ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the human rights paradigm to frame questions and a discussion about the contemporary American family. It states that the family is not only an appropriate area for study but also in desperate need of attention by human rights scholars. The chapter focuses on the American family as a site for interrogation by the human rights paradigm. Traditional sociological methods help to address the questions in terms of trends and predictions, when data are collected primarily via large-scale surveys, there are limits to the analysis that can be performed through the lens provided by the human rights paradigm. Thus, it states that scholars of the human rights paradigm are obligated to turn their attention to family sociology issues. It encourages family sociologists to see the ways in which the human rights paradigm would transform the field and, in turn, challenges human rights scholars to consider how their work could impact family sociology.
