258 Family
FAMILY
Family in Africa is characterized by persons,
unborn, living, or deceased, who are related to
each other or may become related to each other
through direct blood and ancestral affinity.
Members of the same family are related to a com-
mon ancestor in biological as well as sociospiri-
tual terms. The African idea of family comprises
all of the members from a particular lineage. This
lineage might be, as was usual in most cultures,
matrilineal or, as it is increasingly, patrilineal. A
household may consist of several generations
from the oldest member of the family to the
youngest. Indeed, coresidence is not necessary,
although proximity is usually required. From this
perspective, it is possible for a family to have sev-
eral locations or houses and the children of these
several houses belong to the same family. In most
cases, where polygamy exists, children live with
their mothers. This entry looks at the role of the
family and concepts related to kinship.
The Family’s RoleThe African family establishes a child’s presence in
the world and provides the child with identity,
spiritual ancestry, and personhood. One does not
have personhood without the collective family in
the African sense. No one is alone, and no one is
an individual island. Thus, the family acculturates
the child to the position that he or she occupies in
the human realm. Children in families are taught
their lineages, responsibilities, values and cus-
toms, and obligations to the family. Many things
are taboo, that is, they are considered deeply
dysfunctional to the family if they are done by the
children and this serves, therefore, as a prohibi-
tion for antifamily behavior.
According to most African scholars, one of the
principal roles of the family is procreation.
Because it is believed by many Africans that life
continues after death and that reincarnation
occurs in human form, it is important to maintain
the procreative function of the family as a way of
maintaining the presence of the ancestors in the
land of the living. Once ritual has played its
course in the remembrance of the ancestors and
there are no more children or grandchildren to
ritualize the ancestors, they can only live by
returning to Earth in a human form. Thus, the
continuity is ensured because the ancestors return
not in an animal form, but in the form of a child
who is born to the same lineage. Often the African
elder’s only worry appears to be, “Who shall ritu-
alize me when I am deceased if I have no
children.” Therefore, men and women believe that
having many children is one of the best ways to
ensure continuity so that the circle of humanity,
especially in the family, is not broken.
The African family is also the center of spiritu-
ality and economic production. By increasing the
productive capacity of the family, often with the
expansion of the members of the family through
plural marriage or through adoption into the
family, economic stability is maintained. Because
marriage is how members are traditionally added
to families, the significance placed on marriage in
Africa relates to the spiritual continuity of the
group. It is rare to find matrifocal families in
Africa where a mother and her children exist
outside of a relationship with a man.Kinship Concepts
The most popular family type may be calledcon-
sanguineal. Yet this term is often referred to in the
West as the “extended” family, where the idea of
the nuclear family is seen as standard. Use of the
term extended has become problematic. Thus,
consanguineal families consisting of a mother and
her children living with a man or a blood-related
family member, which might be the husband’s
brother, is the norm in Africa. This condition can
occur if the husband dies and leaves the wife with
children. Such a family does not become matri
focal because the responsibility of the husband’s
brother is to maintain the deceased wife or wives
and children.
Several types of kinship descriptions exist in
Africa. Among Africans, some groups will have no
two relatives sharing the same kinship term,
although they may be equal distance in generation
from the ancestor. This is rare. However, the most
common description appears to be one that allows
a distinction between sex and generation. In tradi-
tional societies, Africans did not utilize the