Family in Transition: Rethinking Marriage, Sexuality, Childrearing, and Family Organization

Abstract

America has undergone a psychological revolution in the past 2 decades. 20 years ago people defined their satisfactions and problems in terms of how well they lived up to traditional work and family roles; today people have become more introspective more attentive to inner experience. Because of the continuing stream of new family scholarship as well as shifts in public attitudes toward the family each edition of this book is different from the previous one. Part of the confusion surrounding the current status of the family arises from the fact that the family is an inherently problematic area of study; there are few if any self-evident facts even statistical ones. Although anthropologists have tried to come up with a single definition of family that would hold across time and place they generally have concluded that doing so is not useful. Through reproduction and socialization the family presumably guarantees the continuation of society through time. Traditionally theories of socialization have taken either of 2 perspectives: 1) social molding--the child is likened to a blank slate or lump of clay waiting to be shaped by the environment; and 2) animal taming--the infant is a wild beast whose antisocial instincts need to be tamed by parents. Although the belief that early family experience is the most powerful influence in a childs life is widely shared by social scientists and the public it is not well supported by evidence and theory. Many of the difficulties besetting family life today are the consequences of some very positive changes: the decline of infant mortality and death rates in general the fact that people are living longer the use of birth control the spread of mass education and the increasing control of the individual over basic life decisions. Family life is bound up with the social economic and ideological circumstances of particular times and places.