This chapter basically purports a universalistic view, built upon basic human needs, albeit displaying cultural variations in their manifestations. This chapter also concerns two of the four fundamental questions the editors of this volume, van de Vijver, Chasiotis and Breugelmans, pose in the first chapter: primarily ‘how does culture become ingrained in human development?’ and secondarily ‘what is the relationship between individual and culture?’ Finally, it also touches upon their question about the profundity of cross-cultural differences in psychological functioning. I aim to look for answers to these questions in the light of the theoretical framework I have developed in the last two decades regarding the self, the family and their interface with culture. On the one hand I will describe the Self Theory and Family Change Theory, which are interrelated, and on the other hand, I will discuss their implications for cross-cultural theorising in general. In particular, I discuss the emergence and the significance of the autonomous-related self as a key construct in the search for answers to these fundamental questions.

The interface between culture and self is a nebulous topic. Any treatment of it is necessarily selective, as is true of this chapter also. There have been many attempts at addressing the complex issues involved (Kağitçibaşi and Poortinga, 2000; Poortinga, 1992, 1997; Poortinga et al., 1987).

The study of the diversity of types of families and family change throughout the world during the past 200 years has largely been the province of family sociology and cultural anthropology, but more recently psychology and psychiatry have taken an active interest. The co-authors in this study are all psychologists and their primary interest is in the cross-cultural analysis of psychological phenomena. The design of the study was based on four hierarchical levels: ecological and sociopolitical characteristics of societies, family roles, family networks, and psychological variables. Thus, the project emphasized the study of the psychological variables of emotional closeness, self-construal, personality, family values, and general values and their relationships within ecological and sociopolitical features of societies, family roles, and family networks. The data from the countries of this project form a rich and complex mosaic of interrelationships across and within these four hierarchical levels.

The project has both a cross-cultural or comparative dimension and an indigenous dimension. The cross-cultural dimension is based on quantitative analyses of data from 27 countries, while the indigenous dimension reflects a qualitative analysis of cultural features of the 30 countries in the study, as well as descriptions of the relationships between the ecological and sociopolitical, family, and psychological variables by authors from these countries.

This chapter discusses three related themes that underlie the findings presented in Chapter 7. The first theme deals with how families differ in cultures across the world.

This project was guided by several basic questions. How are ecological and sociopolitical features of societies related to the structure and function of families, to family networks, to family roles, and to psychological variables such as emotional bonds, self-construal, personality, family values, and personal values? To what extent are the structure and function of the families in societies throughout the world related to increased economic changes, and how have these changes affected family networks, family roles, personality, and values? To what degree will changes in family structure, function, and psychological relationships characteristic of North America and Northern Europe also occur in the rest of the world, as predicted by modernization and globalization theories?

The frameworks used in this study of family differ from the typical paradigms of sociology and cultural anthropology in their emphasis on psychological aspects of family. The key concepts that characterize this study are culture, social structure, kinship ties, family roles, and a variety of psychological variables. An important issue in cross-cultural psychology is the search for context variables that can aid in the analysis of the relationships among psychological and cultural variables. This project attempts to identify both cross-cultural universals and variations in the relationships among ecological and cultural variables, family roles, kin networks, and psychological variables.

FAMILY DIVERSITY AND FAMILY CHANGE

In the more than two centuries since Comte and Le Play concluded that the French Revolution and urbanization resulted in the breakdown of the traditional stem family in France, the issue of family change has been examined by sociologists, cultural anthropologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and other social scientists.

This book is about similarities and differences in families across cultures. Family has been studied during the past two centuries by many disciplines, including sociology, cultural anthropology, psychology, education, psychiatry, economics, and historical demography, among other disciplines.

The perspective in this book is the relationships between psychological variables, the ecocultural context of countries, and family variables.

The book centers around three issues. The first examines how families differ in cultures across the world. What are the differences in family networks, family roles, and psychological variables among countries with different ecological and sociopolitical systems?

The second issue examines how families are alike across cultures. That is, to what degree are features of family similar in countries throughout the word?

The third issue involves family changes in societies throughout the world as a result of social changes, such as economic level, education, political systems, the global influence of television, and of communication through telephones, email, and the internet. Changes in family types in the last two centuries, as a result of industrialization and urbanization, have been described as transitions from the extended types of family systems to the nuclear family and more recently to the one-parent family. Understanding the nature of these developments is of scientific interest, but these changes are also important social issues in almost all countries throughout the world; research on the family has influenced government policies in many countries. Some family researchers as well as the media and governments talk about the crisis of the institution of family.

This chapter describes the methods of analysis. The first section presents an overview of the four levels of analyses: ecocultural, social structural, family roles, and individual. Some analyses are at the country level and others at the individual level. The second section describes characteristics of the sample; both the sample of countries employed in the study and the characteristics of the samples of students in each country. The third section describes the variables in the study.

A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE LEVEL OF ANALYSES AND THE VARIABLES

Ecocultural variables

The ecocultural variables are conceived widely, including economic, social structural, and sociopolitical variables. They are measured by archival data at the country level: (1) the ecological variables: percentage of the population engaged in agriculture; a number of economic indices labeled affluence, and highest monthly temperature; (2) the sociopolitical variables: education which measures access to education, and percentage of population per religious denomination.

Social structural variables

The social structural variables are the interaction with family networks. Three variables are employed: geographic proximity, frequency of visits, and frequency of telephone calls with members of the nuclear and extended family.

Family roles

Family roles for nine family positions are as follows: for mother and father, the three family roles are expressive, childcare, and finances. For grandfather, grandmother, uncle/aunt, 20-year-old male and female, 10-year-old boy and girl, the two family roles are expressive and instrumental (e.g., Parsons, 1943, 1949).

In this Chapter we will examine family dynamics and change from a cross-cultural psychological perspective. The main focus will be on family change within changing global social structural and ecocultural contexts. Following the previous Chapter, however, we will start by examining the current Western family with a sociological orientation, for it is the Western family that has served as a prototype for family research in sociology. We will then devote most of our attention to the non-Western family, both in the Majority World and also as immigrant in the Western countries, and try to depict patterns of change that can be explained with a comparative orientation and from an ecocultural perspective. There will also be a presentation of a Model of Family Change (Kağıtçıbaşı, 1990, 1996a) that has proven useful in understanding family patterns in relation to different ecocultural contexts and changes in these.

FAMILY RESEARCH AGENDA: THE WESTERN ECOCULTURAL CONTEXT

Even a cursory glance at current scholarship on the family brings forth an interesting, even ironic dilemma. While there is a concern regarding the current state and the future of the Western family, which is claimed to be on the decline, at the same time there is a tacit assumption that the family in the non-Western (Majority) world is shifting toward the Western model. As discussed in Chapter 1, this is the main thesis of modernization theory that permeates social science thinking and everyday parlance, even though it has been questioned ever since its inception in 1960s (Bendix, 1967; Gusfield, 1967).