Family sociology represents an important area of social science theory development and research. It addresses a wide range of practice-relevant questions that touch upon private life, social policy, and demographics. This volume provides a well-founded insight into family sociology. Initially, it discusses the historical and ethnological variations of family life forms and presents the main theoretical traditions of family sociology. For the central subject areas—such as partner selection, marriage behavior, intra-family interaction, fertility, family forms, as well as separation and divorce—the theoretical and empirical state of research is presented and discussed.