ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the nature and career of the modern family. It explores the factors that endowed the nuclear family with its modern civilization-building ability. The historical evidence strongly suggests that the structure and consciousness of the nuclear family had prepared the stage for the great transformation and its inner dynamics provided the engine for its expansion and progress. Without the social foundation provided by the nuclear family, the modern world could not have come into existence. The affinity between the injunctions and ideals of the Protestant ethic and the norms and values of the nuclear family created a potent social force when the Industrial Revolution made new opportunities available. When one looks at the growing interplay between the different spheres of social life—the economic, political, structural, cultural, and ethical—it becomes evident once more that the conventional family continued to play the same pivotal role.
