ABSTRACT
For many years social scientists attributed the changes in the structure and functions of the family to the larger economic and social transformations occurring with the transition from traditional society to the complex society of the modern age. The structural-functional paradigm was supported by the expansion of the welfare state just after the Second World War. A common point of reference for the development of our analysis can be singled out in the economic-social crisis which, since the beginning of the mid-seventies, has affected all European countries. The attention given to the concrete aspects of everyday life is related to a more general interest in the subject of the social division of the responsibilities among the various institutions competing to satisfy the needs of individuals, families and social groups. The adaptation of this theoretical apparatus to the characteristics of the new social reality implicitly marks the abandonment of the traditional paradigm of knowledge.
