Journal of religion and health
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Engendering family life is a spiritual process (theosis) based on human ethological constants of gender difference and generational turnover. Recent studies on ethnicity suggest that such a process retrieves a primordial sense of the human species as a whole, "humankind." Families, especially in this broad sense, link together the living and the dead and, at their best, morally empower individuals who link their destinies to such a vision of creation and human health. Reference is made to work on human strengths and speciation by Erik Erikson and to that on maternal thinking by Sara Ruddick. A political program by which an ideology of "familism" can be made is offered.