Family Research

Abstract

Systematic family research has had a relatively slow development in Western Society. It started only in the nineteenth century after the American and French Revolutions and after industrialization and urbanization changed the structure of society. Also, family research could not be more than individual scholars’ efforts until the social sciences evolved as distinctive fields of study that could address the problems of society and its institutions, including the family. Their development has allowed for the multidisciplinary approaches needed for family research. Unfortunately, family study was impeded by concern about invading the privacy of the oldest institution. In this chapter, we look at early studies of the family as an economic unit, adjustment to and satisfaction with marriage, family functioning, and especially, at the immensely increasing number of studies of the family and mental disorder.

What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning —T. S. Eliot (1971, p. 144)