What is a family?

Family is the name for a gathering of people around birthright, belief, mission, and a common story. 

Ideally all of these would be contained in the concept of the family but it is not always so.

The role of the family has everything to do with identity and identification.  Your family is who you have gathered together with, either by nature or by choice (a lot of the time it is both), and it is where you discover who you are and the role you play in life.  It has to do with who takes care of you, who provides for you, who believes the same things about life as you, and who tells the same stories as you.