Although family norms have been one of the most important concepts for the sociological studies of family, it has rarely been discussed explicitly: what is it? how does it work? and how can we approach it? This paper examines the concept of family norms itself and try to present the different perspective from “the standard theory of the family” and its critics. This perspective, drawing on some ideas from ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, relocates family norms in the interaction settings and focuses on the procedure by which the participants use a variety of family norms as interpretive resources to make social reality accountable.
