What's happening to the family? Interactions between demographic and institutional change.

The article presents the lecture of the author, delivered at the Population Association of America, 1990. The institution of the family is not seen as a fixed form against which people can judge current behavior. Rather, it is the collective representation of their changing family experience, as that experience interacts with its environment. Normative expectations play a major role in structuring family patterns, but they also tend to lag behind changing behavior, accommodating in time to behavioral changes. The author is aware that the stance taken here may appear to run counter to historical work discrediting various links between modernization and family change. He thinks the differences are more apparent, however, than real. This perspective does not require close temporal association between economic or structural shifts and family changes. Underlying ecological contexts of organizational change may create tensions, much like those at a fault line, the effects of which are not seen until the confluence of forces overcomes inertia.