Families within themselves are communities, and the people you associate with. Families tend to do things together, such as meals or go to events together, but this is not always the case. They can disagree with each other, build each other up, become divided, all things that communities can also do. Families definitely have in-group and out-group bias. A child might be closer to one parent and favor their side, siblings might choose each other rather than parents, which all create biases within families, but can still stay as a unit. Empathy plays a huge role within families. If someone in your family makes a mistake or has something bad happen to them, most family members show them support and unconditional love. That being said this is not true for all families who are blood related, many people tend to pick the people they consider their family so they can have unconditional love and support.
Communities in general are more focused on the group rather than the individual, but I believe that families have the capacity to do both. A small example is chores, each person can take a task to help the household be clean as a unit, for the better of the family. Some people start working at a young age to help support their family financially, all of which is not based on the individual. In addition to this families can also stress the importance of the individual, such as going to watch their sports games or helping on an essay that they have to turn in, this is all for the individual and their own accomplishments. What is so unique about families is that the individuals make up the community, and the dynamic would be very different if one person were missing. Although these factors are not true for all family units, this can be accurate towards many, because each family is different, and embraces all of the members that make up that community.
Alyse Covington 