ABSTRACT
The study of family life is a complicated affair. Those who professionally study family behavior quickly realize that the intricacies of daily family living are far more difficult to understand than one would first imagine. We also realize that to better understand family life it is essential to appreciate the traditions of learning shaped by many scholars in recent decades. Some great minds have struggled with questions like: why do some families endure and others dissolve; why do some families excel at collecting and using resources wisely and others do rather poorly; and why do some families have chronic and destructive violence as a feature of their daily life and others are relatively violence free. To begin to understand these and many other complicated family processes, family scholars often initiate their journey of learning by considering several theoretical frameworks that have guided family research since the beginning of the family science discipline.
