ABSTRACT
I N WESTERN INDUSTRIAL societies of the 1950s and 1960s, paeanswere being sung to the family. In West Germany it was enshrined in theConstitution and placed under special state protection; it was the recognized model for everyday life, and the dominant sociological theory regarded it as essential to a functioning state and society. But then came the student and women's movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s, with their show of resistance to the traditional structures. The family was exposed as ideology and prison, as site of everyday violence and repression. But on the opposite side, others appeared in the arena 4in defence of the bourgeois family' (Berger and Berger, 1984) or rediscovered it as a 'haven in a heartless world' (Lasch, 1977). A 'war over the family' broke out (Berger and Berger, 1983). Suddenly it was no longer even clear who or what constituted the family. Which types of relationship should be described as a family and which should not? Which are normal, which deviant? Which ought to be encouraged by the state? Which should receive financial support?
