It is Hardest to Think Macro About Family Life

One of my most important jobs as a sociologist is to help students move from thinking about the micro to the macro. It is hard to think about big institutions, huge social forces, and society-wide social facts; it is natural to think only about how they affect individuals, especially ourselves and people like us. …

…Family is the hardest institution to think about at the macrosociological level because each family only exists at the micro level. There is no national family corporation, family state, family culture industry, family church. There are just millions of families whose collective actions add up to a social institution.