Industrialization and The Family1

This chapter explores how there are at least three reasons why industrialization and the family is today an important subject for debate by an international conference of social workers. The first is an obvious one: the opportunities that it offers for discussion and analysis on a comparative basis. The second lies in the fact that the world is increasingly an industrial world and dominated in its values and goals by problems of economic growth. The third reason in supporting the choice of this particular subject for discussion is that social work is primarily an activity carried on in industrial, urban societies. The problems of human needs and relationships with which social work has traditionally been associated have had their origin in those societies experiencing the impact of industrialization.