ABSTRACT
This chapter explores family patterns in American society that have been affected by both a structural and a cultural lag resulting from the social and cultural construction of the role of the family by historical perception. It examines changes in the family in relation to cultural and structural lags in the following areas: the organization and role of the household; interdependence among kin; privacy and sentimentality in family relations and the family's relationship to the community; women's work and the ideology of domesticity; and the timing of life transitions. A series of myths about family life in the past cloud popular understanding of contemporary problems. According to these myths, three generations lived together happily in the same household, families were intimate and close-knit units, and single-parent households rarely existed. Household members engaged in direct exchanges across neighborhoods, as well as over wide geographic regions.
