Our families : strengths and stresses : a report on a survey on the family in Malta

Abstract

The interest of sociologists in the family as one of the most diffused structures within a larger society, and as a basic cell in any community, has been varied. Social anthropological interest in the family, particularly as it arose in the wake of rapid social development in the so-called third world countries, restricted itself primarily to compare the variations exhibited by this ubiquitous institution in different cultures. In the more developed societies, interest in the family arose as a measure of the interest in the way societies are held together, and in the way in which microcosms like the family contribute to the working and the failings of the macrocosm, society as a whole. The family as such has been the subject of religious and political debate throughout the centuries. It has been the institution that, because of its nature, has to withstand the shocks and stresses of rapid social change; it frequently served as an important cushion whenever one or more of its members were in a crisis. Through it, and at times only in virtue of what it represented, the individual obtained the necessary ingredients that were to maintain him as an integrated personality throughout his life. It is precisely the permanent effect of "early socialisation" through the family that has attracted the major continuing interest of the sociologist and the developmental psychologist alike. [excerpt]