The Making of Family Roles and Family Change

This paper is an attempt to bring to the attention of family practitioners the concept of role making as a means for analyzing family change. The concept is a useful one for this purpose because it enables the practitioner to encourage change as well as to account for change that is not normatively defined. The necessary conceptual clarification will also indicate that role making bridges the gap between the individual and the already existing structure of interaction patterns whether in families or society. It, therefore, ties together personality and social variables so that the practitioner can escape an either-or perspective. There are expectable family changes which do have a strong normative component. Among these changes are those due to the varying numbers and age composition in families, as they endure through the various phases of the family cycle. Some modifications in role content, loss of roles and addition of roles are channeled by age and gender norms. Examples are having children, their leaving home, and