A Sociology of Family Life. Deborah Chambers
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proposed that the small, nuclear version of the family was perfectly adapted to the needs of modern society. He introduced new ideas about how the nuclear family’s sex roles operate to reproduce the population and a stable workforce. For Parsons, the family served two vital functions: the socialization of children, and the stabilization of adult personalities. The strict division of sex roles, between the father’s instrumental role as breadwinner and the mother’s expressive role as homemaker, was viewed as well adapted to modern industrial society. The functionalist model has had a major impact on official discourses about the ideal nuclear family in the UK and USA from the 1960s. It influenced academic research and government strategies up to the late twentieth century through policies on child and family poverty, including childrearing practices, childhood education, the role and moral framework of parenthood, fertility and access to new reproductive technologies. Chapter 1 also assesses the impact of functionalist approaches in studies of Black and minority ethnic families in the USA and UK, where extended and matriarchal,3 one-parent families were perceived as deviations from a nuclear family form.
Public anxieties about loosening family ties in modern industrial societies proved to be unfounded, according to many studies of the mid twentieth century. The strength and importance of generational ties were revealed in classic British studies of family and kinship (for example, Bell 1968; Rosser and Harris 1965; Young and Willmott 1957). Informal relationships were highly significant at personal and structural levels. Chapter 1 also addresses the principal feminist perspectives of the 1970s and 1980s on the family, sex, gender and patriarchy,4 which directly critiqued the functionalist perspective. This feminist work revealed the ways in which the institution of ‘the family’ reproduces patriarchal and heteronormative versions of masculinity and femininity. Feminist perspectives contributed to new understandings of how inequalities of gender, class and race are reproduced through family and wider social structures and relations.
Public concerns about the erosion of mutual responsibility and long-term commitment lie at the heart of arguments about a decline in family values. Chapter 2 explores theories and debates from the 1990s about changes in intimate relationships. The concept of ‘individualization’ advanced by a group of scholars including Giddens, and Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, to explain the rise of more egalitarian intimate relationships is assessed in depth. The chapter explains changing ideas about love and commitment, the changing nature of the self and society, and the notion of the pure relationship. Children are held as providers of a more permanent love during a time when long-term commitment between adults is suspect. These explanations are challenged by a range of evidence from empirical research which is addressed in the second half of the chapter. A series of recent and mainly qualitative studies on intimacy has provoked a reassessment of late modern theory and fed into critiques of the individualization thesis.
Debates about changes in parenting values and practices are assessed in chapter 3. Changing notions and practices of motherhood, pinpointed by feminist debates, correspond with women’s improved education and entrance into the labour market. The identification of a ‘new’ parenthood that emerges out of separation and divorce has shaped definitions and practice of both mothering and fathering. The theme of parenting is followed by a focus on current ideas about fatherhood and masculinity. New models of fatherhood have been prompted by the erosion of the male breadwinner role, the rise in post-divorce families and families without fathers. Public discourses about a new kind of Dad, based on the model of ‘active fatherhood’, are displacing the notion of the father as ‘male breadwinner’ and unemotional disciplinarian. As a result, fatherhood is being reconstructed in law and social policy. The chapter addresses the idea of ‘involved fatherhood’ promoted by the state in the UK and USA, followed by a critical analysis of the harmful consequences of domestic violence, especially among women and children. The chapter also addresses the issue of parenting among ethnic minority families. Furthermore, the challenges and opportunities faced by LGBTQ+ parents in contemporary societies are examined in the chapter.
Chapter 4 traces changes in childhood. It highlights the tensions between opposing accounts of childhood: a traditional romantic ideal which affirms that the right of a child is ‘to be a child’, and the idea of the child as an active agent with rights. The practicalities of contemporary childrearing practices are set against this romantic ideal and often lead to confusion among both parents and children. Childrearing is now depicted as a negotiation between parent and child, within a process monitored by the state and other agencies such as schools. The impact on childhood of post-divorce families, lone parenting and poverty are examined. Contemporary approaches to childhood draw attention to children’s accelerating contact with the media, commercialism and new digital technologies. Children’s sustained engagement with media devices complicates the idealized and sentimental notion of childhood. For example, the introduction of a wide range of media gadgets into the home, together with children’s access to mobile devices, prompts a renegotiation of household relationships between children and parents. The chapter also shows that in certain non-western societies, childhood is now shaped by elements of privatized and individualized family life familiar to western societies, suggesting that a western trend of home-based privatized childhoods may be a globalizing tendency. Changes occurring in contemporary urban China are outlined to offer an insight into the way these changes are impacting transnationally.
Chapter 5 focuses on ageing societies and the life course in the context of the family. The term ‘life course’ is used in sociology to indicate an individual’s passage through life, which is generally studied as a sequence of significant life events that include birth, marriage, parenthood, divorce and retirement. Major changes in family responsibilities over the life course have been driven by a rise in life expectancy, an extension of the age of reproduction and longer periods of ‘post-parental’ life, as well as rising divorce rates. In ‘ageing’ western societies, it is often assumed that older people are a growing burden on the young. However, patterns of reciprocity between older and younger family members show that older relatives, particularly older women, often take on considerable responsibilities as grandparents. The chapter looks at ageing and intergenerational ties to examine how families and households deal with the anxieties of caring for the elderly in both the global north and global south. Various configurations of social support, including friends, neighbours and extended kin, are now centrally involved in caregiving in an ageing society, as exemplified by non-traditional family forms, such as LGBTQ+ couples. New research agendas that address the global dimensions of family life have been developed, with the maintenance of generational and network-based ties across different nation states focused on. The chapter therefore assesses the impact of migration on the care of the elderly by describing a series of case-study examples.
Scholars have tended to study globalization in terms of capital, changing state and market mechanisms and new technologies. In chapter 6, globalization is approached in a specific manner that spotlights the ways in which globalization shapes and is shaped by families. Family systems and family relations interconnect with and support large-scale processes of economic globalization. How families negotiate and are impacted by international migration and other transnational connections is addressed. Patterns of marriage, migration and global processes have strengthened, reshaped or destabilized families. These trends are analysed by focusing on topics ranging from the migration of care workers to arranged marriages, internet dating and mail-order brides. Local and international marriage and labour markets are interconnected processes that are mediated by local practices and customs of kinship and marriage.
Chapter 6 is divided into three sections to address general themes. The first section examines the growing mobility and global migration of families or family members triggered by the demand for care workers in the West, by raising important questions about the global