ABSTRACT
The diametrically opposed view – represented by the newer ‘radical’ critics – is that, on the contrary, these very problems are, in fact, caused by the strength of the socially isolated, over-privatized nuclear family itself, and the resistant obstinacy and obduracy of its hold in a rapidly changing world. The family is the source of the trouble. It is the very intensity of life within the small modern family which causes mental stress, mental illness, conflict and violence, sexual repression, disorder, abnormality, and outbreaks of violent rebellion against the conventional order of society. The old anxieties, though now perhaps in more complicated form, continue; but new concerns also arise in that – whatever the peoples do to reform matters – the problems seem to remain, and even worsen. The central and very evident concern felt by all critics for conditions and qualities of the family on the one hand, and those of society on the other, are therefore well founded.
