A review of 50 years of research on naturally occurring family routines and rituals: Cause for celebration?

This article is a qualitative review of 32 publications appearing since J. Bossard and E. Boll's (1950) seminal work on family rituals was conducted. Definitions are offered whereby a distinction is made between family routines as observable practices and family rituals as symbolic representations of collective events. The relative occurrence of family routines, as described in the literature, appears to follow a developmental course and is...