The Filipino Family Third Edition

The study of the family is significant because of its unique and important characteristics. The family is universal. Its influence on personality and character is pervasive because it is a very close and intimate group, and because the individual’s earliest and longest experiences in living take place in the family setting. The family serves as the link between the individual and society, providing continuity to social life and acting as a major agent in the transmission of culture.

This book is designed to be a comprehensive text on the sociology of the family as applied to the Philippine setting. It attempts to cover all aspects of the family: its structure, functions, and changes. It describes the patterns of social interaction among family members, as well as the relationship of the family with other social groupings and with society as a whole. Both traditional and changing patterns drawn from a more general review of universal family structures and relationships as well as data particular to the Filipino family are presented in terms of basic sociological concepts and principles.

About the Author

Professor Belen Tan-Gatue Medina obtained her BA (cum laude) and MA from the University of the Philippines where she majored in Sociology, after which she took postgraduate courses in sociology/anthropology and Southeast Asian studies at Cornell University as a Fulbright/Smith-Mundt scholar. She trained in the Sociology of Development at Delhi University as a UNESCO Fellow, and obtained a Certificate in Social Research for Developing Societies (With Merit) at the University of London. With a Ford/Rockefeller grant, she visited the University of California at Los Angeles and Irvine, Wright State University, University of Cincinnati, and Miami University for enrichment studies in the sociology of the family. She also visited the Chulalongkorn and Thammasat Universities, Rangoon University, the University of Malaya, the University of Singapore, and the University of Indonesia on an Asia Foundation grant for Southeast Asian studies.

Professor Medina taught for more than fifty years at the Department of Sociology of the University of the Philippines in Diliman, where she served as chairperson twice. She is the recognized expert on the Filipino family and has published many articles and books on this topic. She has read papers at sociological conferences in the Philippines and abroad. Professor Medina is an elected lifetime member of the Phi Kappa Phi International Honor Society and the Pi Gamma Mu International Honor Society in Social Sciences.