Family

Editorial Note
Links to other media and further information regarding this topic can be found in the German version of this article.

1. Introduction

The keyword “family” is constantly present in private and public everyday communication and seems to express all kinds of things: banality and kitsch, a deep sense of life, hope for refuge and happiness. Belonging to a family, living in partnerships, and having children (after the education phase) is a top priority for most people. Providing a place and support for families is also seen as a core task of the church.¹Cf. EKD (Ed.), Zwischen Autonomie und Angewiesenheit. Familie als verlässliche Gemeinschaft stärken. Eine Orientierungshilfe des Rates der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland (EKD), Gütersloh ³2013 (https://www.ekd.de/22584.htm), accessed on 24.03.2026; EKD/Diakonie, Mit Familien für Familien. Zehn Orientierungslinien der Evangelischen Kirche und Diakonie, 2023 (https://www.ekd.de/mit-familien-fuer-familien-77203.htm), accessed on 24.03.2026. Their dark sides of confinement, conflict, violence, and abuse are well known. However, they often still inspire idealized images, even idylls in religious or secular guise (advertising, e.g., in drugstore photo shops).

2. Conceptual and Theoretical Explorations

Looking at social science and historical research on families over the past few decades, it becomes clear that historically and globally universal definitions are problematic. Social, sexological, economic, psychological, cultural, legal, and other perspectives on “family” offer important partial views, but not the whole picture of its reality. Sociologists propose descriptive and flexible definitions: the family of our era is about multigenerational relationships, biological and social achievements, and “a specific relationship of cooperation and solidarity”²Nave-Herz, Rosemarie, Ehe- und Familiensoziologie. Eine Einführung in Geschichte, theoretische Ansätze und empirische Befunde, Weinheim ²2006, 29–32, translation by Jacob N. Cerone. that is lived out in individual and interconnected (including international) households.³Cf. Bertram, Hans/Ehlert, Nancy (Eds.), Familie, Bindungen und Fürsorge. Familiärer Wandel in einer vielfältigen Moderne. Freiberger Studie zum familiären Wandel im Weltvergleich, Opladen/Farmington Hills 2011. Family is “created” in everyday life.⁴Cf. Jurczyk, Karin, Care in der Krise? Neue Fragen zu familialer Arbeit, in: Apitzsch, Ursula/Schmidbaur, Marianne (Eds.), Care und Migration. Die Ent-Sorgung menschlicher Reproduktionsarbeit entlang von Geschlechter- und Armutsgrenzen, Opladen/Farmington Hills 2010, 59–76; Jurczyk, Karin/Rerrich, Maria S./Thiessen, Barbara, Doing Family at the Crossroads of Organisations and Private Lives, in: Bollig, Sabine/Groß, Lisa (Eds.), Practicing the Family. The Doing and Making of Family In, with and Through Social Work and Education, Bielefeld 2024, 59–74. It is “an everyday, generative, social, and caring practice.”⁵Plonz, Sabine, Wirklichkeit der Familie und protestantischer Diskurs. Ethik im Kontext von Re-Produktionsverhältnissen, Geschlechterkultur und Moralregime (Ethik und Gesellschaft 5), Baden-Baden 2018, 178.

The reality of life for specific small groups consisting of parents and children, which we usually think of first (nuclear family), is embedded in larger contexts: it is about procreation and the preservation of the human species (reproduction). It takes place within social frameworks and, in turn, has an impact on the structure and “morals” of society. A ritual or legally contracted marriage is not a prerequisite, but marriage is usually understood as confirmation of newly founded families. New to previous eras are family forms based on same-sex relationships and the use of “artificial,” self-determined fertilization and surrogate pregnancies and co-parenting situations.

In the vast majority of cases, where a heterosexual couple has children (which can become a single-parent family), it is not only their own ideals that are lived out, but also the legacy of the past and social norms. This is why men’s and women’s biographies continue to differ. As soon as children arrive, the balance of activities and income shifts to the detriment of women, and for men, providing for the family can become a burden, but also an escape from everyday care work. Both the desired equality in partnerships and the well-being of children (parents, the elderly, the sick) require social or welfare state support and family-friendly employment conditions. Today’s families need “time, money, and infrastructure,” as the professional association “evangelische arbeitsgemeinschaft familie” (Protestant Working Group on Family Issues) confirms, based on research by the “Deutsches Jugendinstitut” (German Youth Institute).⁶Cf. evangelische arbeitsgemeinschaft familie (Bund), Politisch, Wissenschaftlich, Praxisnah, 2015 (PDF-Doument, https://www.eaf-bund.de/sites/default/files/2015-10/230504_eaf_Flyer_WEB.pdf), accessed on 24.03.2026; The “Deutsches Jugendinstitut” (DJI; German Youth Institute) is one of the largest social science research institutes in Europe (https://www.dji.de/en/about-us.html), accessed on 24.03.2026.

Family is not synonymous with kinship. The latter is based on social conventions and, at most, partly on shared biological ancestry. “Elective affinities” (literary: Johann W. Goethe ) and ways of life that come from close friendships are always being tried out as alternatives to the “normal family” (theological: Mary E. Hunt ⁷Cf. Hunt, Mary E., Fierce Tenderness. A Feminist Theology of Friendship, New York 1994.), as are forms of community like religious orders or cooperatives.

3. Historical Developments

For theological and ecclesiastical discussions, it is essential to look at the history of today’s ideas, at least when it comes to the significance of biblical traditions for Christian life. The term “family” has been applied to the patriarchal “household” since the seventeenth century.

Parents, descendants, adult siblings, and underage servants lived and worked here. However, the much-cited “extended family” is a myth in Western and Northern Europe.⁸Cf. Mitterauer, Michael, Der Mythos von der vorindustriellen Großfamilie, in: Mitterauer, Michael/Sieder, Reinhard (Eds.), Vom Patriarchat zur Partnerschaft. Zum Strukturwandel der Familie, München 1977, 46–71. This book is also available in english: Mitterauer, Michael/Sieder, Reinhard (Eds.), The European Family. Patriarchy to partnership from the Middle Ages to the Present, Oxford 1982. Large farming families have almost completely disappeared.⁹Cf. Frie, Ewald, Ein Hof und elf Geschwister. Der stille Abschied vom bäuerlichen Leben in Deutschland, München 2023. Since the nineteenth century, marriages of convenience and contractual marriages have increasingly been replaced by marriages based on love (romanticism). Modern bourgeois and proletarian family forms emerged, which hardly produced anything themselves and, from the middle of the twentieth century, rarely had employees living in private households. The latter trend is currently being broken by the needs of (elderly) care and global (female) labor migration.

Patriarchal relationships predominate in biblical texts. However, both Testaments also address women’s experiences and their struggle for autonomy, conflicts, and violent relationships, e.g., in the stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs (Genesis), prophecy, and the New Testament missionary movement. In the Hebrew Bible, the “house of the father” is the central reference point, while in the New Testament Greek world it is the “oikos” (the etymological basis from which contemporary eco-related terms are derived).

The Latin term “familia” is linked to the rigorous legal and power relations of Roman slave-owning society and therefore cannot be a Christian ideal. On the contrary, the Gospels, Acts, and (Pauline ) Epistles show attempts to break out of patriarchy¹⁰Cf. Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth, Bread Not Stone. The Challenge of Feminist Biblical Interpretation, Boston 1984. and social solidarity movements based on the precarious living conditions of taxpayers, debtors, slaves, and the dispossessed. Late New Testament letters document the emergence of a male-dominated church. They incorporated the political and economic morality of the household, in which women, children, and slaves/servants were subject to the rule and mercy of the father, into Christian piety and their image of the church. This “household ethics” shaped church history (Reformation!) right up to the ethics of gender and family issues at the end of the twentieth century. In the process, the love of freedom of the people of the exodus and the equality of different people in the New Testament messianic communities were leveled. Thus, for example, Gal 3:26ff. could easily be reconciled with patriarchal dominance in law, economics, politics, and society.

In bourgeois society, and especially in Protestantism, marriage was elevated to an institution with legal, moral, and theological foundations. It served to secure male dominance in all areas of life. The fixation on the patriarchal gender hierarchy is a major reason the needs of family life were marginalized in social policy and social ethics, and the reason biblical, theological, and diaconal interest in marriage overshadowed the reality of family life.¹¹Cf. Plonz, Wirklichkeit; Jäger, Sarah, Bundesdeutscher Protestantismus und Geschlechterdiskurse 1949–1971. Eine Revolution auf leisen Sohlen, Tübingen 2019. Contemporary reflection on family in systematic theology and ethics is therefore still in its infancy.

4. Theological Reflections and Biblical Insights

Despite historical denominational differences, the motif of the Holy Family is present throughout Christianity. Although it seems outdated today (with the exception of the Christmas season), the concept of the “holy” is widespread even in non-religious and anti-religious circles. However, there is no universally accepted language for it. It stands for something inviolable, transcendent, and superior in the reality of life, on which people depend. Therefore, it must be respected and nurtured. This special quality is what family life is all about, even if its religious and moral exaggeration has long been exposed as socially critical and exploited by consumerism and the pressure to present oneself in a certain way (the cult of the child, the staging and moralization of parenthood). The invocation of the “family” stands for the hope of being able to be human and thus for what the Christian faith and the message of the church essentially aim at. The knowledge of and daily concern for the extraordinary and vulnerable can be theologically appreciated in the light of biblical impulses without declaring pre-modern family relationships to be the norm: in the Old Testament collections of laws, the holiness of God is linked to that of his people. It is to be lived out in everday life by all in just circumstances and in the spirit of love of one’s neighbor (Lev 19). In the creation stories, the image of God (Gen 1:27) is established in human beings, who are initially not defined in terms of gender. Their designations are collective in nature and refer to the species (Adam: “human,” “earthling”; Eve: living being, “mother” of the living).¹²See the explanations of the translation options in BIGS (Bibel in gerechter Sprache). For this reason alone, invoking God as “man” is a narrowing reduction.

At the same time, the Bible insists on the difference between God and humans: the name YHWH is a promise that inspires trust (faith) (Exod 3:14), and Moses, Israel’s leader and representative, is not allowed to see the deity (he hears God from the burning bush in Exod 3 and from a crevice in the rock in Exod 33). On the other hand, YHWH hears and sees the plight of the people, whether as workers in the Egyptian house of slavery (Exod 3) or as outcast female servants like Hagar in the house of Abraham (Gen 21). Human products (images) cannot depict YHWH and acquire godlike authority (Isa 40:18ff.); the movement of Jesus’s followers is a communal (ecumenical) one; the promise to all of being God’s children (Ps 82:6; Gal 4:6) is social, not biological (just as the titles of Son or Mother “of God” do not refer to biological descent). From the beginning, the “image” of the human being contains the hoped-for humanity and must remain open until the end (1 John 3:2). If today’s diverse family practices aim at humanity, the Bible tells us that, just like the invisible God of promises, this will always remain “different from us.” Despite all interpersonal contact, it must remain free from encroachment and domination. Theological reflection on “family” is therefore oriented toward the human dimension. According to this view, life’s necessities take precedence over economic, political, or moral demands, and violence must be overcome. Idealized images of a “holy family,” however, “unholy” they may be, indicate that this human dimension is often disregarded and longed for.

It therefore makes sense not to fix a Christian model in the sense of an institution, but rather to orient oneself toward this standard. In 2013, the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD) purposed a life-affirming balance: family life takes place “between autonomy and dependence” (Zwischen Autonomie und Angewiesenheit). In this balance, love and justice should be realistically linked; responsible care should be pursued ethically and politically. In this approach a wide variety of intergenerational relationship patterns are conceivable, and space is also opened up for child-centered perspectives.

Where life in relationships takes center stage, relative metaphors and narratives are understood as theologically appropriate forms of language rather than fixed orders.¹³Cf. Link-Wieczorek, Ulrike/Ritschl, Dietrich, Art. Familie. II. Theologisch, in: Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon. Internationale Theologische Enzyklopädie 2 (³1986), 1258–1260; Post, Stephen G./Witte, John/Lee, Cameron, Art. Family, in: The Encyclopedia of Christianity 2 (2001), 283–293; Spory, Anke, Familie im Wandel. Kulturwissenschaftliche, soziologische und theologische Reflexionen, Münster/New York/München/Berlin 2013. Since ancient times, the ecclesiastical-theological doctrine of the Trinitarian God has also had a strong component in the loving relationships between the three divine modes of being. This idea that “the self-revelation of God unfolds in relationship” was revived in the twentieth century.¹⁴Cf. Karl Barth  as well as feminist and ecotheologies. Where this basic tone was heard, romantic and liberal ideals of partnership and ethical concepts of care were able to develop.¹⁵Cf. Ringeling, Hermann, Theologie und Sexualität. Das private Verhalten als Thema der Sozialethik, Gütersloh 1968; Ringeling, Hermann, Art. Freie Lebensgemeinschaften in der Sicht evangelischer Sozialethik, in: ZEE 24/2 (1980), 143–148; Keil, Siegfried, Art. Familie und Politik. Einst und jetzt, in: ZEE 51/4 (2007), 280–291; idem, Was wir damals noch nicht schreiben durften/konnten. Die sexualethische Denkschrift von 1971 in der Rückschau eines Beteiligten, in: Evangelische Theologie 63/5 (2013), 353–364. They also included same-sex love and responsible communities, which, however, presupposes emancipation from the prevailing norm of masculinity.¹⁶Cf. Connell, Raewyn, W., Masculinities, Cambridge 1995; EKD, Autonomie; Plonz, Wirklichkeit.

5. Ethical Perspectives

The family practice of “active care for oneself and others” depends on a fair division of labor, supportive social welfare structures and resources as well as loving recognition between genders and generations. Christians can understand this commitment as a contemporary variant of the biblical tradition of love of one’s neighbor, which is embedded in social law. In a pluralistic public sphere, it is a matter of political negotiation and agreement in non-religious language.¹⁷Cf. Care.Macht.Mehr., From the Care Crisis to Care Justice, 19.10.2013 ((https://care-macht-mehr.com/english-version-2013/), accessed on 24.03.2026. A relevant European civil societies paper is: Recommendations for Care That Respects the Rights of Individuals, Guarantees Access to Services and Promotes Social Inclusion, 2012 (https://www.socialplatform.org/content/uploads/2013/03/20121217_SocialPlatform_Recommendations_on_CARE_EN1.pdf), accessed on 24.03.2026. See also Pfau-Effinger, Birgit, Culture and Welfare State Policies. Reflections on a Complex Interrelation, in: Journal of Social Policy 34/1 (2005), 1–18; Pfau-Effinger, Birgit/Geissler, Birgit (Eds.) (2005): Care and Social Integration in European Societies. Bristol 2005; and a kick off analysis on care from a gender and welfare state perspective: Knijn, Trudie/Kremer, Monique, Gender and the Caring Dimension of Welfare States. Toward Inclusive Citizenship, in: Social Politics 4/3 (1997), 328–361. In order to protect vulnerable life, it is important to enshrine family-related social action in human rights. It is not only a matter of protecting marriage and family by constitutional and discoursive political norms, but of actual enforcement of gender equality, the implementation of the UN Convention on children’s rights, as well as labor and social rights (including globally organized work in private households), sexual self-determination, protection for victims of violence in relationships, the right and duty to care for sick, elderly, and disabled people, extremely vulnerable people such as children and youth fleeing their homes, public debates, and civil movements that reject “group-focused enmity.”¹⁸The term was coined by the “Institut für interdisziplinäre Gewalt- und Konfliktforschung” (Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Violence and Conflict, https://web.archive.org/web/20110414202256/http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/(en)/ikg/, accessed on 24.03.2026) at Bielefeld University under the direction of sociologist Wilhelm Heitmeyer  and was later used in research on right-wing extremist trends in churches. German original: “gruppenbezogene Menschenfeindlichkeit.”