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Copyright of Journal for Sociology of Education & Socialization / Zeitschrift für Soziologie der Erziehung & Sozialisation is the property of Julius Beltz GmbH & Co. KG Beltz Juventa and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Examines the relevance of the concept of ambivalence for the study of intergenerational relations. Discusses an article written by Ingrid Connidis and Julie McMullin, and an initiative of the editor of the "Journal of Marriage and Family;" History of insights into the ambivalence between parents and adult children, which can be traced back to the beginnings of human society; Sagas in Greek mythology provide some examples of what is now referred to as ambivalance; Description of how the term is used today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary societies we observe an increasing interest for the forms of persuasive public communication, for which the term "new rhetoric" has been proposed recently. It includes the analysis of scholarly publications and therefore is related to developments in the sociology of science. Family research is a fruitful field for research on this kind of "scientific rhetoric". A small number of key-terms, among them prominently "pluralization of family forms", play a dominant role in the literature. At the same time, a remarkable rise of family research led to a multiplication of theoretical approaches. Also, speaking and writing on the family unavoidably contains moral and therefore rhetorical connotations, due to the anthropological dimensions of the topic. The article starts with comments on the discourse on the family. Then the theoretical foundations of research on scientific rhetoric in a media society are presented. It is followed by a comparative analysis of three recent articles on the situation of the family and related forms of private life in Germany. Finally, a frame of reference for the analysis of family rhetoric in scholarly texts is sketched out and the utility of rhetorical analyses is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the authors take the demographic data as their point of departure. They may first be interpreted as indications of family behavior. Consequently, the authors then continue with an overview of the main institutional forces, law, and family policy. In their presentation they recall the interpretation of both components. Thus they also refer to the organizational aspects of demography, not the least of them being the monopoly of collection by the Statistical Office. In turn, family policy, and even legislation, depend heavily upon demographic information that is erroneously considered objective. Contrary to many popular beliefs, the German family was at no time as extended and as large as expected. Though there has been a slight population decline in West Germany since 1974 , the number of households is still growing. Household projections show that this increase will continue up to the mid-1990s and will then reverse into a shrinking number of households. The increase of number of households between 1972 and 1985 by 14.7% is mainly the consequence of a rapidly growing number of one-person households.

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Soziologie is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)