“Family is a unit consisting of a mother, father and their two children”. This…

Concept: A definition of a social institution like family must capture its essential general feature, not describe one particular structural instance. Presenting only one household composition (a specific number of parents and children) as though it were the definition commits the error of defining a general category by a single example, and it wrongly excludes other recognized family structures such as single-parent, joint/extended, childless, or blended families.

Application: The given statement describes family as “a unit consisting of a mother, father and their two children” — one specific composition — as if this were the definition of family itself. Sociology and teaching-aptitude syllabi recognize many other family structures, so treating this one composition as definitional is incorrect; the flaw is precisely that family cannot be classified as being of only one kind.

Cross-check — why the other readings of the statement do not hold:

• Requiring the two children to be specified as biological does not fix the statement — it still ties family to one fixed composition and only adds a further restrictive detail.

• Calling the composition an ‘ideal’ size argues from a size preference, which is not the criterion that decides whether a description functions as a valid general definition.

• Calling the composition typical of ‘all Indian families’ argues from regional prevalence, which likewise does not establish that the description is definitionally correct.

Result: Because the statement narrows family to one household composition when many differently structured families are equally valid, the statement is incorrect for exactly the reason that family includes many kinds and cannot be classified as being of only one kind.