ABSTRACT
Working toward the goal entails examining not only the assumptions that the general public makes about families, but also what family researchers take for granted in their more specialized approach to families: that is, what assumptions family researchers make about their points of departure in creating more findings about families. Even though family researchers frequently pay lip service to the idea that families are important social groups, they may at the same time essentially ignore many aspects of the real power families have in their research projects. Using future family research to solve social problems further suggests that families may hold important clues about how to formulate effective, preventive family strategies that benefit widely diverse populations. Family projection, multigenerational transmission, emotional cutoff, and emotional process in society are also built on repeated behavior patterns, which suggest at least some degree of predictability.
