Structuralist/Modernization Theories

At the turn of the 20th century, theories of modernization that described the movement from traditional to modern social systems dominated. These theories wanted to understand, for example, the implications of the industrial revolution on family life. They tried to develop theories that would explain how social and economic changes had led to the "modern" family (see Mandell and Duffy for a detailed discussion).

Under the broad umbrella of modernization theorists fell both radical theorists like Marx and Engels (see Materialist/Marxism wiki page) and more conservative-leaning theorists like Parsons (see Structural Functionalism wiki page).

The term modernization broadly defined an era in which theorists sought to understand how larger social forces affect families. Since the 1960s, there has been more of a turn toward postmodern social theories (see Poststructuralist/Postmodernism wiki page).