Rethinking ‘family’: A call for conceptual amelioration

The modern concept of ‘family’ in the United States recognizes many types of social groups as families, a conceptual shift which was largely helped along by advancements in assisted reproductive technologies enabling those formerly unable to biologically reproduce to have children, as well as by soc...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Lam, Ryan Xia-Hui (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Wiley-Blackwell 2024
In: Bioethics
Year: 2024, Volume: 38, Issue: 7, Pages: 650-658
IxTheo Classification:NBE Anthropology
NCJ Ethics of science
Further subjects:B nuclear family
B bionormativity
B Traditional Family
B Family
B alternative family
B conceptual amelioration
B conceptual engineering
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Summary:The modern concept of ‘family’ in the United States recognizes many types of social groups as families, a conceptual shift which was largely helped along by advancements in assisted reproductive technologies enabling those formerly unable to biologically reproduce to have children, as well as by social movements aimed at garnering recognition for these emergent nonbiologically related social groups spearheaded by LGBTQ+ and adoption activists. That these social groups are now recognized as types of families is unquestionably an improvement to the concept, though there are still defects in the concept that preclude these nonnuclear families from achieving the same social–ontological status as nuclear families. Drawing from the nascent philosophical field of conceptual engineering, I analyze our current conception of ‘family’ and argue that it is tacitly exclusionary of nonnuclear families, which can be attributed to a combination of widespread genetic essentialism and linguistic practices that unduly cast the nuclear family as a more desirable type of family by emphasizing genetic relatedness as a valuable quality. I then offer proposals to ameliorate these defects, such as educational interventions to reduce genetic essentialism and the introduction of new terminology that does not connote one type of family as being superior to another. In doing so, my hope is to reveal and begin to resolve an overlooked defect in the concept of ‘family’ in order to bolster the movement to view all families as equal.
ISSN:1467-8519
Contains:Enthalten in: Bioethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/bioe.13333