Based on discourse analysis and on the sociology of knowledge, the article shows that since its beginnings the sociology of the family (and marriage) has centred on a crisis-oriented view of its subject, including the current debate on changes in families and marriages. One of the underlying assumptions equates family with privacy—an assumption which has limited the analytical potential of the sociology of the family until the present day. A different and contrasting point of view would argue that a sociology of privacy in its own right would constitute a more appropriate basis for a (post)modern sociology of the family, both theoretically and empirically. Such a perspective would have to be self-reflective, i.e., aware of its own discursive entanglement in complex relations between the private and the public spheres which characterize the ongoing modernization of society.