This study of early childhood and the family in member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) employs two statistical approaches to the problem of providing an accurate picture of modern conditions of family life. A classical demographic approach to population studies is initially used, then is critiqued, and finally is replaced by an approach which employs statistics of households and families in order to build a more concrete picture of diversity in the immediate enviornment of the child. Part One of the study focuses on general data on population, the value and limitations of general data, factors of demographic evolution and childhood, the impossibility of describing the family and its cycle through demographic models, and normality and pathology of family events. The 16 chapters of Part Two, after a general discussion of households and families, comprise monographs covering aspects of family life in Belgium, Norway, Ireland, New Zealand, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Germany, Japan, The United States of America, Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal, Finland, Sweden and Iceland, Austria, Yugoslavia, The United Kingdom and France. (Author/RH)