Synonyms
Children; Couple; Household; Kin; Marriage; Nuclear family; Parents
Introduction
The task of discussing “family” could take any number of approaches and emphasize a nearly inexhaustible inventory of topics. In light of this, this discussion will adopt a levels-of-analysis framework, wherein the concept of “family” will be explored largely from a macro-level to micro-level perspective. This treatment will necessarily exclude many relevant substantive issues and, as a result, rely on other entries in this volume to compensate for these omissions. The advantage of such a perspective is that it permits us to consider families from varying levels of abstraction, each of which is useful both in its own right as well as in conjunction with others in the array.
Defining “Family”
The task of defining what is meant by the term “family” has never been resolved to the satisfaction of all interested parties; in fact, it may be becoming more difficult over time. This strikes some as an odd...
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Crawford, D.W. (2019). Family. In: Lebow, J.L., Chambers, A.L., Breunlin, D.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49425-8_502
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