Family sociology, more especially in France, tends to admit two types of paradigm to explain the family fact. One grants social institutions, and particularly the State, a diriment role. The other considers that the establishment of the family fact is a matter for the autonomous individual. We suggest regarding the family fact as the product of multifactorial dynamics. This leads us to favour a sociological approach that attributes the key role to the operations of deconstruction/reconstruction of the family fact, taking into account the model of the social world in which it takes place.