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Religion is an institution upholding a system of "sacred" acts as contrasted with others called "worldly" or "profane." All of them, from "primitive" to the most advanced types - such as Confucianism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and their numerous derivatives - have classified family relations as the most important of "sacred acts" of a wordly type. A true believer must not only love "God" but be very faithful in family obligations such as in carrying out the roles of husband, wife, parent, child or of kin. Thus religions institutionalize the quintessence of the basic mores. The religion is a "collective" and not an individual "fact." Thus the family is only partly subservient to individual wishes. It is also a religious and legal-political institution. This may be called the "triple field" aspect of family sociology. When a couple join in matrimony the biological mating has religious and political significance. The moral and political rights, obligations and duties of the couple and their issue are also altered. Family, Society, and Civilization intertwine through religious beliefs. This system of interrelationships explains why times such as the present see a concurrent weakening of faiths, family relations and public order.

Many sciences are taxonomic-then subject matter is classified into categories to each of which certain non-overlapping true statements may be made. This is not so in family sociology. With a few very broad exceptions, the basic concepts of family sociology are evaluative of the status of the families with regard to their strengths and weaknesses in relation to the controls over the individuals concerned and their implementation of social needs. Within this framework the same taxonomic classification (objectively speaking) can show wide ranges of strength or weakness and ability to carry out individual and social purposes. An examination of the main historical and contemporary concepts applied to groups of families shows this to be true. The same family or kindred groups can and do vary with time in their strengths and weaknesses. Hence the atomistic concept applied by Zimmerman to our contemporary Western family system is no more evaluative than any other family concept. With this in mind it is suggested that the atomistic family type with its weak controls over the individual is a current fact—not fiction. Thus the family system falls into the general category discussed by Aristotle in his Nichomachean Ethic-its type depends upon its strengths and weaknesses, its minimums and excesses, and not on its taxonomic forms. This view clashes with the optimism of the ideas of the Ogburnian school and the existentialism of the Parsonian group of family sociologists.