Postmodernism and family diversity Flashcards
What is the Postmodern view on the family?
- We no longer live in ‘modern’ society with its predictable, orderly structures such as the nuclear family
- In postmodern society, there is no longer one single, dominant, stable family structure such as the nuclear family and family structures have become fragmented into many different types
What is one advantage and disadvantage of this greater family structure choice and diversity?
+ individuals have greater freedom to plot their own life course
- greater risk of instability, since these relationships are more likely to break up
What is Stacy’s (1998) view on postmodern families?
- Greater freedom and choice has benefitted women
- Life history interviews in California: women rather than men have been the main agents of changes in the family
- Many of the women she interviewed had rejected the traditional housewife-mother role and had returned to work and education and created new types of family that suited their needs
- One of these new families was the ‘divorce-extended family’ whose members are connected by divorce rather than marriage
- The divorce-extended family illustrates the idea that postmodern families are diverse and that their shape depends on the active choices people make about how to live their lives
From Stacey’s evidence, what conclusions does Morgan reach?
- It is pointless making large scale generalisations about ‘the family’ as if it were a single thing
- It’s more important what those involved choose to call their family
What does Giddens and Beck’s individualisation thesis argue?
- The individualisation thesis argues that traditional social structures such as class, gender and family have lost much of their influence over us
- In the past: people’s lives were defined by fixed roles that prevented them from choosing their own life course
- Now: individuals have fewer fixed rules to follow
According to Giddens, why have the institutions of the family and marriage been transformed by greater choice and a more equal relationship between the genders?
- Contraception has allowed sex and intimacy rather than reproduction to become the main reason for the relationship’s existence
- Women have gained independence as a result of feminism and because of greater opportunities in education and work
What is Giddens’ ‘pure relationship’?
- The pure relationship is typical of today’s late modern society, in which relationships are no longer bound by traditional norms
- One key feature of the pure relationship is that it exists solely to satisfy each partner’s needs
How does Giddens see same-sex couples as creating more democratic and equal relationships?
- Same-sex relationships aren’t influenced by tradition to the same extent that heterosexual relationships are
- Weston: same sex couples created supportive ‘families of choice’
What is Beck’s version of the individualisation thesis?
- We live in a ‘risk society’ where tradition has less influence…
- The patriarchal family has been undermined by 2 trends:
a) greater gender equality
b) greater individualism - This has led to a new family type called the negotiated family: these are families which don’t conform to the traditional family norm, but vary according to the wishes and expectations of their members
What is Beck’s zombie family?
- Where the family appears to be alive, but in reality it is dead
- People want it to be a haven of security in an insecure world, but it cannot provide this due to its own instability
What are the personal life’s perspective criticisms of the individualisation thesis?
- It exaggerates how much choice people have about family relationships today
- The thesis views people as disembedded, ‘free-floating’ individuals- ignores that the social context can vary, shaping our decisions
- Ignores the importance of structural factors such as social class
What is Smarts’ connectedness thesis?
- We live within networks of existing relationships and interwoven personal histories, and these strongly influence our range of options and choices in relationships
- Finch and Mason back this up: study of extended families shows that although some individuals can negotiate the relationships they want, they are also embedded within family obligations which restrict their choice
What does May argue about the power of structures?
- Unlike Beck and Giddens’ argument, these structures aren’t disappearing, they are simply being re-shaped
- The personal life perspective doesn’t see increased diversity simply as a result of greater freedom of choice. Instead: emphasises the importance of social structures in people’s freedom when choosing families
