish that the human family is an institution and not a biological fact founded on the natural relationship of consanguinity.

Early scholars of family history applied Darwin's biological theory of evolution in their theory of evolution of family systems. American anthropologist Lewis H. Morgan published Ancient Society in 1877 based on his theory of the three stages of human progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization. Morgan's book was the "inspiration for Friedrich Engels' book" The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State published in 1884.

Engels expanded Morgan's hypothesis that economical factors caused the transformation of primitive community into a class-divided society. Engels' theory of resource control, and later that of Karl Marx, was used to explain the cause and effect of change in family structure and function. The popularity of this theory was largely unmatched until the 1980s, when other sociological theories, most notably structural functionalism, gained acceptance.

Kinship terminology

Anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881) performed the first survey of kinship terminologies in use around the world. Although much of his work is now considered dated, he argued that kinship terminologies reflect different sets of distinctions. For example, most kinship terminologies distinguish between sexes (the difference between a brother and a sister) and between generations (the difference between a child and a parent). Moreover, he argued, kinship terminologies distinguish between relatives by blood and marriage (although recently some anthropologists have argued that many societies define kinship in terms other than "blood").

Morgan made a distinction between kinship systems that use classificatory terminology and those that use descriptive terminology. Morgan's distinction is widely misunderstood, even by contemporary anthropologists. Classificatory systems are generally and erroneously understood to be those that "class together" with a single term relatives who actually do not have the same type of relationship to ego. (What defines "same type of relationship" under such definitions seems to be genealogical relationship. This is problematic given that any genealogical description, no matter how standardized, employs words originating in a folk understanding of kinship.) What Morgan's terminology actually differentiates are those (classificatory) kinship systems that do not distinguish lineal and collateral relationships and those (descriptive) kinship systems that do. Morgan, a lawyer, came to make this distinction in an effort to understand Seneca inheritance practices. A Seneca man's effects were inherited by his sisters' children rather than by his own children. Morgan identified six basic patterns of kinship terminologies:

  • Hawaiian: only distinguishes relatives based upon sex and generation.
  • Sudanese: no two relatives share the same term.
  • Eskimo: in addition to distinguishing relatives based upon sex and generation, also distinguishes between lineal relatives and collateral relatives.
  • Iroquois: in addition to sex and generation, also distinguishes between siblings of opposite sexes in the parental generation.
  • Crow: a matrilineal system with some features of an Iroquois system, but with a "skewing" feature in which generation is "frozen" for some relatives.
  • Omaha: like a Crow system but patrilineal.

Western kinship

See also: Cousin chart

Most Western societies employ Eskimo kinship terminology. This kinship terminology commonly occurs in societies based on conjugal (or nuclear) families, where nuclear families have a degree of relative mobility. Members of the nuclear use descriptive kinship terms:

  • Mother: a female parent
  • Father: a male parent
  • Son: a male child of the parent (s)
  • Daughter: a female child of the parent (s)
  • Brother: a male child of the same parent (s)
  • Sister: a female child of the same parent (s)
  • Grandfather: father of a father or mother
  • Grandmother: mother of a mother or father
  • Cousins: two people that share the same grandparent (s)

Such systems generally assume that the mother's husband has also served as the biological father. In some families, a woman may have children with more than one man or a man may have children with more than one woman. The system refers to a child who shares only one parent with another child as a "half-brother" or "half-sister." For children who do not share biological or adoptive parents in common, English-speakers use the term "stepbrother" or "stepsister" to refer to their new relationship with each other when one of their biological parents marries one of the other child's biological parents. Any person (other than the biological parent of a child) who marries the parent of that child becomes the "stepparent" of the child, either the "stepmother" or "stepfather." The same terms generally apply to children adopted into a family as to children born into the family.

Typically, societies with conjugal families also favor neolocal residence; thus upon marriage a person separates from the nuclear family of their childhood (family of orientation) and forms a new nuclear family (family of procreation). However, in the western society the single parent family has been growing more accepted and has begun to truly make an impact on culture. The majority of single parent families are more commonly single mother families than single father. These families face many difficult issues besides the fact that they have to rear their children on their own, but also have to deal with issues related to low income. Many single parents struggle with low incomes and must cope with other issues, including rent, child care, and other necessities required in maintaining a healthy and safe home. Members of the nuclear families of members of one's own (former) nuclear family may class as lineal or as collateral. Kin who regard them as lineal refer to them in terms that build on the terms used within the nuclear family:

  • Grandparent
    • Grandfather: a parent's father
    • Grandmother: a parent's mother
  • Grandson: a child's son
  • Granddaughter: a child's daughter

For collateral relatives, more classificatory terms come into play, terms that do not build on the terms used within the nuclear family:

  • Uncle: father's brother, mother's brother, father's sister's husband, mother's sister's husband
  • Aunt: father's sister, mother's sister, father's brother's wife, mother's brother's wife
  • Nephew: sister's son, brother's son, wife's brother's son, wife's sister's son, husband's brother's son, husband's sister's son
  • Niece: sister's daughter, brother's daughter, wife's brother's daughter, wife's sister's daughter, husband's brother's daughter, husband's sister's daughter

When additional generations intervene (in other words, when one's collateral relatives belong to the same generation as one's grandparents or grandchildren), the prefixes "great-" or "grand-" modifies these terms. Also, as with grandparents and grandchildren, as more generations intervene the prefix becomes "great-grand-," adding an additional "great-" for each additional generation. Most collateral relatives have never had membership of the nuclear family of the members of one's own nuclear family.

  • Cousin: the most classificatory term; the children of aunts or uncles. One can further distinguish cousins by degrees of collaterality and by generation. Two persons of the same generation who share a grandparent count as "first cousins" (one degree of collaterality); if they share a great-grandparent they count as "second cousins" (two degrees of collaterality) and so on. If two persons share an ancestor, one as a grandchild and the other as a great-grandchild of that individual, then the two descendants class as "first cousins once removed" (removed by one generation); if they shared ancestor figures as the grandparent of one individual and the great-great-grandparent of the other, the individuals class as "first cousins twice removed" (removed by two generations), and so on. Similarly, if they shared ancestor figures as the great-grandparent of one person and the great-great-grandparent of the other, the individuals class as "second cousins once removed". Hence one can refer to a "third cousin once removed upwards."

Cousins of an older generation (in other words, one's parents' first cousins), although technically first cousins once removed, are often classified with "aunts" and "uncles." Similarly, a person may refer to close friends of one's parents as "aunt" or "uncle," or may refer to close friends as "brother" or "sister," using the practice of fictive kinship. English-speakers mark relationships by marriage (except for wife/husband) with the tag "-in-law." The mother and father of one's spouse become one's mother-in-law and father-in-law; the female spouse of one's child becomes one's daughter-in-law and the male spouse of one's child becomes one's son-in-law. The term "sister-in-law" refers to three essentially different relationships, either the wife of one's sibling, or the sister of one's spouse, or, in some uses, the wife of one's spouse's sibling. "Brother-in-law" expresses a similar ambiguity. The terms "half-brother" and "half-sister" indicate siblings who share only one biological or adoptive parent.

Family in the West

Kindship and family forms have often been thought to impact the social relations in the society as a whole, and therefore been described as the first cell or the building social unit of the structure of a society.

Family types

The different types of families occur in a wide variety of settings, and their specific functions and meanings depend largely on their relationship to other social institutions. Sociologists have a special interest in the function and status of these forms in stratified (especially capitalist) societies. The term "nuclear family" is commonly used, especially in North America and Europe, to refer to conjugal families. Sociologists distinguish between conjugal families (relatively independent of the kindred of the parents and of other families in general) and nuclear families (which maintain relatively close ties with their kindred). The term "extended family" is also common, especially in North America and Europe. This term has two distinct meanings. First, it serves as a synonym of "consanguinal family" (consanguine means "of the same blood"). Second, in societies dominated by the conjugal family, it refers to "kindred" (an egocentric network of relatives that extends beyond the domestic group) who do not belong to the conjugal family. These types refer to ideal or normative structures found in particular societies. Any society will exhibit some variation in the actual composition and conception of families. Much sociological, historical and anthropological research dedicates itself to the understanding of this variation, and of changes in the family that form over time. Thus, some speak of the bourgeois family, a family structure arising out of 16th- and 17th-century European households, in which the family centers on a marriage between a man and woman, with strictly defined gender-roles. The man typically has responsibility for income and support, the woman for home and family matters.

According to the work of scholars Max Weber, Alan Macfarlane, Steven Ozment, Jack Goody and Peter Laslett, the huge transformation that led to modern marriage in Western democracies was "fueled by the religio-cultural value system provided by elements of Judaism, early Christianity, Roman Catholic canon law and the Protestant Reformation".

In contemporary Europe and North America, people in academic, political and civil sectors have called attention to single-father-headed households, and families headed by same-sex couples, although academics point out that these forms exist in other societies. Also the term blended family or stepfamily describes families with mixed parents: one or both parents remarried, bringing children of the former family into the new family. Also in sociology, particularly in the works of social psychologist Michael Lamb, traditional family refers to "a middleclass family with a bread-winning father and a stay-at-home mother, married to each other and raising their biological children," and nontraditional to exceptions from this rule. Most of the US households are now non-traditional under this definition.

... I want to live and be happy. I believe that we cannot be one or the other by pushing the absurd to all its consequences. I am like everyone. To feel liberated, I sometimes wish death on my loved ones, I covet the wives forbidden to me by the laws of family and friendship. To be logical, I should then kill or possess. But I judge that these vague ideas are unimportant. I everyone tried to put them to reality, we could neither live nor be happy.
— Albert Camus (1913–1960)

In terms of communication patterns in families, there are a certain set of beliefs within the family that reflect how its members should communicate and interact. These family communication patterns arise from two underlying sets of beliefs. One being conversation orientation (the degree to which the importance of communication is valued) and two, conformity orientation (the degree to which families should emphasize similarities or differences regarding attitudes, beliefs, and values).

Sociological views

Contemporary society generally views the family as a haven from the world, supplying absolute fulfilment. Zinn and Eitzen discuss the image of the "family as haven a place of intimacy, love and trust where individuals may escape the competition of dehumanizing forces in modern society". During industrialization, "he family as a repository of warmth and tenderness (embodied by the mother) stands in opposition to the competitive and aggressive world of commerce (embodied by the father). The family's task was to protect against the outside world." However, Zinn and Eizen note, "The protective image of the family has waned in recent years as the ideals of family fulfillment have taken shape. Today, the family is more compensatory than protective. It supplies what is vitally needed but missing in other social arrangements."

"The popular wisdom", according to Zinn and Eitzen, sees the family structures of the past as superior to those today, and families as more stable and happier at a time when they did not have to contend with problems such as illegitimate children and divorce. They respond to this, saying, "there is no golden age of the family gleaming at us in the far back historical past." "Desertion by spouses, illegitimate children, and other conditions that are considered characteristics of modern times existed in the past as well."

Others argue that whether or not one views the family as "declining" depends on one's definition of "family". The high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births indicate a decline in the institution of the family. No longer are marriages arranged for political or economic gain, and children are not expected to contribute to family income. Instead, people choose mates based on love. This increased role of love indicates a societal shift toward favoring emotional fulfilment and relationships within a family, and this shift necessarily weakens the institution of the family.

As an agent of socialization, family is the primary source of influence behind the formation of personality and the growth of a child, due to its influence on the basics of personality and its role providing gender identity. This impact is large as the family confers its social position onto the child when it is brought into the world.

Oedipal family model and fascism

The model, common in the western societies, of the family triangle, husband-wife-children isolated from the outside, is also called the oedipal model of the family, and it is a form of patriarchal family. Many philosophers and psychiatrists analyzed such a model. One of the most prominent of such studies is Anti-Œdipus by Deleuze and Guattari (1972). Michel Foucault, in its renowned preface, remarked how the primary focus of this study is the fight against contemporary fascism.

“ And not only historical fascism, the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini but also the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us. ”


In the family, they argue, the young develop in a perverse relationship, wherein they learn to love the same person who beats and oppresses them. The family therefore constitutes the first cell of the fascist society, as they will carry this attitude of love for oppressive figures in their adult life. Fathers torment their sons. Deleuze and Guattari, in their analysis of the dynamics at work within a family, "track down all varieties of fascism, from the enormous ones that surround and crush us to the petty ones that constitute the tyrannical bitterness of our everyday lives".

As it has been explained by Deleuze, Guattari and Foucault, as well as other philosophers and psychiatrists such as Laing and Reich, the patriarchal-family conceived in the West tradition serves the purpose of perpetuating a propertarian and authoritarian society. The child grows according to the oedipal model, which is typical of the structure of capitalist societies, and he becomes in turn owner of submissive children and protector of the woman.

Some argue that the family institution conflicts with human nature and human primitive desires and that one of its core functions is performing a suppression of instincts, a repression of desire commencing with the earliest age of the child. As the young undergoes physical and psychological repression from someone for whom they develop love, they develop a loving attitude towards authority figures. They will bring such attitude in their adult life, when they will desire social repression and will form docile subjects for society. Michel Foucault, in his systematic study of sexuality, argued that rather than being merely repressed, the desires of the individual are efficiently mobilized and used, to control the individual, alter interpersonal relationships and control the masses. Foucault believed organized religion, through moral prohibitions, and economic powers, through advertising, make use of unconscious sex drives. Dominating desire, they dominate individuals. According to the analysis of Michel Foucault, in the west:

the family organization, precisely to the extent that it was insular and heteromorphous with respect to the other power mechanisms, was used to support the great "maneuvers" employed for the Malthusian control of the birthrate, for the populationist incitements, for the medicalization of sex and the psychiatrization of its nongenital forms. —Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality vol I, chap. IV, sect. Method, rule 3, p. 99

Size

Natalism is the belief that human reproduction is the basis for individual existence, and therefore promotes having large families. Many religions, e.g., Islam, Christianity and Judaism, encourage their followers to procreate and have many children. In recent times, however, there has been an increasing amount of family planning and a following decrease in the total fertility rate in many parts of the world, in part due to concerns of overpopulation. Many countries with population decline offer incentives for people to have large families as a means of national efforts to reverse declining populations.



Categories

Further Reading: Family

Islamic Marital Practices ... The Council of Trent (convened 1545–1563) ruled that in future a marriage was only valid in Roman Catholic countries if it was witnessed by a priest of the Roman Catholic Church or, if obtaining a priest were impractical, by other witnesses. This ruling was not accepted in the newly Protestant nations of Europe, nor by Protestants who lived in Roman Catholic countries or their colonies in the Americas or elsewhere, nor by Eastern Orthodox Christians...

Pregnancy ... In Haredi communities, many marriages are arranged by a professional match-maker ("shadchan") who receives a "brokerage-fee" for his or her services. The parents may be actively involved in the matchmaking procedure, but the young couple is not forced to marry...

Marriage ... Friendship (romantic) Significant other Boyfriend · Girlfriend Casual · Cohabitation Same-sex relationship Sexual partner . ...

Celestial Marriage ... In India, where most Hindus live, the laws relating to marriage differ by religion. According to the Hindu Marriage Act of 1955, passed by the Parliament of India, for all legal purposes, all Hindus of any caste, creed or sect, Sikh, Buddhists and Jains are deemed Hindus and can intermarry...

Adolescence ... The United Nations views forced marriage as a form of human rights abuse, since it violates the principle of the freedom and autonomy of individuals. The Roman Catholic Church deems forced marriage grounds for granting an annulment — for a marriage to be valid both parties must give their consent freely...

Marriage Law ... Family planning is sometimes used as a synonym for the use of birth control, however, it often includes a wide variety of methods, and practices that are not birth control... Family planning services are defined as "educational, comprehensive medical or social activities which enable individuals, including minors, to determine freely the number and spacing of their children and to select the means by which this may be achieved." Purposes Raising a child requires significant amounts of resources: time, social, financial, and environmental... The purpose of family planning is to make sure that any couple, man or woman who has the desire to have a child has the resources that are needed in order to complete this goal...

Arranged Marriage ... Within Mormonism, celestial marriage is an ordinance associated with a covenant that always takes place inside temples by those authorized to hold the sealing power. The only people allowed to enter the temple, be married there, or simply attend these weddings are those who hold an official temple recommend...

History Of The Family ... Since 2001, ten countries have begun allowing same-sex couples to marry nationwide: Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, and Sweden. Same-sex marriages are also performed and recognized in the Brazilian state of Alagoas, Mexico City and parts of the United States...

Religious Views On Same-sex Marriage ... Many parents create their own style from a combination of factors, and these may evolve over time as the children develop their own personalities and move through life's stages. Parenting style is affected by both the parents' and children's temperaments, and is largely based on the influence of one’s own parents and culture...

Same-sex Marriage ... Psychological development Of the 'two major socializing agents in children's lives: the family environment.and formal educational institutions,' it is 'the family in its function a primary socializer of the child' that predominates in the first five years of life: middle childhood by contrast is characterized by 'a child's readiness for school.being self-assured and interested; knowing what kind of behavior is expected.being able to wait, to follow directions, and getting along with other children.'...

White Wedding ... According to the teachings of the Quran, a married Muslim couple is equated with clothing. Within this context, both husband and wife act as each other’s protector and comforter, just the way real garments “show and conceal” the body of human beings...

Forced Marriage ... The book, Centuries of Childhood by Philippe Ariès, published in France in 1960, had a great influence on the revival of the field of family history studies... Gathering church files, court records, letters, architectural and archeological evidence, art and iconography, and food and material culture increased the objectivity and reproducibility of family reconstruction studies... Studies of current family systems additionally employ qualitative observations, interviews and focus groups, and quantitative surveys...

Chinese Marriage ... According to Kilbride, ending an extramarital affair in a polygamous marriage, rather than in a divorce, is better for the children; "hildren would be better served if family augmentation rather than only separation and dissolution were seen as options." Moreover, he suggests that other groups will also benefit from plural marriage, such as elderly women who face a chronic shortage of men...

Family Planning ... Historical view Anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881) performed the first survey of kinship terminologies in use around the world. Though much of his work is now considered dated, he argued that kinship terminologies reflect different sets of distinctions...

Christian Views On Marriage ... Christians who support religious and legal recognition of same-sex marriage may base their belief in marriage equality on the view that marriage, as an institution, and the structure of the family is a biblical moral imperative that should be honored by all couples, heterosexual and homosexual alike...

Jewish Views On Marriage ... They were favored primarily as a way to show the world that the bride's family was so wealthy and so firmly part of the leisure class that the bride would choose an elaborate dress that could be ruined by any sort of work or spill...

Parenting Styles ... Since the late 20th century, it has become popular to create an elaborate wedding album. The album usually consists of many pictures of the bride and groom taken at various locations with many different costumes...

Parenting ... Attachment Parenting- strengthen the intuitive, psychological and emotional bond between the primary caregiver Unconditional Parenting- giving unconditional positive encouragement Spiritual Parenting- respecting the child's individuality, making space for child to develop a sense of their own beliefs through their personality and their own potentials Slow Parenting- allowing the child to develop their own interests and allowing them to grow into their own person, lots of family time, allowing children to make their own decisions, limit electronics, simplistic toys Helicopter Parenting- over-parenting, parents are constantly involving themselves, interrupting the childs ability to function on their own Narcissistic Parenting- parents are driven by their own needs, their children are an extension of their own identity, use their children to live out their dreams Toxic Parenting- poor parenting, complete disruption of the child's ability to identify one's self and reduced se...

Kinship Terminology ... One function dowry may be to provide the husband with "seed money" or property for the establishment of a new household and to help feed and protect the family ... A dowry may also have served as a form of protection for the wife against the possibility of ill treatment by her husband and his family...

Preadolescence ... Essentially the couple continue to live separately from each other, as before their contract, and see each other to fulfil their needs in a permissible (halaal) manner when they please. Sheikh Ahmed al-Kubaissi from the United Arab Emirates thinks there is no formal problem with 'misyar' marriage...

Dowry ... While marriage is honored among Christians and throughout the Bible, it is not seen as necessary for everyone. Single people who either have chosen to remain unmarried (Celibacy) or who have lost their spouse for some reason are neither incomplete in Christ nor personal failures...

Wedding ... In these societies, the intragenerational relationship of the family is much more valued than the marital relationship...

Criticism Of Marriage ... The end of adolescence and the beginning of adulthood varies by country and by function, and furthermore even within a single nation-state or culture there can be different ages at which an individual is considered to be (chronologically and legally) mature enough to be entrusted by society with certain tasks. Such milestones include, but are not limited to, driving a vehicle, having legal sexual relations, serving in the armed forces or on a jury, purchasing and drinking alcohol, voting, entering into contracts, completing certain levels of education, and marrying...

Hindu Wedding ... Nastika-Heterodox Charvaka Buddhism Jainism Scriptures Vedas Rigveda • Yajurveda Samaveda • Atharvaveda Divisions Samhita, Brahmana, Aranyaka, Upanishad Upavedas Ayurveda • Dhanurveda Gandharvaveda • Sthapatyaveda Vedangas Shiksha · Chandas · Vyakarana Nirukta · Kalpa · Jyotisha Upanishads Rig vedic Aitareya Yajur vedic Brihadaranyaka · Isha Taittiriya · Katha · Shvetashvatara Sama vedic Chandogya · Kena Atharva vedic Mundaka · Mandukya · Prashna Puranas Brahma puranas Brahma · Brahmanda Brahmavaivarta Markandeya · Bhavishya Vaishnava puranas Vishnu · Bhagavata Naradeya · Garuda · Padma Shaiva puranas Shiva · Linga Skanda · Agni · Vayu Itihasas Ramayana · Mahabharata Other scriptures Bhagavat Gita Dharma Shastra · Manusmriti Artha Shastra · Yoga Vasistha Sutras · Stotras · Tantras Yoga Sutra others Classific...

Marriage In Hinduism ... The term embryo is used to describe the developing offspring during the first 8 weeks following conception, and subsequently the term fetus is used henceforth until birth. 40% of pregnancies in the United States and United Kingdom are unplanned...



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