A Seventh Group has Visited the Elephant.

This paper presents the authors' reply to commentaries on their article The Family Realm: Theoretical Contributions for Understanding Its Uniqueness. We believe that life within the family realm is a unique part of the human experience and that having a concept that helps us recognize and articulate this will be a helpful addition to the field. The main purpose of our paper was to demonstrate that when our perspective starts by focusing on familial phenomena we see things differently than when our perspective starts from one of the older disciplines. A family realm perspective helps us realize that some family phenomena are more fundamental than the social and historical factors that influence, shape and mold families. Thus far, we have not entirely ascertained which aspects of the family realm are inherent and which are developed by cultural and social conditions. It is only in the family realm that people are connected through generations. The other characteristics of the family realm that we identify in our essay are relatively unique to this sphere. This means that relationship permanence, concern for the total person, emotionality and so on, exist in nonfamily realms but they are experienced in very differently ways in the family part of life.