In the early 20th century in Canada and elsewhere, an amalgam of social reformers and members of the rising new social work profession, with the assistance of sympathetic jurists and legal thinkers, struggled to establish a new means of controlling and structuring intrafamilial behavior. Courts of domestic relations slowly began to be founded, dominated by nonjudicial personnel and imbuded with a philosophy of using the power and stature of these courts to support and enforce 'acceptable' familial conduct. There continued to be a heavy reliance on the power of the law to enforce normative behaviors rather than on the more direct activities of agents of the law. The domestic relations courts represent a transition to a more active role for state institutions and officers. By the end of the 1930's, depression, and the start of World War II, that transition was still underway, awaiting completion in the 1960's. 95 footnotes. (Author abstract modified)