Role Of Family In African Family

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Therefore, there is a bond that is shared among the members of the family and every aspect of the society is developed from this family bond or concept. Likewise, any family can make up a typical example of what community life should look like. Beginning from the concept of marriage; where two people from different places, villages and families come together as man and wife because of love felt. These two then start up a family that becomes a part of the wider community in order to ensure the continuation of the community. It can be added that the family can be described as a minimal effective group of relatives by blood and or marriage and analogous groups. By analogous groups, he refers to those family members that are not related by blood …show more content…

Whereas the nuclear family consist of fewer people and the immediate family which according to Alyward Shorter, is autonomous and operates without reference to other relatives and they will dwell in areas not directly close to where couples hail from. The extended or wider family on the other hand involves or is made up of more people which go beyond the immediate family. They stay together, seek common good, share their life and possessions in common and manifested what living like brother and sister should be like. Sometimes, the relationship among them could be biological or by marriage too. This too does not exclude those children who had been adopted.
3.1.1 African Family
The family plays an important role in the African society and is the bond and force of continuation. Since no one exists on his own without some form of relationship, Mbiti confirms that “each person in African traditional life lives in or is a part of the family.” No human being ever lives and carries out an activity, role or responsibility or even exists without a family behind him because “the family community was the basic element of the African, this basic sphere of action through which he became integrated with the larger human community… he always acted from within the sphere of the family.”
3.1.2 African Community and …show more content…

Biko Steve writes thatour living together is not unfortunate accident which causes ceaseless contest among us but is an intentional act of God to make you a community of brothers and sisters mutually concerned with the search of involved in the quest for a fused response to the different life problems. Therefore in all our actions, man should come first since all our activities are usually joint and geared towards the community rather than the individual. This is the reason why the training of a child in the African community is not done by the child’s parents alone but the whole community is involved. Education also is in view of development of the community as well. Africans truly have a strong inclination therefore to community life. An African adage says that ‘a single person’s prosperity does not make the town rich rather the person is enriched by the prosperity of the town’. Thus, emphasising the importance that the community is not made up of a single person but people in communion who see each other as gifts and the relationship is truly of the essence in order to enhance peaceful co-existence among

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