Abstract: The individualization theories about family, which is the basic social unit, present the
“restriction proposition”and the“protection propositions”from the perspective of“dis-embedding”and“reembedding”
respectively. The former regards family as an institutional restrictive mechanism in the process of
individualization process while the latter views family as a protector of individuals from various risks. Based on
these two propositions, this study uses a variety of methods to analyze the survey data of the World Values
Survey. The results show that individualized attitudes have no significant explanatory power for the differences
between the importance of family and the importance of friends, although it decreases the perceived importance
of both family and friends. Between family and work, as well as between family and leisure time, individualized
propensity encourages one to assign greater importance to work and leisure time. These findings suggest that the
impact of the individualization process on the family system is only one case of its general impact on social
aggregations. In addition to its impact on family, the process of individuation has implications for other
mechanisms of assemblage, such as friendship. Moreover, individuals with better family financial status assign
more importance to friends and leisure than to family although they assess the importance of family in
accordance with its financial capability to protect one from the risks in life. Therefore, a family with good
financial status can be a promoting factor for individuals to engage in the individualization process.

Key words: neo-familism, individualization, importance of family, perspective from outside the family