ABSTRACT
The concept of family values has been taken up by politicians in relation to the effect on society of the perceived demise of the traditional family. In the academic and health fields, anthropologists, family therapists, sociologists and psychiatrists have been concerned to widen the concept of ‘the patient’ to include the family and, where relevant the wider community. A general problem in analysing data on families is the sheer diversity of people’s living arrangements. When speak of a ‘household’ or ‘the family’ the implication is of a unit of social organisation which is in some way distinctive. Households are made of family units. As defined in the 1991 census nuclear families consist of a couple (married or cohabiting) with or without never-married children, or a lone parent with never-married children. Grandparents with never-married children constitute a nuclear family even if there is a ‘missing middle generation’.
