ABSTRACT
This volume describes some of the trends characterizing the family of the 20th century as well as draws implications for the next millennium. This century has been characterized by an increasingly technological and global transnational society, transcending the boundaries of the traditional nuclear family and demanding increasing instrumental and emotional investment in the work sphere. Relatedly, changing gender roles, decreased marriage and fertility rates, increased divorce rates, ambiguity in parental roles, “hightech” reproductive methods, family violence, and other evolving phenomena have resulted in a breakdown in the traditional family infrastructure which served as a basis for the education, nurturance, and identity of its members. Individualism, autonomy, and the pursuit of career-related status may usurp traditional family values such as community, belonging, and family-related status as society “progresses” along the inevitable pathways of increasing modernization.
