Factory and family - some guidelines for a reflection on the subject

Abstract

The working-class families have not been a particularly popular subject within the field of the social sciences. Such a marginality is more specially curious as there is a wide bibliography either on the «workers» or the «working class», and the working-class, contigent in the industrialized societies is remarkably significant. Indeed, the workers' private every day life and namely their family everday life are a minor research subject. The study of the European bibliography on the «working-class families» is the starting point for a view over the most significant theoretical approaches to the subject. It is intended to analyse the thread and the internal logic of these proposals and inferences in order to obtain some standard profiles of the «working-class». Then, the theoretic relevance of such problems is confronted with the empirical information provided by the structure of the Portuguese contemporary society. Finally, the author points out some hypotheses of analysis and some exploratory tracks which are assumed to be relevant for a full awareness of the present reality regarding the working-class families in Portugal.