ABSTRACT
The families that we have described—the Clarks, Lansons, Littletons, Newbolds, and Steeles—are in a sense “typical” American families. They are typical in that the major social, cultural, and psychological circumstances which influence their family interaction and activities are shared by many American families. Our five families have worked out their own adaptations to the gratifications and stresses of family life in a fashion that is generally acceptable to the communities in which they live. While they are unique in the sense that all families develop unique interactional patterns, they are not deviant or, we believe, statistically unusual. They have been presented to illustrate something of the complexity and variety of the solutions that nuclear family groups develop in their attack upon several central issues of family living.
