The second of three special film reports by Julian Pettifer

When the West was won it was, above all, a family affair. Their struggle across a vast continent was an affirmation of family union - quite simply, they did it together; a victory for family integrity from which the ties emerged still stronger and deeper.

Today those ties are looser, the trail less certain. Millions of Americans are having a hard time plotting a shaky course through the apparent minefield of American Family Life.

As guidebooks they are reading by the millions: How to Make It With Another Person; Creative Intimacy; The Marriage Savers; Parent Effectiveness Training; Till Divorce do us Part; Children the Challenge and so on. Why is the family that once played, prayed and stayed together now fragmenting - what is the State of the Family Union in America today?