ABSTRACT
In the 1920s, Ernest Watson Burgess, a leading representative of the Chicago School and one early family sociologist, characterized the great changes that families experienced during his life time by a new relational model. In relation to this diversity of family structures, there is an ongoing debate among sociologists, especially in North America, regarding the use of the plural or the singular concerning the family realm. The functions of support and social integration filled by families according to Burgess and Parsons and Bales, are still central in contemporary societies. The nuclear family was defined by anthropologist Peter Murdock as a residence unit constituted by a married heterosexual couples and its biological and socially dependent offspring. Based on a series of empirical quantitative studies, it reveals the importance of these interdependencies for a variety of issues.
