It makes sense that this is important. If we reduce the family to a series of variables – housewife, male breadwinner, for example – moving away from this structured idea looks like a decline. The primary proponent of family decline theory that will be used in this assessment is David Popenoe's article, American Family Decline, 1960-1990 A Review and Appraisal. In this article, Popenoe argues that there is an ideal family and that there should be an incentive to return to this ideal. The definition of a family found in American Family Decline is: A family is "a group in which people generally live together within a household and function as a cooperative unit, especially through the sharing of economic resources in the pursuit of domestic activities” (Popenoe). This assessment will attempt to show how inadequate this definition is to encompass all modern variants of the family and, through the use of standpoint theory, arrives at the conclusion that no definition is possible. Furthermore, Popenoe's use of this definition to show the decline of the family is