Generations and Families: 50 Years of Sociology of the Family

The family in Western Europe and North America has undergone multiple transformations since its theorization by Parsons in the 1950s. From now on, the ideal of conjugality is gender equality. Its formulation was made possible, thanks to the mobilization of the feminist movement, by the recognition of women’s right to control their own fertility in the 1970s. It is this ideal of conjugality that presided over the legalization of same-sex marriage during the 2000s. Since then, the axis of common family law is filiation not marriage. Today, it is the child who should be at the heart of the new family law, but the legislator (for example, in Quebec or France) is slow to materialize this major transformation in the construction of the contemporary family.