Families

Family is one of the central organizing units of consumption. Within the context of the family, we make collective and individual choices, express social and emotional bonds, draw from and resist the pressures of consumer culture, and learn how to be consumers through fundamental socialization processes. However, questions on what family means and on how to define family are increasingly relevant in contemporary society and continually challenge existing theories of consumption. Demographic and sociocultural shifts around the world have made traditional definitions of family a distant memory. Recent U.S. Census numbers indicate that single persons constitute over 30 percent of the households in the United States. Though divorce rates are low in most Latin American (predominantly Catholic) countries and in Muslim countries, they have grown rapidly in general, especially when compared to the rapidly declining marriage rates. In Europe, more than in the United States, marriage is seen as increasingly unnecessary, and the incidence of children being born outside of marriage has reached over 50 percent in countries such as Iceland and Sweden and is projected to reach that level in France, Denmark, and the United Kingdom in the near future (Petre 2006). Family units are steadily shrinking in size, and singleparent and single-person households are growing at far more rapid rates than the traditional parents-with-children households.

As often noted in U.S. and European contexts, the “deterioration” of family has emerged as a regular focus of increasingly anxious public debate. The debate centers on the meaning and nature of family. This entry examines various ways of defining family, including cross-cultural differences reflected in public policies; identifies and critiques the treatment of family in consumer research; outlines methodological issues in family studies; and presents future research directions.