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In this paper the conventional treatment of family harmony and conflict, in a consensus-equilibrium framework, is discussed and judged inadequate. Instead a view of the family as a system in conflict is suggested as an alternative and more fruitful theoretical approach. The major premises underlying such a frame of reference are briefly outlined. Its theoretical implications for the study of the family are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses some of the difficulties relating to administration and data interpretation when researchers employ parental attitude questionnaires with culturally disadvantaged families. Making use of their own experience with the Parental Attitude Research Instrument and a review of the literature, the authors examine problems of language complexity and differences in class and race between interviewers and respondents. The meaning of the acquiescence response set for data interpretation is looked at in detail. An item analysis of data collected on the Parental Attitude Research Instrument suggests a new, shorter test which can be used to identify culturally deprived mothers to measure attitude change within this group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of family change during industrialization has been hindered by the lack of adequate historical data. This paper attempts to overcome this obstacle by further refining Coale-Burch measures that can be used with existing census data, It shows the validity of these measures for Prance, uses them to analyze the effects of land holding, agriculture, illiteracy, and dispersed settlement on household complexity, and then analyzes the effects of household complexity an fertility, migration, suicide, divorce, religiosity, and care for the aged during the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative studies are defined as those which use ‘society’ or ‘culture’ as one of the variables in the analysis. The possibilities of conducting such studies through secondary analysis of existing data and through replications of already published one-society studies are illustrated. The central strategic requirement for maximizing the contribution of ‘secondary analysis’ and ‘comparative replication’ studies is the use of societies to represent differences in a theoretically important variable. Potential contributions of studies following such a design are described, with emphasis on the heuristic value of the cross-cultural inconsistencies which are typically uncovered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is designed to help bridge the gap between theoretical and empirical study of the family. It includes a model (Chart I) of familial development in diagrammatic form which raises questions of terminology and seeks semantic clarification. The general theory of selective needs (‘basic postulate’) is presented in Chart II wish extension to the concept of vicarious identification. A generalized model for testing hypotheses derived from the theory is presented and is illustrated by 20 derivative hypotheses. A method is suggested for testing a theory by predicting outcomes reported in case studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although money is available for family research, the dearth of significant projects, lack of adequate theoretical formulations, scarcity of personnel, weaknesses in basic designs, and procedural problems related to participation of subjects are seen as significant impediments to sound research on the family. A symposium held at the 1963 annual meeting of the National Council on Family Relations considered these problems at some length, and the panel members' suggestions for reducing these weaknesses form the content of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion on creative literature of the family as educators include humanities in their study to widen the interdisciplinary field of family study. Appropriately the main organizations of family study specialists have encouraged the presentation of papers and the publication of articles by those of their members who have tested in their classrooms various forms of creative literature. Articles based on the papers and the audience discussion are offered in the present issue.

The article discusses significant issues relate to the developments in family theory. The family theory, as defined by Reuben Hill, is a family phenomenon in all of its manifestations in behavior, overt or covert, associational or institutional, interactional or ideological. It was as well known as a family behavior as a dependent variable to be explained. It was also defined as a sociological theory with featured modifications to meet the special conditions of the universal social grouping. It further stated that training graduate students related to family life should be developed from time to time in order to be ready in case of a big lead forward in this matter.

The article attempts to present a conceptual framework to be used in the study and analysis of the relationship between families and societies. The author states that social scientists and policy makers respond to the unanticipated social problems brought by economic growth and industrialization, and require empirical data based on family sociological research in order to provide humanistic social action policies. Social indicators, approaches to familial systems, and linkages between family and society are discussed.

This article presents brief summaries of various articles related to marriage and family living included in the November 1, 1959 issue of the journal "Marriage and Family Living." One of them is a paper on "Problems in the Organization of Health and Human Relations (Sex Education) in the Public Schools." The educators who favor sex education in high school there is a divergence of opinion as to what it is or what it should be. One should conceive of social hygiene as a phase of character education, directed toward the whole child. Schools today must seek to develop normal and wholesome attitudes and ideals in relation to sex in life. The school is the most practical place for such a program for two reasons: practically all adolescent boys and girls are now enrolled in secondary schools. Another being a study on "The Vicious Cycle in Parent-Child Relationship Breakdown." The child's feeling of rejection generates a vicious cycle in the parent-child relationship. The child become anxious and insecure about whether or not his patents really love him. He then tests them, retaliates, rebels, or withdraws.

Serious research in marriage and family behavior has been under way since the turn of the century, and for the past 20 years this area has been near the top among sociological specialties. The field has burgeoned so luxuriantly that the very wealth of knowledge about it poses problems for those who would learn more. Researchers often begin projects with little awareness of the fund of generalizations related to their projects buried in inaccessible publications and manuscripts. If the available knowledge in the field is to be used most profitably, the time seems ripe for codification. As originally prepared for the "Family Life Research Conference" this paper was organized in two parts. Part one deals with a statement of objectives and progress and part two deals with gaps in the Knowledge of family Sociology from residential propinquity and mate selection studies. Only part one of the studies is presented in this issue of the journal. The universe of research projects to be covered by this inventory includes research projects reported in the literature during the period 1900 to 1956.

This article presents an insight study of family activities and relationships with special reference to research interview. The value of the family interview as a research instrument may be studied for two main reasons. First, the validity of measures of family activity, second, there is a suspicion that measures of attitudes and feelings are no more successful. For example, W.C. Becker and R.S. Krug, social researchers, demonstrated in a review article about the meager success so far obtained with the Parental Research Instrument. In spite of the many detailed criticisms that can be made, it is unjust to reject the interview as a research instrument. The initial development of the instrument was based on interviews with eighty married couples with children, where one parent had recently contacted a psychiatric service. Further thirty families were seen in order to heck certain aspects of the reliability of the measures. In this paper the author first discusses some of the reasons for various methods, and then presents the results of the study which investigated various aspects of the reliability and validity of the measures.

At the Milbank Memorial Fund's Annual Conference of 1952, a round table was devoted to the topic Exploration of Possibilities for New Studies of Factors Affecting Size of Family. In May, 1953, the Milbank Fund received a small grant from the Population Council Inc. to enable it to sponsor the development of plans for a new study in this field. It had already organized a work-session on preparation for new studies in fertility, which was held in June, 1953, at Princeton University. Shortly thereafter, a Steering Committee was organized to guide the work. In order to crystallize the work and at the same time to get the benefit of advice from people not on the committee, a round table session at the annual conference of the Milbank Memorial Fund was utilized for the presentation of a tentative proposal. The proposal presented at the Milbank Conference had included provision for studying: one, the factors affecting occurrence and timing of first births among newly-married couples and, second, the factors affecting the occurrence and timing of third births among couples who already had two children.

The article presents the author's comments on the article "The Study of Family Power Structure: A Review 1960-1969," by Constantina Safilios-Rothschild that was published in the November 1970 issue of the journal. The author says that Safilios-Rothschild rejected the resource theory of power without appropriate justification. He also disagrees with Safilios-Rothschild's characterization of the expermentalists' view of survey research.

This validity study compares four measures of family power (predicted power, process power, retrospective power, and authority) with a criterion measure of outcome power and none of these four variables proved valid. The interrelationship between all four measures was also compared. The only relationship found was that authority was related to both process power and retrospective power. While it was found that individuals were not able to report who makes decisions in their family, they were able to report what decisions were made. It is recommended that further conceptual and methodological attention be given to the concept of family power before further substantive studies are done using this concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An attempt is made to add conceptual strength to the conflict approach toward the study of family process. The concepts developed aim to provide analytical access to the nature of the family negotiating process. The focus thus is on the conceptions of bonding, aggression, appeasement, and threat. In addition the extramarital nature of familial and marital conflict management is discussed. Throughout the argument, findings from the field of ethology are used, heuristically, to aid in the attempts at problem formulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study of the family theory beginning from the year 1950. Harold Christensen says that the systematic study of the family has gone through three grand stages. The first included the latter half of the 19th century and called it Social Darwinism. The second encompassed the first half of the 20th century and was named Emerging Science. Finally, he designated 1950 as marking the beginning of the era of Systematic Theory Building. The present study may be viewed as a progress report on the second decade of the theory building era in the field.

The problem of structural conflict between occupational and conjugal roles among clergy couples is investigated. It is found that church-type couples resolve this conflict by allowing occupational role at certain times to go unfulfilled while they carry out expressive conjugal roles. Sect-type couples are not as apt to consider it legitimate to allow occupational roles to ‘cool off,’ and therefore, they tend to experience less expressive conjugal interaction than do church-type couples. It is suggested that further research into conflict resolution between other occupations and the family might investigate the presence or absence of orientations analogous to those within church and sect groups. For example, a ‘total-work’ orientation might result in behavior similar to that of sect clergy, whereas a ‘work-home’ outlook might result in the mode of resolution practiced by church clergy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information related to the life and works of family life educator, Ernest Glenn Osborne. He was born in Riverside, California on September 3, 1903 and died in New York City on December 8, 1963. He has been an associate in parent education in the Child Development Institute of Teachers College from 1932-1937. Due to his specialization in child development, Osborne has contributed a lot for the family life education in the U.S. He became the vice president of the Child Study Association of America and serves as an advisory editor of the "Parents' Magazine." Other information concerning Osborne's contribution on the family life education in the U.S. are discoursed in the paper.

This paper discusses the contribution of sociology to an undergraduate course on marriage and the family. First of all, the teacher can at least expose the students to material which will be calculated to help him in obtaining a perspective on marriage and the family in this and other cultures. The student is apt to be fairly well-insulated and prejudiced against an alien system such as polygamy and polyandry. The student will look upon these as queer and freakish types, rather than as human institutions functioning in their own societies in just as adequate a fashion as our own monogamy. For the average student, monogamy is a divine institution, somehow destined to last throughout eternity, and all other systems are doomed inherently to failure. Part of the function of sociologists is to help to give sympathetic insight into the reason for these various marital arrangements and family systems, so that the students may get away from the praise or blame attitude in his study of social forms. Another part of the business of sociology is to acquaint the student with the historical background of marital institutions. The present society cannot be understood save in relation to the past, any more than the behavior of an individual can be thoroughly understood save in relation to his childhood.

One of the more perplexing problems facing those engaged in selling and advertising consumer goods is which member of the family exerts the main influence upon the purchase of a particular good. From the sales and advertising standpoint, this is a problem of paramount importance. It is therefore not surprising that a number of studies have been made seeking to answer this problem. Unfortunately, the validity of these studies is as yet largely an unanswered question. The method by which these studies have been carried out--by soliciting the opinion of one family member regarding the purchasing influence possessed by himself and by other members of the family--and the scarcity of any rigorous tests of the validity of this method provides sufficient basis for receiving such studies with skepticism. The present study was designed in part to test the reliability of one type of purchasing influence information, namely that obtained by asking a family member to rate the relative influences of each member over the purchase of specific goods. Although the main objective of this study is methodological rather than substantive, a certain amount of data of the latter type were necessarily compiled in the course of the operation. On the basis of these data, an attempt is made in a later section of this article to arrive at some new estimates of the relative influence various family members exert on the purchase of specific items. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on the meeting sessions of the Committee on Marriage and Family Life in the Schools as part of the National Conference on Family Relations in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on April 7 and 8, 1946. Over fifty persons attended the morning session, with a registration for the day of seventy-five persons. Of this number over one-third asked to work on the committee throughout the coming year. Five projects were spontaneously set up for effective interchange of ideas, experiences, and other resources between the members of the committee. Questionnaires on materials found most helpful, and areas in which useful publications are lacking, will be compiled and the results will be mimeographed for those cooperating. Some of the papers given at the April 7, 1946 meetings of the committee are being mimeographed for immediate distribution at cost to those committee members who request them. Anyone doing a piece of work in the field of education for marriage and family life in the schools is invited to report it, with such details as may be useful to others attempting or considering similar undertakings. Selected material from such reports will be mimeographed for the committee. Those who have questions they would like other committee members, or outside resource persons, to help them answer are invited to pool them.

The article discusses about teaching a course on the family. The topic was introduced in the evening session group of sociology on an elective basis. On the basis of a sixteen weeks' semester, topics were chosen and time was apportioned. The introduction classes taught socio-cultural approach, differences of family type, theories of family change, the family in primitive and historic societies. Then followed the description of contemporary American family. It includes historical antecedents, colonial family, changing pattern correlated with change from rural to urban society, distinct family types and their functional significance, migratory, isolated, ethnic groups, problems of marriage and the family-population trends, vital statistics, illegitimacy, prostitution, poverty, eugenics, birth control, marriage, prediction of success or failure, changing sex moves and mental hygiene. The text chosen was J.K. Folsom's "The Family: Its Sociology and Social Psychiatry." In addition, about a dozen monographs were selected for classroom analysis in the course of the semester. Each student in consultation with the instructor wrote an essay on some topic related to marriage and the family that excited his particular interest. The best of these were summarized in class.

The article focuses on a workshop that promoted interdisciplinary cooperation on the teenage parent. There were hundreds of high schoolteachers, junior college instructors, counselors, school nurses, home advisors, social workers, ministers, and parent-teacher associations representatives who participated in the gathering. During the workshop, anthropologists, economists, psychiatrists, and sociologists have made it clear that there were many causes of teenage marriage and parenthood problems. Many of those present involved themselves in family life education, medical and nutritional care of teenagers. Meanwhile, social workers focused themselves with the rehabilitation of unwed mothers.

The article discusses the findings of a study in which 394 married couples were examined in order to determine the relationship between marital satisfaction and personal anomie. The findings support the Mertonian anomie theory, which dictates that there is an inverse relationship between the two variables. The authors discuss the sociological context of the study as well, and point out that emphasis on family sociology leads to less attention paid to personal isolation or social separation.

The article reviews family sociology literature which is based on demographic or population data to base certain conclusions. The author discusses three reasons for the growing interest in family sociology and demography; those reasons include the theory that family units utilize natural interpersonal communication, interest in the observable effects of family dynamics on population growth and trends, and the growing amount of sociological literature on the family life cycle. The author provides several sources for further research into family sociology.

In beginning the study of family finance, one class discussed how families make their money, how changing conditions influence the amount made and how it is spent, how family structure and status influence spending, and how values and standards concerning the use of money play a part in family planning. Each class divided itself into "family" groups. These units were "imaginary families" who had as their problem the selection and furnishing of a home. There were usually four students in each family group. Using classified ads from the daily paper and other reference materials, each "family group" studied the cost of renting or buying a home and after discussion decided whether they would rent or buy. The "family units" found that before they could have the things they wanted there would have to be some wise budgeting. They learned the approximate cost of utilities from their parents, friends, and neighbors. They studied advertisements from food stores to determine the cost of feeding the family. As the study progressed, the need to find more about savings, security, and social security arose. Through the study of social security, the class realized that to furnish reasonable security for a surviving wife and children insurance should be added.

The author comments on the "Journal of Marriage and the Family." He pleased the editorial staff that brings the attention of the first edition of the International Department of the Journal which is a special issue on family planning. He have asked Catherine Chilman and Bill Liu to join him as guest co-editors. He joins members of the Council in expressing congratulations to Roberta Frasier upon receiving the Osborne Award given to an individual for effective teaching in family relations.

The article reports on the developments of the journal. Its February 1, 1966 issue is dedicated to Meyer F. Nimkoff, an eminent scholar who has made significant contributions to the sociology of the family. Various career developments has occurred in the journal's editorial staff brought by its rotating responsibility. Roy Rodgers has replaced William Kenkel as Article in Brief editor after a year of his competent service. Alvin Schorr has resigned from his position as an associate editor after his two years of diligent service. Edward Devereux and Gerhard Neubeck are the new associate editors panel.

The article presents a list of recommendations for family life education. It recommends that married or pregnant high school students would either be given counseling or be referred to qualified agency. Legislative steps were initiated stating that under age couple would need physical examination, clergyman consultation or qualified marriage counselor before a licensed be issued. There should also be legislation that education on venereal disease be mandatory in the public schools.

A study of fertility and family planning in Maryland since 1965 revealed that a decrease of fertility cannot be simply associated with an increase in the number of women participating in family planning programs. Findings are analyzed for methodological limitations and implications for research are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the significance of home and family life education in public schools. Furthermore, vocational homemaking education is a cooperative program in which home and school work together and it is based on recognized needs, interests, and problems of adolescents and their families in relation to personal development. Moreover, the article assesses student abilities, attitudes, and problems among students in homemaking classes. Finally, findings also point out that the use of techniques which seem not to be the most promising ones and to weaknesses in evaluation.

This article discusses the implications of education on home and family life. There are facts and principles that are useful in guiding students in the solution of problems of everyday living in homes. Psychological studies of the behavior of those who lived in families from the nursery school years to the most elderly person now served by adult education are also appropriate to education for family life. Family life education is now becoming a recognized part of the responsibility of the schools from nursery schools to adult groups as well as in the graduate college.

This article presents a research on the home and family life education. There is a need for important research findings to be made more readily available thru publication, either as individual articles or as bulletins incorporating several related studies. Some interesting facts are evident from a review of research related to teaching in the field of home and family life education. During the past three years, research studies reported on the home and family, and on the various aspects of subject matter related to the home, have been so numerous that they would require entire chapters for their review alone.

This article presents the study of home and family life education in the U.S. The review of the research in the past three years has attempted to report and evaluate the most important published studies. Little attention has been given to consumer education as it relates to home and family life, however, since a recent publication of this subject matter summarized investigations in this area. An educational program, taking awareness of interests and needs at various age levels from preschool thru adulthood, may well accept as one of its major purposes that of aiding family members to assume their roles effectively both in the small family group and in the larger community group.

This article presents information regarding sociological research of the family. In the effort to establish categories for the description of the family one is at once confronted with the question of criteria for his selection. As far as the physical composition of the family is concerned, i.e., the number and kind of persons composing it, the task is fairly simple, but when one attempts to distinguish what are termed family structures, i.e., the established behavior patterns, the problem becomes more difficult. One at once becomes aware that these behavior patterns largely reflect the mores of his own culture and that he tends to describe those structural characteristics which seem to him to be essential to family life under his existing situation. Obviously certain of these characteristics are not essential for family life under other conditions. Some recent contributions to the study of family life illustrate this point very clearly. Thus N.L. Whetten, in outlining a research project on the Relationships between Family Organization and Consumption, seeks to compare the relation of consumption usages to a high or low degree of family "cohesion."

Although the family concepts that have been worked out in the U.S. Bureau of the Census in the past few years are admittedly quite complicated, the serious student should be well repaid by a careful study of them. Distinctions are made between such units as households, married couples, primary families, secondary families, subfamilies, and unrelated individuals person households and unattached lodgers and servants. A classification of married couples according to whether or not the husband is also the head of the household will yield statistics on doubling up. For the first time since 1930 statistics on families and on marital status will be published for counties and other small areas. Unless events in the political field prevent it much more valuable information on income will be obtained than from the 1940 census. The income statistics in 1940 were effectively limited to wage and salary income, whereas in 1950 total income will be gotten by asking about income from three general sources, of which wages and salaries are one. The 20-per cent sample of families for which income data will be collected should suffice for the publication of fairly reliable distributions and medians for counties, urban places, and census tracts. For persons income can be cross-classified by other economic, social, and demographic characteristics.

There appear to be two main approaches to the study of the family. One describes the family as a group having certain properties that differentiate it from other groups. It has a certain kind of structure; it has a set of internal relationships that can be specified by reference to the roles of the family members; and, as a group, it has certain legal, economic and status relations to other groups. Possibly not all sociologists would wish to identify themselves with this approach but systematically speaking this is a sociological way of ordering the social events represented by the family and its activities; it is so because it takes the group as the unit of its study. The other approach to the family, which is essentially psychological, takes the individual as the unit of its study. The family is conceived as creating a particular kind of social structure within which the individual is embedded, which acts upon him in diverse ways and on which he acts. The family is conceptualized as an environmental factor having the twin functions of instigator to behavior and manipulandum for behavior. It provides the main setting in early life for the learning of those behavior characteristics that have both individual and social reference, skills such as talking and feeding oneself, and motives and values.

This study relates dating behavior to Wailer's principle of least interest and Miller and Swanson`s entrepreneurial and bureaucratic family integration settings. Interview data show that females exerted significantly greater effort to maintain their dating associations. Male were less interested and emotionally committed to continuing their current dating relationships, and those least interested were males reared in entrepreneurial rather than bureaucratic homes. Further linkages of Wailer's findings to structural variables are encouraged, and should prove fruitful since most explanations of dating behavior are confined to analyses of interpersonal variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parental mistreatment of children is proposed to be a manifestation of noxious societal forces impinging on families. Data from a series of comparative studies of families who had mistreated their children and those who had not is analyzed in relation to this proposition. Distinctions can be made among families who do not mistreat, and within types of mistreating families. Among low-income families several factors inhering in the status of poor people, including both the direct stresses of poverty and structural deficits in their relationship to community systems of familial supports, are observed to be particularly marked among mistreating families. These factors, extrinsic to the families, are interpreted as a manifestation of societal forces which engender the mistreatment of children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fact of discrimination against the woman in our society continues to accrue documentation in social science literature. It is our contention, however, that the thesis of Inequality between the sexes is usually incompletely presented. The institutionalized role of women in the family (and the woman's acceptance of her traditional role) may continue to impede their achievement of equality in spite of attempts to change the economic structure of our society. Data from a recent study of dual-profession couples on the woman's desire for an egalitarian family, her career orientation, and her perception of discrimination are used to support the "tolerance of domestication" thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A synthesis of the writings of Mexican social scientists suggests that Mexican family roles are primarily determined by the submission of female to male and of younger to older. The husband wife relationship emphasizes his manliness or machismo and his role as authoritarian patriarch. The father-son relationship tends to be distant, respectful, and frequently severe. The mother helps prepare the son for dominance and independence. The father-daughter relationship is distant though relatively conflict-free. The mother-daughter relationship is very close, the daughter achieving an early identification with the female role. Younger siblings respect the older ones and especially girls their brothers. Sister-sister relations remain close throughout life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compared families affiliated with the Nation of Islam to those matched families affiliated with various lower-class Negro Christian churches. The specific areas of family life covered included husband-wife relationships; family-extended kin relationships; parent-child relationships; and relationships between the families and various types of social groups and community agencies. The results indicated different patterns of family life existing between the two groups. Of particular interest was the tendency for the Muslim families to exhibit middle-class values and behavior patterns to a greater degree than did the Christian families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since no previously standardized test was found that precisely fitted the investigator's needs for measuring student achievement in a functional class in marriage adjustment; this study presents the rationale for and procedures used in developing a free-response schedule for such measurement. The devised schedule was tested for reliability of scoring, sensitivity of the instrument, and reliability of the revised instrument. Critical levels of probability were met in every case. An appraisal of the methodology is made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on short story and family insights in secondary schools. For the college and adult education levels, there is already a guide to the selection of stories that illuminate the main topics of family courses. Among the major topics in family courses, as reflected in the textbooks they adopt, are changing sex roles, dating and mate selection, and intergenerational relationships. Family disorganization figures more markedly in the college textbook, but several textbooks on the secondary school level now include the broken homes and working wives.

The article discusses the literature approaches used in teaching family courses. In using imaginative literature for family insights the educator is faced by a choice as to how much of the one or the other should be emphasized. This choice raises the issue of teaching goals in the family course or unit. There is broad consensus on assisting the student in developing an understanding of the relationships in modern marriage. One of the approach seeks to relate the emotional returns from reading fiction to the goal of intellectual growth.