family unit

1. 1.

   primary social group; parents and children

   “he wanted to have a good job before starting a family”

   Synonymsfamily

   Broaderkin

   NarrowercouplemarriageBronte sistersMarx Brothers

Questions about family unit

What does family unit mean?

family unit means "primary social group; parents and children".

What is another word for family unit?

Close synonyms include family. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is family unit a common word?

family unit is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.