ABSTRACT
The concept of family has changed in the course of history, as has its value, the sentiment that bonds members of the family and its importance for the individual. At the beginning of the 1960s Ariès wrote:
It was long held that the family constituted the ancient foundation of our society, and that beginning with the 18th century the progress of liberal individualism had loosened and weakened it. Its history in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries was taken to be the history of deterioration: the proliferation of divorces and the loss of the authority of the husband and father were taken to be indications of its decline. In considering modern demographic phenomena, however, I have been led to the exact opposite conclusion. It seems to me … that in our industrial societies the family plays a critical role, and that perhaps it has never influenced the human condition in so decisive a manner. (Ariès, 1986, p. 6)
