You can't, which is a source of exasperation for many travellers.
Substitute the word "airline" with, say, "theatre", "cinema" or "train", and the question might hardly be worth asking – the chances of not getting what you pay for are very small. Once again, it is aviation that flies in the face of apparently rational practices.
When you book a flight, you secure nothing more than a promise to try to get you from A to B. While the EU has prescribed plenty of remedies for the traveller who is left stranded, it is silent on the matter of specific seats.
When the airline offers you the chance, usually at a price, to pre-book a specific seat, you might imagine that seat 12C, say, has your name attached to it. You'd be wrong: the option is hedged with qualifications.
The captain has to worry about weight and balance (the need to distribute passengers in a particular manner); the airline may be obliged to change the aircraft type (as happened to tens of thousands of Qantas passengers following the Airbus A380 incident in Singapore); or overbooked passengers from another departure could be transferred to your flight, upsetting the pre-assigned seating plan. The airline's liability to you is simply to refund what you have paid for the privilege of an assigned seat.
From the customer's perspective, it's tempted to be outraged at apparently poor standards of care. But the airlines insist aviation isn't like terrestrial transport (or an entertainment venue), and that they have to retain flexibility.
A number of airlines, particularly charter carriers, sell the right to sit with the other members of your party, but they decline to specify exact seats.
One carrier that, notably, does not charge for seating families together is British Airways; while there is a pre-booking option, if you are travelling with young children, you need do nothing and you should be seated together.
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