The birth of the family, as institution, is lost in the mists of time but - in our opinion - its unaltered fundamentality is based right on the ability to change, adapting creatively and constructively with respect to its own era and historical, social and cultural belonging. Marked, for better or for worse, by the transformations of its time, it is still called today to question itself to be the foundation of a society, in various ways defined as "liquid" (Bauman), "risk" (Beck), "fragile bonds" (Sennett).
If we think, as Donati stated, that "the family is the relational order of reality, made up of individuals but above all of relationships", pedagogically it is then worth returning to reflect on the idea of "the family as a source of relational goods (and evils) for itself and for the community". Without forgetting the classic studies of the seventies, such as those of Horkheimer and Cooper, who had denounced the "disappearance" and "death" of the family but, at the same time, capitalizing on its ability to be able to cross the troubles of the crisis while maintaining its generative meaning, first of all, of affections, emotions, feelings, relationships in turn the foundation of thoughts,  of ideas, of values.