Is blood thicker (or heavier) than water - or, put another way, "does
             blood run deeper than love'" In most cases, family members will always
             back other family members in a dispute with mere friends or outsiders. One
             example of how universal the sanctity of family is: the moral crime of
             incest. It's an anthropologically provable fact, that the one most
             universally observed (enforced) taboo within all of the world's known
             societies is incest. Having sex with a member of one's nuclear family is
             taboo, always; but on the other hand, having sex with the neighbor's wife
             or with the teacher of one's high school daughter, while immoral, repugnant
             and scandalous, is not a punishable as a horrific taboo against society.
             According to Professor Brian Schwimmer, Department of Anthropology at
             the University of Manitoba, "Kinship is the most basic principle of
             organizing individuals into social groups, roles, and categories." And
             although family structures "have been weakened by the dominance of the
             market economy and the provision of state organized social services,"
             Schwimmer continues, "the nuclear family household is still the fundamental
             institution responsible for rearing children and organizing consumption."
             And so, with that definition of "kinship," i.e., family, it is true
             that not every family member will stick up for a fellow family member when
             it comes to a disagreement with an outsider - a friend or acquaintance.
             But for the most part, though brothers and sisters may fight - literally
             and figuratively - they nearly always stick up for each other when the
             chips are down, and when one is threatened by an outside force.
             Another example of blood running deeper than love (or water!): when,
             after several years of being divorced, mom meets a new man and marries him,
             the re-molded, newly-arranged family may not appeal to the daughters; they
             may not only dislike th...