Family evolution and contemporary social transformations

In the first place, this paper intends to analyze the kind of relationships existing inside the family. In order to do that, the author makes an effort to reconsider its historical forming process applying the classical anthropological texts. At this stage, the analysis proposes two different types of relationships between human beings, the primal, which arose from the most elementary feelings of love, protection, accompaniment, and the strictly social, risen from the needs of cooperation and collective work. The family is the expression of both kinds of relationships. In the second place, this work analyzes the nuclear family as a result of a historical process associated to the development of capital and the social conditions that make possible its consolidation. And in the third place, the author proposes the discussion on the crisis of the nuclear family under the perspective of the contemporary global transformation of the accumulation of capital. As a conclusion: some reflections on the perspectives that these transformations offer to the role of the family.