Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
nuclear family \nuclear family\ n. A family consisting of parents and their children and grandparents of a marital partner.
Wiktionary
n. A family unit consisting of two parents (a mother and a father) and their children.
WordNet
n. a family consisting of parents and their children and grandparents of a marital partner [syn: conjugal family]
Wikipedia
A nuclear family or elementary family is a family group consisting of a pair of adults and their children. It is in contrast to a single-parent family, to the larger extended family, and to a family with more than two parents. Nuclear families typically centre on a married couple; the nuclear family may have any number of children. There are differences in definition among observers; some definitions allow only biological children that are full-blood siblings, but others allow for a stepparent and any mix of dependent children including stepchildren and adopted children.
Family structures of one married couple and their children were present in Western Europe and New England in the 17th century, influenced by church and theocratic governments. With the emergence of proto-industrialization and early capitalism, the nuclear family became a financially viable social unit. The term nuclear family first appeared in the early twentieth century. Alternative definitions have evolved to include family units headed by same-sex parents and perhaps additional adult relatives who take on a cohabiting parental role; in the latter case, it also receives the name of conjugal family.
The concept that a narrowly defined nuclear family is central to stability in modern society has been promoted by familialists who are social conservatives in the United States, and has been challenged as historically and sociologically inadequate to describe the complexity of actual family relations.
As a fertility factor, single nuclear family households generally have a higher number of children than co-operative living arrangements according to studies both from the Western world and India.
Usage examples of "nuclear family".
I suggested that the nuclear family being the prime shaper of neurotic personality structures, there were certain ways in which it might, in an ideal society, be modified.
But the rest of it, the luxurious landscapes, meandering freshwater lakes, the giant windows with their fans of mechanically swiveled mirrors, Caribbean climates and nuclear family neighborhoods of open-plan Italian villas—.
As a result of this widespread sharing, three-quarters of all the food that an Ache consumes is acquired by someone outside his or her nuclear family.
This is not the time and place for the nuclear family and sexual fidelity.
Like communalism and animism, non-nuclear family structures provide a poor defense against the corrosive effects of cities, where African culture is being redefined as deforestation tied to overpopulation drives peasants out of the countryside.