ABSTRACT
The family in American history has always been at the center of social life and has served to refract many social concerns. Because it has played such an important role in organizing individual lives and the larger social order, it is not surprising that there is such concern about its present and future status and such nostalgia for its past. The model of the family as a protected haven from the outside world, with a woman as guardian of the domestic sphere and a man as sole breadwinner, autonomous yet embedded in a network of mutually supportive kin, epitomizes the symbol of the traditional American family. It is a family model that no longer easily fits the contours of the social and economic world of the late twentieth century. Increased longevity, the massive movement of women into the labor force, and new values about autonomy and independence have changed the old rules in important and often unpredictable ways.
