Marriage and the Family in Economic Theory and Policy (Special Issue: The Nature of Marriage and Its Various Aspects‪)‬

INTRODUCTION Human beings are social by nature; the most basic manifestation of this sociability is the family. (1) In his article, Alfonso Cardinal Lopez Trujillo underlines the reality that man is a social being who is naturally oriented toward the family--family based on the natural unit of marriage. Marriage, the union of a man and a woman, generates children. Marriage in itself establishes the beginning of the family community. (2) A community is something radically different from considering "family members separately" (3) or as a sum of isolated individuals living together by simple chance or biological reasons. Rather, a community is "a social subject," (4) "a unit into which all the members of the family are integrated." (5) It follows from this view that an understanding of either marriage or the family that converts a relationship between persons into an exchange of "things" or "objects" is not fitting to them. A person normally comes into the world within a family, and it is there where he develops, grows, and matures into an adult capable of being a productive member of society. (6)