espanolEl tema de la familia ha sido una constante de reflexion, abordada desde diversas disciplinas, llegando a coincidir en que los vinculos de afectividad que se generan en su interior consolidan las estructuras de regulacion emocional de las personas, pasando a convertirse en necesarios e irremplazables pues, en definitiva representan el bienestar de una sociedad. Se realizo un estudio, descriptivo, cuantitativo, transversal mediante la aplicacion de un cuestionario a 550 adolescentes escolarizados (292 mujeres y 258 hombres) de tres colegios oficiales de Bogota. El objetivo de este estudio fue identificar el sentido que tienen de familia, los adolescentes de instituciones educativas distritales de la ciudad de Bogota, encontrando que la composicion familiar de mayor peso porcentual es la nuclear completa con un 59%. El 42% la considera la familia como el lugar de expresion del afecto, el 71% tiene entre sus planes conformar una familia y el 58% considera el matrimonio como base de la familia. Asi, la familia continua siendo el eje fundamental en el proceso de desarrollo de los adolescentes y es esta y los amigos los principales grupos de referencia donde se establecen los vinculos de afecto mas importantes. EnglishViews about family have been a continuous reflection to be addressed from several disciplines, which have argued that ties of affection are generated from familiar contexts, so that it allowed that significant structures can be con-solidated to control emotions of human beings; in other words the above mentioned structures have become as well basic as irreplaceable by illustrating the welfare of society. A descriptive, quantitative and interdisciplinary study was carried out in order to survey five hundred fifty thousand students, two hundred ninety two women and two hundred fifty eight men, from three public institu-tions in Bogota. The aim of this study was to identify their views about family; the obtained results have showed that structured nuclear families presented the largest percentage from this research, 59%, on other hand, 42% of the mentioned students regarded the family as a place where people can find significant expressions of affec-tions, then 71%percent of them have arranged to build a family meanwhile 58% of the surveyed people have con-sidered that marriages are based on the family, therefore, the group of family has been considered as a significant element that will contribute to an enabling environment for adolescents development as well friends put forwards the importance role of family and friendship as essential groups to establish strongest affectionate bonds.