In sociological literature, there exist three paradigmatic approaches to the study of women and the family, i.e., positivism, interpretive sociology, and radical sociology. Because study of the sociology of women and the family has been carried out primarily in the positivistic paradigm, the emphasis has been on the constraints of existing social arrangements as well as the description and analysis of these arrangements. Over-reliance on positivism has also meant over-reliance on the methodology of positivism, i.e., the use of questionnaires, scales, and other objective tests. A multiparadigmatic approach would allow researchers to ask a greater variety of questions, deal with feminist critiques of sexism, vary methodological approaches, and permit social policy decisions to be made on a greater breadth of data. (Author/HLM)