Abstract:
 Family is the oldest and the most important constituent part of human society.  Since the industrial revolution, the progress of world modernization has brought the profound effects to family. As a result of industrialized society change is that the percentage of nuclear family has risen rapidly, and nuclear family has become the dominant form of family structure. American sociologists Goode, Burgess and others studies have indicated, that it is the distinguishing feature of modern society that nuclear family has been in dominant position. Parsons also stresses the importance of nuclear family. In modern society, no matter in China or in western countries, nuclear family all has the most percentage or the vast majority. This means that family relations have become simple and clear to some extent, as well as the importance of nuclear family status. Compared the family relations with other social relations, family relations are based on the marriage relationship and consanguinity relationship, and mutual behavior with other family members include material and spiritual aspects, for example: repopulate the earth, sexual intercourse and parent-child emotion. These are that other social relations not have. And family relations are layered as relations between generations, and age-long and general social relations. In a certain sense, family relations are most closely and the mutual influence of subject of relations is most deeply. So, it is necessary for us to compare the family relations between China and western countries. This paper mainly expands the comparative study from spousal relationship and parenthood.

Key words: family relations; nuclear family; spousal relationship; parenthood relationship; marriage

摘要：
家庭是人类社会最古老、最重要的组成部分。工业革命以来的世界现代化进程，对家庭带来了深远的影响。工业化社会变迁的结果之一就是核心家庭所占比例迅速上升，成为家庭结构中的主导形式。美国社会学家古德、伯吉斯等人的研究指出，核心家庭占主导地位是现代社会的显著特征。帕森斯也曾经强调过核心家庭的重要性。在现代社会中，无论是中国还是西方社会，核心家庭均占了大部分或说绝大部分的比例，这意味着家庭关系在一定程度上的简单化和清晰化，同样也意味着核心家庭地位的重要性。家庭关系与其他社会关系相比，家庭关系以婚姻关系、血缘关系为基础，与家庭成员之间特殊的相互行为包括物质方面和精神方面，如繁衍后代、性爱交往和亲子情感，这是其他社会关系中所没有的。而且家庭关系以代际关系为层次，是一种久远、普遍的社会关系。在一定意义上说，家庭关系最为密切，关系主体的相互影响也最为深刻。所以，我们有必要来比较一下中西方家庭关系。本文主要从夫妻关系，亲子关系这两方面展开对比研究。

关键词：家庭关系；核心家庭；夫妻关系；亲子关系；婚姻