The author starts by asking himself whether the family is relevant nowadays. To answer this question he analyzes the couple's relationship with each other and with their children, placing these relationships historically. It is suggested that the "familial problems" come to being when a certain pattern of family becomes standard. Those families which do not follow this pattern are then called "problematic". For that reason, the author prefers to make reference to different "familial situations". These are thought from a double perspective: the invariance which also refers to a sort of evolution, or the novelty which, as a contrast, relates to rupture and re-composition. Three areas of familial situations are then distinguished: those which come from their familial relationships, from the social world and from each subject (as the variations from his/her internal world affect his/her familial bonds). At last, the author asks himself if the new familial forms really answer to the production of novelty and if this novelty relates to its shape or structure. He concludes that the family is not new nor old, but that it does something new or not. The analysis of the family should include an analysis of the making in its bounds and of the consequences of this making.
Family; Family relations; Family structure