the concept of family

with predictions on the increase of divorce rates and the eventual abolishment of marriage, will the concept of a family be relevant? or will it change from blood relations to emotional and spiritual bonds (think platonic relationships but in a deep familial way)? if that's not the case then what will it be? I was just wondering since one of my stories takes place in the year 2120 and I'm trying to make it as plausible as possible within that universe.

Ok what makes you think marriage would be abolished? I have a funny feeling but humor me and explain why you think that.

why? well maybe might have dissolved I guess. I'm not suggesting it would be abolished anytime soon. someone told me it would be a possibly in the future.

Marriage is a way of legally establishing male paternity. Basically determining who the father is in legal terms. Without it you'd need to rework things like inheritance and guardianship for fathers.

Did they give any reasons? Have you come up with any reasons why this might happen? Marriage, in the sense of some kind of closed social, religious, or economic contract between two or more people, kind of forms the foundation of families, and subsequently communities and further on up. I can see the definition of marriage being expanded in the future, but not totally abolished. The closest thing I can think of to a familyless or marriageless society would be some kind of tribal or hunter-gatherer society where childcare is treated as the responsibility of everyone in the tribe, not just each child's parents, and possessions are either the collective property of the tribe or become collective property when their owner dies.

Bel: It is way more complex then that.

The thing is marriage has been around for a very long time and existed in pretty much every single human culture we can find in one form another. The forms are not identical and societies views on marriage tend to shift over time. That being said I really doubt marriage will be abolished or disappear just change what it means to be married and likely what it takes to get married.

Family is similar. While there is a concept of family in all human cultures it isn't identical across all cultures. I expect it will still exist just to have morphed in to whatever the culture finds suitable and sustainable.

edited 12th Dec '16 4:42:26 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Family concept will still be important in the far future, if only because we need something that can ensure survival and development of children to be useful members of a society. Even animals build something resembles that, especially the social ones.

Agreed, I'm only simplifying because I don't want to do a deep dive on sociology right now.

Seriously, I don't even want to get into the theories that without marriage men wouldn't contribute to society.

There is as well the idea that without the idea of family, without belonging to one or desiring to build one of some kind, individuals wouldn't be likely to have much of an investment in the idea of society. Society is built on rings of affinity, going from family to tribe (or ethnic group) to nation.

Fiction gives you a lot of lee way to play with these concepts and various works do just that. Fantasy an sci-fi alike.

I'm pretty sure that as long as people keep having children the concept of family will still exist. Someone has to be in charge of raising the children, after all.

No reason that couldn't be the state, though. That idea's been proposed before, by various individuals/ groups throughout history. In Brave New World "mother" and "father" are dirty words, and children are raised by the state; Huxley meant the idea to disturb people, and it did, but he was cribbing it from a number of alternative political philosophies of his era.

edited 18th Dec '16 12:31:52 PM by Robbery

Hey guys, any more theories

I had this idea for a society of clones where all the children were raised in creches. The idea was that the children were made in batches that were mixes of existing clone batches so while a clone doesn't have parents per se, clones have thousands of aunts and uncles. Still, infant batches were cared for by clones genetically engineered for strong parental instincts in state run creche-bunkers.

Now, keep in mind that this is something of a dystopia. It's not a very humane system with tons of ethical hangups.

not exactly, but the book series Tankborn has genetically modified humans who's job it is to take care of crèches, although the crèches are the biological children of upper class families, not clones.

Well The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress brought up the ideas of line- and clan-marriages, plus a few others (like the troika, two men one woman, an adaptation to social condition of having twice as man men as women).

edited 9th Jan '17 11:34:12 PM by MattII

Troika's actually have existed (though they likely weren't called that). Usually in Asia, and most recently in some of the more remote mountain cultures in and around the Himalayas. Heinlein was all about unconventional sexual relationships (so long as they were hetero).