Excerpt from Family, Society, and the Individual It is a singular pleasure to present a book of such excellence as The Family, Society, and the Individual. It is reliable and authoritative, as a first-rate work of science must be. This will come as no surprise to students of the family who are familiar with Dr. Kephart's own important scientific contributions. It is admirably clear. Few textbooks combine such a readable style with meaningful content. The student who uses this book will not bog down in it. It is comprehensive. Here will be found all the topics which are ordinarily considered in courses on the sociology of the family. The book will serve the institutional courses very well indeed. But included are enough practical topics so that the book can also be used in many so-called functional courses. This book will appeal to those teachers of functional courses who want an effective theoretical frame of reference and who are willing to sacrifice attention to some practical problems like housing and budgeting in order to get it. The book is unified by a central thesis, namely, that problems of the family often represent a clash between the needs of the individual and the requirements of the social order, and that it is only when these two forces are in balance that maximum social integration can be effected. Whatever contributes to the conservation of the family, therefore, also contributes to the well-being of both individual and society. This thesis is not just enunciated in an early chapter and then ignored. It pervades the entire book and integrates it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.