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What is a Family?
Strictly speaking, your family are the people to whom you are related, by birth or marriage.
Family can be divided into close family and extended family. Your close family includes spouses, parents and siblings, whilst an extended family includes in-laws, uncles, aunts, cousins and so on.

For some people, their friends are also considered to be part of the family. Families are, after all, pretty flexible: children and adults can be adopted into the family and seen as part of the family for a variety of reasons.

The word 'family' can be traced back to the Latin word 'familia'. This word referred to an entire household: not just the parents and children who formed the traditional nuclear family back then but also the household servants. Though families are different today, they remain very important, and here we give 5 key reasons why.

There are several occasions in life when you want that you don't have any obligations at all. At such stages, you ponder why a family is important. For beginners, it offers you the most significant things in life - support, love, plus a feeling of belonging. In the subsequent paragraphs, we will mention 10 reasons why family is important in life.

7 Reasons Why Family is Important in Life

1. Support and security.

Whether you are applying for a new job or just getting over a difficult breakup, there is no denying that it's so much easier when you have your family there to support you with their love and care. Your family will boost your self esteem no matter what thanks to their unconditional love for you!

The sensation of fear exists in every single human; every one of us must feel secure. A family will provide one with protection. The strength of the family members is not important; a nuclear family or maybe a joint family offers you a feeling of being secure. It is because you realize that your family is going to stand by you, regardless of what.

2. They love and understand you.

Just like the basic requirements, a human also has several emotional needs, the gratification of which is essential for mental as well as physical happiness. Everyone requires affection, understanding, feeling of belonging, love, and so forth. A family offers you all of these things.

Your family understands your habits and knows the trials that you have been through throughout your life. Of course, sometimes your mannerisms can provide a little entertainment for the other members of the family as well!

3. Protects from external influences.

Peer pressure might have a substantial impact on teenagers and adults alike. When individuals try to get other folks to perform things which aren't morally correct, they make an effort to penetrate the family values. This means, if somebody possesses a strong perception of what is correct and what is wrong due to the values they had been raised with, they are more unlikely to become sufferers of deviant influences.

4. Giving earth a center!

No matter where you roam, you always know that you have a home to go back to - your family home. That means that you are never alone in the world, and always have somewhere to go whatever happens. Sometimes this sense of home is legally and financially cemented with shared (joint) ownership of the house.

5. Helps to raise a child.

Family play an important role in the raising of the child. Your loved ones can assist you to raise a child. In case you are in close contact with your household, it will be much easier for you to aid your kid to grow up healthy and happy. You will not just have a couple of people taking care of your child; you will have lots of people. Your family members will take proper care of your kid when you are sick or away, and assist you to cope with your youngster while things are tough. Whilst raising children is never simple, having powerful family relationships makes it a whole lot simpler.

6. Aids to make decisions.

Family values affect the decisions individuals make both in the family structure and also outside. Deciding about crucial topics can be challenging, and people might feel helpless if they are clueless which way to proceed. Consequently, having strong family values aids individuals to make the correct decisions in life.

7. They help to make you who you are.

Whether by providing you with your first steps in education (like learning to read and write) or instilling you with moral values, your family can shape your personality and beliefs for many years ahead. Many people say that the kind and wise words of their family helped to make them a better human being.

Conclusion.

Our family can be whatever we make it: it can consist only of blood relatives or it can also include close friends. From promoting your inner growth to giving you financial support, your family will help you to achieve all of your goals.

When you have your family by your side, you never need to feel that you are alone as you step out into the world. There is always a whole team of people behind you who want the best for you and who will always be there to call upon when you need someone to talk to or a helping hand.

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Family: 7 Reasons Why Family is Important in Life - Important India

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Strictly speaking, your family are the people to whom you are related, by birth or marriage. Family can be divided into close family and extended family. Your close family includes spouses, parents and siblings, whilst an extended family includes in-laws, uncles, aunts, cousins and so on.

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From breakfast to bedtime, college sophomore Julia-Scott Dawson and her mother, Robin Dawson, exchange a flurry of texts that include I love you's, inside jokes and casual chitchat.

"We talk every day," Dawson says.

"Every day," echoes her mother.

Julia-Scott Dawson is a sophomore at the University of North Carolina, which is just a 15-minute drive from where her parents live. Every week, she shares a Sunday meal with her family and grabs morning coffee with her parents when they can.

"I just love the time I spend with them," Dawson says.

The ongoing stream of communication may sound like a lot, but studies say it's not too unusual.

College students communicate with their parents on average 13.4 times a week, says Barbara Hofer, a psychology professor at Vermont's Middlebury College and co-author of The iConnected Parent: Staying Close to Your Kids in College (and Beyond) While Letting Them Grow Up.

A more recent study illustrates similar parent-child trends. Research featured in Generation on a Tightrope: A Portrait of Today's College Student by Arthur Levine and Diane Dean shows that about 40 percent of college students are in touch with parents by phone, email, text or visit at minimum once a day.
College Offices For Parents
Three-quarters of colleges report increased parent involvement in their children's lives and college affairs, Dean and Levine say.

In response to that growing involvement, many universities have built offices of parent services.

"When I went to school, back in the dark ages, your parents dropped you off at the curb, you went in [and] you unpacked," say Rodney Johnson, executive director of George Washington University's Office of Parent Services. "Things have changed."

The office at the Washington, D.C., university was one of the first of its kind in the early 1990s. Today, about 30 percent of colleges have similar services to respond to the questions and anxieties of parents. Similarly, more than 90 percent of colleges offer a specific orientation for parents of freshmen before the start of classes.

"Our job is to do it in a positive way, to say, 'Mom and dad, you need to back off a little bit, let your sons and daughters take care of this,'" Johnson says.

About 15 calls and emails come through the office each day. That's about 2,500 calls a year.

The stakes are higher than they were in previous generations, Johnson says. The cost of college has rocketed, entrance exams are tougher, and parents are simply more invested in their children's happiness and success.

Many students, however, won't admit to having so-called helicopter parents and say their parents are simply concerned about what's going on in their lives.

Jon Gould, author of How to Succeed in College (While Really Trying), says many college students expect a high level of communication with their parents.

"When I talk to students, they're not offended that their parents call them," says Gould, a professor at D.C.'s American University. "They actually enjoy the fact that their parents are involved. But the real challenge is for parents to realize where the dividing line is of being involved and concerned, and taking control of their students' lives."

Almost every professor, he says, is familiar with the horror stories: anecdotes of parents with off-the-wall requests like whether they can stay in the dorms or attend classes with their children. Sure, the accounts are rare, he says, but they exist.
Tech Keeps Parents Close

Advances in technology have made it progressively easier for parents to keep up to date with the daily lives of their children.

For example, Robin Dawson says she relies heavily on Facebook and text-messaging throughout the day to drop sweet notes or just say hello to her daughter, Julia-Scott.

"I'm friends with my daughter on Facebook, I'm friends with most of her friends on Facebook, and she's friends with most of my friends on Facebook," Robin Dawson says.

A generation ago, if Robin Dawson wanted to talk with her mother, she waited in line to make a collect call home. Of course, snail mail was an option, too.

While modern technology can lead to overwhelming parent-child relationships, saysAmerican University's Gould, it has also helped to strengthen the bonds.

"One thing that's different about the generation of parents and kids today is that they grew up for the most part liking one another," Gould says. "And that's different than ... the baby boomers that grew up rebelling against their parents."

Robin Dawson says she can't imagine a world without constant communication with her daughter.

"I just love her," she says. "I love having the time with her and - this is going to make me cry - I just love having the time with my kid."

But she insists she is not a helicopter parent; rather, she's more like a coach on the sidelines, she says, cheering her daughter on.

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Phone Home: Tech Draws Parents, College Kids Closer

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College students often contact their parents twice a day, seven days a week, and they are not always asking for money. Communications technology - including texting, email and social media - has changed the relationship among parents, students and universities.

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Years ago, I saw an interview with a rockstar where he confessed that all of his songs were about what happened in his life from birth until age twelve. He may not have known it, but he was hitting upon a hot debate embroiling researchers and experts from across a variety of fields. That debate concerned the importance of our early experiences and just what causes some people to go on to illustrious success while others languish, why some people seem to defy all odds and excel, while others, despite one opportunity and benefit after another, never seem to get off the starting block.

More to the point, what I have learned as a human behavior expert and child development specialist is that our interactions with our parents form the crucible for our growth. Through these interactions, we learn what is good and bad, right and wrong, who we are and who we are to be.

So, although your genes lay out a blueprint for your potential development, they do not determine the way in which you will grow. Instead, it is the environment your parents create that instructs and directs your genes by enhancing some and turning off others. In other words, parents are the true gene therapists.

Now, as a parent yourself, the baton has passed to you. And who your baby will be and how he will grow subsequently is up to you. After all, in these critical first few years of life, your baby isn't just building language and communication skills - he's building his very personality. This means that your choices - what you say (and don't say), what you do (and don't do) - strongly influence who your child becomes. You are a key co-author in the book of his life.

This is a heavy responsibility that can cast fear into the hearts of even the most confident of parents. So when people learn of my background, I tend to hear the same three questions again and again:

1. What can I possibly do as a parent to influence my child's I.Q.?

2. How can I raise an emotionally well-adjusted child?

3. What influence can I possibly have on my child's moral growth?

My answer always begins the same way: parents have the power. As mother or father, the ultimate responsibility for the trajectory your child takes in life is yours. But the good news is, you have everything you need to give your baby what he needs.

Moreover, contrary to what you've been told (or sold), your child doesn't necessarily need special teachers, lessons, or flashcards. But what he does need is a supporting, stimulating environment: objects for manipulation and observation (pots, pans, balls, and Baroque music, to name a few) and, above all, specific bonding experiences with you, his parent.

Why are these important? Because an environment that is deliberately filled with warmth and stimulation fosters the neural connections in his brain responsible for thought, emotion, and behavior.

Meeting your child's needs, soothing him with your voice and your touch, reading a book, cuddling, or any activity that involves nurturing, will do much to enhance your baby's emotional well-being, temperament, personality, and ability to cope with stress, and whether he reaches his overall potential.

Consider the case of a boy I'll call Sammy, younger brother to Anna and son of Maria and Leo, a successful musician. Like many other kids, Anna started piano lessons at age 7, taking them from her dad, while Sammy looked on. Sammy couldn't wait to start lessons, so Leo started teaching 3-year-old Sammy too. Leo was pleased to see how quickly Sammy caught on.

Leo went to great lengths to make the piano lessons fun. But he also had high standards for his children, making sure they practiced daily and also learned to play correctly, with the right fingers on the right keys and with the right tempo, among other things. The kids also learned composition, music theory, and other instruments, as their abilities allowed.

What was the secret to Sammy's success? Surely he had a natural aptitude for music. But that was not the only ingredient, by far. His father's attention and careful tutelage also played a critical role. That is what made "Sammy" Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as we all know him.

Mozart's story (along with the stories of many other masterminds and miscreants alike) demonstrates the answer to the age-old nature-versus-nurture debate: we are all the products of both our genes and our environments. So, even as you gaze at your sleepy newborns placid face, know that inside, his brain is constantly developing, influenced almost equally by both the genetic codes he received from you and your partner as well as by the experiences you provide him, which affect the expression of those genes.

Although there is nothing you can do at this point about the genes your baby has inherited, there is much you can do to provide the nurturing he needs and an environment that fosters his growth. When you use your parental power to do so, you can help your child become the best that he can uniquely be. But to do that, first you have to understand how your baby's brain develops.

In my next blog post, we'll explore how your baby's brain is hardwired to learn.

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The Power of Parental Influence in Child Development

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The Power of Parental Influence in Child Development

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As a family therapist, I often have the impulse to tell families to go home and have dinner together rather than spending an hour with me. And 20 years of research in North America, Europe and Australia back up my enthusiasm for family dinners. It turns out that sitting down for a nightly meal is great for the brain, the body and the spirit. And that nightly dinner doesn't have to be a gourmet meal that took three hours to cook, nor does it need to be made with organic arugula and heirloom parsnips.
Brain food
For starters, researchers found that for young children, dinnertime conversation boosts vocabulary even more than being read aloud to. The researchers counted the number of rare words - those not found on a list of 3,000 most common words - that the families used during dinner conversation. Young kids learned 1,000 rare words at the dinner table, compared to only 143 from parents reading storybooks aloud. Kids who have a large vocabulary read earlier and more easily.

Older children also reap intellectual benefits from family dinners. For school-age youngsters, regular mealtime is an even more powerful predictor of high achievement scores than time spent in school, doing homework, playing sports or doing art.

Other researchers reported a consistent association between family dinner frequency and teen academic performance. Adolescents who ate family meals five to seven times a week were twice as likely to get A's in school as those who ate dinner with their families fewer than two times a week.
Does a body good
Children who eat regular family dinners also consume more fruits, vegetables, vitamins and micronutrients, as well as fewer fried foods and soft drinks. And the nutritional benefits keep paying dividends even after kids grow up: young adults who ate regular family meals as teens are less likely to be obese and more likely to eat healthily once they live on their own.

Some research has even found a connection between regular family dinners and the reduction of symptoms in medical disorders, such as asthma. The benefit might be due to two possible byproducts of a shared family meal: lower anxiety and the chance to check in about a child's medication compliance.

It isn't just the presence of healthy foods that leads to all these benefits. The dinner atmosphere is also important. Parents need to be warm and engaged, rather than controlling and restrictive, to encourage healthy eating in their children.

But all bets are off if the TV is on during dinner. In one study, American kindergartners who watched TV during dinner were more likely to be overweight by the time they were in third grade. The association between TV-watching during dinner and overweight children was also reported in Sweden, Finland and Portugal.
Soul food
In addition, a stack of studies link regular family dinners with lowering a host of high risk teenage behaviors parents fear: smoking, binge drinking, marijuana use, violence, school problems, eating disorders and sexual activity. In one study of more than 5,000 Minnesota teens, researchers concluded that regular family dinners were associated with lower rates of depression and suicidal thoughts. In a very recent study, kids who had been victims of cyberbullying bounced back more readily if they had regular family dinners. Family dinners have been found to be a more powerful deterrent against high-risk teen behaviors than church attendance or good grades.

There are also associations between regular family dinners and good behaviors, not just the absence of bad ones. In a New Zealand study, a higher frequency of family meals was strongly associated with positive moods in adolescents. Similarly, other researchers have shown that teens who dine regularly with their families also have a more positive view of the future, compared to their peers who don't eat with parents.
What's so magical about mealtime?
In most industrialized countries, families don't farm together, play musical instruments or stitch quilts on the porch. So dinner is the most reliable way for families to connect and find out what's going on with each other. In a survey, American teens were asked when they were most likely to talk with their parents: dinner was their top answer. Kids who eat dinner with their parents experience less stress and have a better relationship with them. This daily mealtime connection is like a seat belt for traveling the potholed road of childhood and adolescence and all its possible risky behaviors.

Of course, the real power of dinners lies in their interpersonal quality. If family members sit in stony silence, if parents yell at each other, or scold their kids, family dinner won't confer positive benefits. Sharing a roast chicken won't magically transform parent-child relationships. But, dinner may be the one time of the day when a parent and child can share a positive experience - a well-cooked meal, a joke, or a story - and these small moments can gain momentum to create stronger connections away from the table.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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The most important thing you can do with your kids? Eat dinner with them.

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As a family therapist, I often have the impulse to tell families to go home and have dinner together rather than spending an hour with me. And 20 years of research in North America, Europe and Australia back up my enthusiasm for family dinners.

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So your child moved back in with you after graduation, and it seems like she will never leave. Or worse, you're sending rent checks each month while she searches for jobs in the big city.

You often find yourself wondering if she will ever grow up. You're concerned that your child is suffering from delayed adolescence.

But research suggests there's no need to panic. Parental support during emerging adulthood does not necessarily inhibit young adults from becoming independent, experts say. This close relationship is actually beneficial to both kids and parents.

"I think it's a great thing overall that there's this wonderful closeness between parents and emerging adults today, and I really think it's unprecedented in human history," says Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a research professor at Clark University in Massachusetts and director of the Clark Poll of Emerging Adults.

Arnett coined the term "emerging adulthood" - the life stage where young adults take time to find themselves in their 20s. He says this stage has brought a new closeness to the parent-child relationship.

The idea of the big American family doesn't exist so much anymore. Rather than having to divide time between multiple kids, parents today can plan their families more and focus on each kid, Arnett says.

"We've had this big change in our beliefs as a society about what's appropriate between parents and children," he says. "Parents no longer feel like they should be some stern authority figure."
Post-Grads Aren't Just Heading Home For Mom's Cooking
Parental support ranges from having the child living at home to paying for living expenses to just talking to the child daily.

Experts say pursuing more education, delaying marriage and the sluggish economy are the main reasons why millennials live with their parents. As more young adults stay single longer - some 25 percent of them will never marry - a bond with a parent can become the most important relationship in their lives, says Karen Fingerman, a research professor at the University of Texas, Austin.

A recent Gallup poll found that only 14 percent of 24- to 34-year-olds are living at home, whereas about half of 18- to 23-year-olds - the majority of which are still in college - live with their parents.

While 14 percent seems like a small number, the number of young adults living at home post-graduation is on the rise. In 1968, only 10 percent of college graduates ages 25 to 34 were living at home, according to a Pew Research Center report.

About 61 percent of parents with grown kids at home find this experience mostly positive, according to the 2013 Clark University Poll of Parents of Emerging Adults. A 2008 study also found that parents showed fewer depressive symptoms when they felt involved in their grown children's lives.

After graduating from Syracuse University this past May, Maddy Berner moved back home to Arlington, Va., while interning and working a part-time job. She says her life at home is very positive so far.

"I knew from the beginning that I wasn't gonna be that child that just turned back into that 16-year-old that made my parents do everything," she says. "I told my parents I would pay for events out with my friends, I would try to make dinner, and I wanted to make clear that I was a 22-year-old and I had responsibilities."

"When it comes to being a millennial and living with your parents, I think it's all about being open with them," Berner adds.
Keep The Rent Checks Coming, Mom and Dad

Even if they don't live at home, a majority of today's emerging adults - about 74 percent - receive financial support from their parents, according to the 2013 Clark Poll.

"Virtually all 25-year-olds could support themselves if they really had to, but then they wouldn't be able to live a very nice life in their 20s," Clark University's Arnett says. "They could live on it, but they don't really want to, and when it comes right down to it, their parents don't want them to have to either."

Berner says her parents understand the tough job market she and many of her peers are entering.

"They're accepting of that, so they're all for me trying to save money so when I become independent, I become self-sufficient and ready to go," she says. "I'm not drowning in debt, depression and need more money."

But Arnett says young millennials are less likely to feel adult if they are still financially dependent on their parents.

"I graduated college, so I should now be self-sufficient," says Lauren Ruvo, a Harvard University graduate student. "I feel self-sufficient, I make daily decisions for myself, but yet the financial piece I still don't have."

Studies show that young adults who had more parental support did not score worse on indicators of independence, says Fingerman of the University of Texas. While there's a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest that helicopter parents persist after college, she says those instances are few.

The majority of today's parents are so willing to support their grown kids because they invented the idea of striving for a career you really want, Arnett says.

"I think a lot of parents that can afford it will say, 'Well, I would really rather have this money for our own fun, but he needs it and they're trying hard, so we'll write the check,' " he says.
It's Not Just About The Money

Millennials who are financially independent still rely on their parents for emotional support.

Kim Parker, a researcher at Pew, says more young people look to their parents for advice because the generation gap is closing. In the 1960s, the young and the old were often at odds, she says.

In 1986, about half of parents reported that they spoke to their grown children once a week. Today, 67 percent of mothers and 51 percent of fathers say they have contact with their young adult child almost every day, according to the 2013 Clark Poll.

To me, millennials are so invested in what their parents want and how their parents feel about their life.

"Typically we talk every day, and we just talk about whatever's going on," Ruvo says. "I would value my parents' opinions more than probably the average 22-year-old, so when there are things that are going on, I call them for emotional support because I know that they won't sugarcoat anything."

Fingerman says the idea of young adults turning to their parents for advice wasn't always so common.

When I was young, "we were turning to other 19-year-olds and asking their advice, and now they're asking a 40-year-old with life experience," she says. "It's a smart thing to do."

But not all young adults have this kind of relationship with their parents. Leo Caldwell, 32, hasn't had a close relationship with his parents since he came out as a lesbian in college. He now identifies as transgender.

"To me, millennials are so invested in what their parents want and how their parents feel about their life," Caldwell says. "I've experienced people feeling very shocked about me not telling my parents things.

"It's interesting to me to see that dynamic," he says, "to see their parents so involved, because I don't think Generation X feels that way or baby boomers feel that way."

The stigma around helicopter parenting leads both parents and young adult children to feel like this level of support is too much. According to the 2013 Clark Parents Poll, 61 percent of parents said their parents gave them little or no support when they were in their 20s. Only 26 percent of today's young adult children say that is true for them.

When Erica Deshpande, 22, was choosing which graduate school to attend, her parents told her they would pay and that money was no object. Columbia University gave her more money, but she chose Harvard because she went to Boston College for undergrad and liked the city.

"There was a lot of guilt associated with having my parents pay for me to just like my school better," she says. "My dad especially is the one who sat down with me and really tried to make me feel that what they want is for me to be where I'm happy. But to be honest, the nicer they are about it, the more guilty I feel sometimes."

Parents and kids feel uncomfortable because cultural norms haven't caught up yet, Arnett says.

"Even though we have this new norm, we don't feel entirely comfortable because we still have this old value that they should kind of be doing this themselves," he says.

While both parents and their grown children agree this type of support is positive now, it's hard to tell if it will prevent them from becoming sufficiently independent in the long run.

As emerging adults grow older, they are less likely to receive financial support from their parents because they want to make their own financial decisions, Arnett says. The 2012 Clark Poll of Emerging Adults reported that only 6 percent of 26- to 29-year-olds said they received regular financial support.

"It's really underestimated in all these negative stereotypes about them how much they want to move ahead with their lives," Arnett says, "and how much they prefer to be financially independent."
Samantha Raphelson is a digital news intern for NPR.org. You can reach out to her on Twitter, where she is often tweeting obsessively about the Foo Fighters and the Phillies.

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Some Millennials - And Their Parents - Are Slow To Cut The Cord

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So your child moved back in with you after graduation, and it seems like she will never leave. Or worse, you're sending rent checks each month while she searches for jobs in the big city. You often find yourself wondering if she will ever grow up.

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What is family? (with subtitles and audio description)