Abstract:

Families are defined as special variants of intimate relationship systems for which the maintenance of boundaries, privacy, closeness, and permanence are crucial, albeit empirically more or less variable, defining elements. It takes into account the dynamic nature of the co-developing individual-family unit by explicitly considering the possibility that a person might be part of a series of quite different intimate relationship system across his or her life course. There is ample evidence that people living in a long-term relationship are, on average, physically and psychologically healthier than single, divorced, or widowed person. In some cases the family itself may became a health risk. In Western societies this is especially true for children and women, increasingly also for older family members, whose personal integrity can be violated by physical maltreatment and sexual abuse. The expression and definition of domestic violence is different from country to country; the same holds true for corresponding laws, criminal statistics, and estimated numbers of unknown cases. The number of possible relationship within a family increases exponentially with the number of individual family members.

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