Hunter Gatherer Family Case Study

The ‘family’ is generally regarded as a major social institution social unit created by blood, marriage or adoption giving us a sense of belonging (The Vanier Institute of the Family, 1994 pg. 6). The family is an institution that has evolved and changed over time from a social unit that was formed for mainly economic reasons to one that mainly provides for emotional needs of its members. This can be seen after observing the past and present of survival, children, and marriage of families throughout history. The earliest families were known as the hunter-gatherers. The invention of the family ensured survival and emotional needs of the members were not an issue. With the family came a division of labor, food-sharing, long term relationships of reciprocity and obligation (Conway, 1997 pg. 11). A recent case study has shown that hunter gatherer families still exist today. The Urueu-Wau-Wau community in Brazil has become a living museum of the hunter gatherer family lifestyle (Holloway, 2003 pg.12). The members of the tribe do not wear clothes, they live in small villages, and the roles of men, women and children are clearly defined and
Agriculture enabled our ancestors to provide much more food, but it also required a great deal of labor. These two factors resulted in larger families, because more people were needed to work the land and tend to the animals. A family could also acquire more land and become wealthier as a result. Pre industrial families, children were an economic necessity during a time when less than 50% of them reached adulthood (Holloway, 2003 pg. 15). Childhood as a period of innocence did not exist and by the age of 7 or 8, they began to assist in the economic activities of the family. Young adults would work in other families, boys would work on a farm or become an apprentice in a trade or craft, and girls would do household