ABSTRACT
Literature abounds on the incipient demise of the family in advanced industrial societies, but children continue to be born and raised by adult members of these societies. Somehow, then, the institution’s function is fulfilled; families continue to exist. Why the pessimism? Clearly, the form families have taken and the constellation of values and roles centered on biosocial reproduction have undergone drastic transformation. The social consensus on what families are and ought to be, so strong in the 1950s and before, has weakened. If a stability of expectations around the social norms and roles relevant to any societal function is the hallmark of its institutionalization, then one can advance the view that the family as the institution concerned with the biosocial reproduction of society is in a state of flux. The reasons for this situation are multiple and complex. Among them are the changes in the social and economic position of women occasioned by the increase in women’s level of education and employment and the liberalization of the laws on marriage and divorce, which have given women more freedom of choice in matrimonial and reproductive matters. But other cultural and demographic trends have contributed to the weakening of the social consensus on the values and norms sustaining family roles and prerogatives. My purpose here is to examine the impact of these wider social changes on the familial institution: to treat not only their effects on social understandings of what families are supposed to be but also on the understanding by real families and their members of socially acceptable familial roles and of the norms guiding their relationships and their lives as collectivities.
