William J. Goode was an American sociologist, an expert on family life, love, and divorce, published 20 books and more than 80 articles on a wide range of topics, His work covered fundamental issues in sociological theory and focused on social control systems of prestige, force and force threat. He was most well-known for his groundbreaking research in cross-cultural analysis of love, marriage, and divorce.

Goode, W. J. (1959). The theoretical importance of love. American Sociological Review, 24, 38–47. https://doi.org/10.2307/2089581

“Love is examined as a component of social action and, consequently, social structure… Since love has the potential to disrupt lineages and social strata, it must be regulated. As its meaning varies across social structures, it is governed by a variety of regulations.” Various control methods are described and discussed.

Goode, W. J. (1963). World revolution and in family patterns. New York, NY: The Free Press of Glencoe.

“… seeks to describe and interpret the main changes in family patterns that have occurred over the past half-century in Japan, China, India, the West, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Arab countries and to relate them to various alterations in other institutional areas.” The book reporting a very influential study of global family change. Goode’s main argument that, as a result of industrialization, family structures throughout the world would resemble the Western nuclear family of the mid-20th century was false. For starters, this model failed shortly thereafter in the West. In at least some regions of the world, however, Goode’s secondary hypotheses have proven to be accurate: that parental control over their children’s family lives would decline and that the ideology of the conjugal family would spread even in countries where industrialization had not been widespread. In addition, it is important to comprehend why Goode was occasionally incorrect and what forces (such as globalization) he did not anticipate. It is also worthwhile to examine more recent works on world family change by eminent academics (Cherlin, A. J. ,2012).