Word.ws English Dictionary

familialism

familialism noun: an ideology that prioritizes the family by advocating a welfare system that assumes that households, not the state, take responsibility for the care of their members.

Noun

familialism (usually uncountable, plural familialisms)

  1. (usually) An ideology that prioritizes the family by advocating a welfare system that assumes that households, not the state, take responsibility for the care of their members.
    • However, I chose to refer to this model as “implicit maternalism” instead of “supported familialism” to emphasize the implicit social and political understanding that mothers instead of fathers (or “families”) perform the bulk of care work.2016 September 15, Sophie Mathieu, “From the Defamilialization to the “Demotherization” of Care Work”, in Social Politics, volume 23, number 4, →DOI, page 582
  2. (usually) A cultural value that emphasizes the importance of close family relationships, such as prioritizing the needs of the family higher than that of individuals.
    • First, Latinas were expected to have higher familialism than European Americans.2008, Belinda Campos, Christine Dunkel Schetter, Cleopatra M. Abdou, Calvin J. Hobel, Laura M. Glynn, Curt A. Sandman, “Familialism, Social Support, and Stress: Positive Implications for Pregnant...
    Synonyms:
    familism

Synonyms of familialism

Forms of familialism

pluralfamilialisms

Questions about familialism

What does familialism mean?
Familialism means an ideology that prioritizes the family by advocating a welfare system that assumes that households, not the state, take responsibility for the care of their members.
What part of speech is familialism?
Familialism is a noun.
What is the plural of familialism?
The plural of familialism is familialisms.

Words near familialism in the dictionary

  1. familial
  2. familial British dementia
  3. familial DNA
  4. familial Mediterranean fever
  5. familial Mediterranean fevers
  6. familialism
  7. familialisms
  8. familiality
  9. familialize
  10. familialized
  11. familializes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: familialism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “familialism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/familialism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.