May 15 is celebrated as the International Day of the Family. This day highlights the importance of families.

It aims at fostering equality, bringing about a fuller sharing of domestic responsibilities and employment opportunities. Family constitutes the basic unit of society.

What is a family? According to Murdock, an anthropologist, a family is a group characterized by common residence, economic cooperation and reproduction. It includes adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain a socially approved sexual relationship, and one or more of their children of their own or adopted by the sexually cohabiting adults. Some inspirational thoughts: No matter what you've done for yourself or for humanity, if you can't look back on having given love and attention to your own family, what have you really accomplished? Elbert Hubbard quotes (American editor, publisher and writer, 1856-1915)

All well-regulated families set apart an hour every morning for tea and bread and butter Joseph Addison quotes (English Essayist, Poet, Dramatist and Statesman, 1672-1719)

You don't really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around - and why his parents will always wave back. William D. Tammeus quotes

No man on his death bed ever looked up into the eyes of his family and friends and said, "I wish I'd spent more time at the office Anonymous

Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we've put it in an impossible situation. ~Margaret Mead The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together. ~Erma Bombeck

Family quarrels have a total bitterness unmatched by others. Yet it sometimes happens that they also have a kind of tang, a pleasantness beneath the unpleasantness, based on the tacit understanding that this is not for keeps; that any limb you climb out on will still be there later for you to climb back. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

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