Swenson, Don

Dr. Don Swenson has a Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame, an M.A. from the University of Calgary and a B.Th. from the University of Ottawa. Dr. Swenson is currently a tenured faculty member of the Behavioral Sciences Department at Mount Royal College, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He is also an active member of the National Council of Family Relations, the American Sociological Association, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the Association of the Sociology of Religion.

Neo-Functionalist Synthesis of Theories in Family Sociology

2005 0-7734-6271-6
Work constructs a Neo-functionalist theoretical framework that is built on Parsionian sociological theory with updated reflections through Neo-functionalism with a reliance on the sociological theorist, Jeffrey Alexander. The author outlines how theory is used, presents Parsons' theory of the family, critiques it, and with Neo-functionalist insights, creates the theoretical framework. Thereafter, using Boss et. al's and White and Klein's overviews of family theory, the author constructs four sets of integration that synthesizes exchange, symbolic interactionist, family development, systems, ecological, conflict, feminist, attachment, and the ecology of child development theoretical frameworks. He subsequently includes insights from family psychology in the synthesis and then integrates all into the Neo-functionalist theoretical framework. The text is concluded with an analysis of four data sets (two on child outcomes and two on adult outcomes) to test the framework. Results show that there is substantial evidence for the theoretical framework.