Gaius remarked (Inst., 1, 55) that "Practically no other men have such power over their offspring as we have over ours." The relations between fathers and sons in Roman law have been the subject of many scholarly discussions in recent years. The most salient problems include first, intergenerational divisions. Because patria potestas did not involve freedom from the legal power of the living male ascendant in the family, the real problem between generations was with adult sons often with their own children not with teenagers as we would experience today. Second was the economic problem created with male children, since the head of the family could not always trust adult sons to conduct a business and retained the power to disinherit sons.

Furthermore, even though patria potestas of course permitted the male head of the family to make decisions concerning the marriages of females sons were also affected: a filius familias could not marry without father's consent because sons had to receive permission for their activities so long as the head of the family remained alive. Tensions within the family sometimes led to patricide with all its dreadful legal consequences which dramatized the Romans' horror at that deed breaching familial loyalty. Some reading of literary sources sheds light on the relationship between these legal principles and real life.