Family, Socialization and Interaction Process

Family, Socialization and Interaction Process. T Parsons & R. F Bales. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press. 1955.

Many authors recently have "cited facts such as the very high rates of divorce, the changes in the older sex morality, and ... the decline in birth rates" as evidence that U.S. society is in the process of either rapid disorganization or structural differentiation. Talcott Parsons and Robert E Bales did so in 1955; the above quote comes from the first page of their volume. They come down clearly and forcefully on the side of structural differentiation as the explanation for these trends, thus setting the tone for most of sociology and other social sciences for the remainder of the century. It is interesting to note that they wrote this well before the times we now think of as encompassing the divorce revolution, the sexual revolution, and the birth dearth.

Although functional explanations have fallen largely out of favor in contemporary social science, Parsons and Bales make a compelling case in this book that the changes in the family to which they point are natural consequences of broader processes of societal differentiation rather than indications of social disorganization or declining morality. This part of their argument has endured through the much more radical changes in divorce, sexuality, and fertility in the latter half of the decade. Certainly this endurance accounts in part for the lasting impact of the book, as does their functional analysis of the relation between personality and society and the role of socialization in ensuring that these "systems" are homologous: The...