The family as a corporate entity

Professor Sol Tax, who is now retired from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, once proposed that the extended family be given legal status as an entity. He developed the idea in a provocative paper which deserves renewed attention, and from which the following adapted extracts are taken:

'The extended family could be given legal status as an entity'

We have watched what many have thought was the disintegration of the family, as its traditional functions have been pre-empted by other social institutions in the industrialising world; as mobility has increased; and with increasingly single-standard sex freedom. Though we value families in political oratory, government does not recognise the existence of the family, with rare exceptions. Nothing except special interest groups now stand between the whole society on one side and our individual identification number on the other.

'To pool resources over some generations, perhaps including health and life insurance, pensions and social security'

My proposal is to give legal status to extended families who want it, and to make this advantageous. A new variant of corporate form, eg, partnerships, cooperatives, or small (non-profit?) corporations would be chartered for families which find it advantageous (under such a charter) to pool resources over some generations, perhaps including health and life insurance, pensions and social security.

'The family' as a voluntary corporate group might begin with the three generations but extend indefinitely horizontally and vertically, with new members enlisted by marriages (involving choice of family or a half-share in each) and subsequent births. The law would of course provide means for individuals to leave the corporate group, and for the corporate group to be dissolved.

The incorporation of the family would be functional to the degree that it could take advantage of other institutions in the private and public sectors of our society that provide advantages to groups, and which limit liability in co-operative endeavours. But the value of such a new institution would be greatly enhanced if the administration of social services now going to individuals would alternatively and advantageously be offered them to encourage the growth and spread of the new institution as a matter of public policy. This contrasts with a situation in which most social services tend to replace rather than to utilise family ties.

Some further points:

- Kinship can include adoption; and a chartered family as a whole can adopt a person.

- A single household of husband-wife-children is not chartered as a family, at least not until one or more of the children marry.

- Income tax liability, and such contracted benefits as for retirement and social security might be pooled for chartered families.
- In its subsequent evolution, a family might join larger family-type groups, so that members of an endogamous religious sect, or a community of American Indians, might make themselves legally a single family.

Professor Sol Tax, Apt 307, 1700 East 56th Street, Chicago 60637, USA (tel 312 363 0990).

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