1. Families, Households &
Intimate relationships
February 2013
‘[I]t is no longer possible to pronounce in some
binding way what family, marriage,
parenthood, sexuality or love mean, what they
should or could be.’ Beck & Beck - Gernsheim
At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.
Plato
The family is the country of the heart
Giuseppi Mazzini
2. Today
• Diversity of family forms
– Are all family forms equally socially acceptable in modern Britain?
– What emotional, social and economic advantages could polygyny or polyandry
offer women and men in a modern society?
– How can growing divorce rates indicate that the marriage relationship has
become more not less important?
• Violence and abuse in families
– Is violent behaviour an individual personality problem or part of the structure
of society? Can it be both?
– What social measures could be taken to reduce levels of violence within
families?
– Which is more important: protecting privacy or protecting people from
violence?
• The search for intimacy
– When people talk about a ‘return to family values’, what do they actually
mean?
– Is romantic love a secure basis for a lasting relationship?
– Do arranged marriages offer a basis for the formation of an emotionally
intimate relationship?
– Is it possible to do intimacy by text?
3. • Diversity in family forms
• Violence and abuse in families
• The search for intimacies
5. The Family in History
Family: a group of persons who form an
economic unit directly linked by kin
connections, the adults of which assume
responsibility for caring for children
Kinship: a relation which links individuals
through blood ties, marriage or adoption.
6. Three phases in the development of
family forms 1500-1800
• Nuclear unit not clearly separate from the community
– Primarily an economic unit: property arrangement
– Unemotional – high mortality rates
– Sex for procreation not pleasure – high infant mortality rates
• Nuclear unit as a distinct and separate entity
– Transitional form found in upper classes
– Growth in importance of marital and parental love
– Increase in authoritarian power of the father
• Nuclear unit with high degree of domestic privacy
– Close emotional bonds
– Centred on rearing children
– Marriage based on romantic love or sexual attraction
– Site of consumption
– Housewife/breadwinner roles
7. Lawrence Stone
(1980)
• 1500s nuclear family, small
households, kin, sex necessary for
children not pleasure,
erotic/romantic love sometimes
regarded as sickness
• 17th /18th C transitional form, nuclear
family becomes separate entity,
importance of marital/ parental love,
increase in authoritarian power of
fathers (connect to patriarchy)
• Post 18th C family, close emotional
bonds, affective individualism;
personal selection, sexual attraction,
romantic love, consumption rather
than production
• Criticisms: love was often found in
pre 18th C English marriages;
unoriginal (borrowing Weber and
Marx’s ideas about individualism?!)
8. The way we never were (Coontz, S
1992)
• Many people, often conservative, argue that
family life is becoming undermined
9. Myths of the Traditional Family
• Is family life becoming
undermined today?
• Victorian family life:
– High mortality rates
– Average marriage less than 12 yrs
– ½ of all children saw death of one
parent (at least) by age of 21
– Strict authority (cruel by today’s
standards)
– Middle-class wives house –bound
– Double standards of sexual
behaviour
– Child labour common in lower
classes
10. Myths of Traditional Family Life
• http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=xO304aoUAWE
• 1950s ‘ideal family’:
– Women trapped in
domestic role after 2nd
WW
– Sexual double standards
– Oppressive nature of
domestic life, childcare
– Emotionally detached
husbands
– Alcoholism and violence
– Friedan, B. (1963) The
Feminine Mystique. ‘The
problem with no name’
11. Critical Thinking...
• If these conepts are frequently shown to be
myths, then why do people like to hold on to
these ideas?
• How do concepts of the family remain so
strong?
• What are the social consequences of holding
on to such myths?
12. Diversity in Family Forms
• Lone parent
• Heterosexual couple: married or cohabiting
• Gay or Lesbian couple: civil partners or cohabiting
• Couple (hetero or homosexual) separated or
divorced but co-parenting
• Reconstituted family
– Diana Gittens (1993) we must speak of ‘families’ not
‘the family’.
13. Individuals may live in many family
forms through the life-course…
Jane is single and as a result of a brief
sexual affair has a child, Shaun. The
biological father does not keep in touch.
Jane meets Simon and they start living
together.
Jane and Simon have a child together and
get married.
Jane and Simon split up.
14. And Then…
• Jane starts a relationship and moves in with Phil,
who has two children from a previous marriage
and one from a previous affair.
• Simon starts a relationship with Peter and moves
in with him. Peter has two children from an
earlier marriage. Both fathers have their children
to stay for holidays.
• Years pass…when Shaun gets married who is
likely to feature in the photos of the groom’s
family?
15. Families around the world- Variety &
Change
Clans and other
kin-based groups
are declining
Same-sex
partnerships
Children’s rightsMore sexual
freedom
Rights of women
Free selection of
spouse
16. Rising Divorce Rates
Divorce relates to the legal end of marriage.
Thus we know nothing about:
• Empty shell marriages
• Separations without divorce
• Cohabitation break-ups
• Remarriage rates
17. Why have divorce rates risen?
• Legislative changes making divorce easier and
cheaper to obtain
• Women’s increased economic independence
• Reduction in the social stigma of divorce
• The expectation of personal satisfaction in
marriage
18. European & Western Families
• Monogomous
families
• Romantic love
• Patrilineal
• Neo-local
• Nuclear
19. Housework
• Women still
disproportionately doing
housework
• Stalled revolution
Hoschild (1989)
• Caring activities are
socially constructed as
women’s work Devault
(1991)
• Mothers spend more time
with children than fathers
Shelton (1992)
20. Lone-Parent Households
• UK has highest propotion in Europe:
– Increase from 7% 1971 to 24% 2006
(HMSO 2007:16)
• Social disapproval
• Economic insecurity
• High correlation between births outside
marriages and poverty and social
deprivation in unmarried/never
married mothers
• Direct link between welfare support
and diverse proportions of lone parent
families across Europe (Morgan 1999)
• Diversity of pathways into/out of lone
parent families (Crow & Hardey 1992)
21. The Absent Father 1930s-70s war; breadwinner
• Contemporary infrequent contact with children after
divorce/separation…The death of the dad?
• Erosion of Fatherhood (Blankenhorn 1995) Fatherless America
• But is it better to have a dad who comes home from work
and drinks beer in front of the tv, than no dad at all?!
• (Yeung et al 2002) the earnings of a working mother or work
hours do not effect the time she spends with children. For
fathers, it does significantly effect it.
• Paternity leave – up to 26 weeks paternity leave
(www.direct.gov.uk) £128.73 per week
‘When did you last see your father?’ W.G. Yeames
22. New Partnerships
• Changing attitudes to family life: fluidity
• Remarriage
• Step-families:
– Reconstituted families
• Kinship relationships (Firth 1956):
– Effective vs non-effective kinship
• Mauthner (2005) sistering - what are women like as sisters? BFFs?
• Cohabitation (HMSO 2004):
– ‘it’s ok to live together without intending to get married’
– 88% 18-24 yr olds
– 40% 65 plus
• Gay and lesbian partnerships (Weeks et al 2004):
– More opportunities for equality among partners - negotiation
• Staying single (HMSO 2004):
– One person households 18% - 1971
– 29% - 2003
23. Perspectives
• Functionalism:
– Family performs important tasks that
contribute to society’s basic needs
– Helps perpetuate social order
– Fullfilling roles
– Focussed on reproduction,
childrearing and socialization
• Feminism:
– Challenging idea of family as being
harmonious and egalitarian
– Questioned idea of family being
cooperative unit based on common
interests and mutual support
– Unequal power relationships
– Male breadwinner model
– Caring activities
25. Violence
& sexual
abuse
• Children:
– Sexual abuse May-Chahal & Herczog (2003)
• 10-20% of children in Europe will be sexually assualted
during their childhood
• 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child:
– Raise awareness of child sexual abuse
– 1999 – only 1% of Europeans had never heard of child
sexual abuse within a family
– 97% thought child sex abuse was a form of violence
26. National Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children
• Neglect
• Physical abuse
• Emotional abuse
• Sexual abuse:
– ‘sexual contact between a child and adult for the purposes
of the adult’s sexual gratification’ (Lyon & de Cruz 1993)
– Correlation between childhood sexual abuse and
prostitution, offending and drug use
• Victoria Climbie (-2000):
– Died of hypothermia after months of torture
– Police and health services missed oppportunities to save
her
27. Domestic Violence
• Rawstorne (2002)
– Women are at greater risk of violence from men in own family/close
aquaintances than strangers
– Two women each week are killed by their partners in the UK
– Domestic violence affects between 1/3 and ¼ of all women
• The Council of Europe (2006)
– 1/5 to ¼ of all women have experienced physical violence at least once
in their adult lives
– 12% to 15% of all women have been in a relationship of domestic
abuse after age 16
• Commonwealth Fund
– 4 million women are physically abused per year in the USA
– Beijing Marriage and Family Affairs Research Institute (1995):
• 23% of husbands admit to beating their wives
• Domestic Violence Research Group, Japan (1993):
– 59% of 796 women questioned had been physically abused by their
partner
28. Violence in the family
• Feminism:
– Privatization of violence and abuse work to uphold the dominance of
men in patriachal societies
– More husbands are violent against women than vice versa
– Domestic violence is a major form of male control over women
• Staus & Gelles (1986) men are less likely to report violence than
women
• Rawstone (2002) violence by women against men is often
defensive rather than offensive, women resort to violence only after
suffering repeated attacks time after time
• Cherlin (1999) spousal abuse is more common in low-income
couples
• Goode (1971) Low income men may be more prone to violence as
they have less means to control their wives (i.e. income or
education level)
• Gelles & Cornell (1990) unemployed men are 2x as likely as
employed men to assault their wives
30. The Search for Intimacy
Contemporary Western society is characterized by:
• Rapid social change
• Weakening of traditional identities and ties
• Individualism
• Reflexivity
• Impersonal globalized risk
Contemporary relationship ideals based on:
• Equality
• Negotiation
• Self-fulfilment
• The ‘haven in a heartless world’
31. Models of Love
Giddens (1993) : The ‘pure relationship’, based on plastic sexuality
(choice, untied from reproduction), social reflexivity, confluent
love (active and contigent)
Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1995): The ‘normal chaos of love’, in the
absence of old norms, love presents as ‘the answer’, a cycle of
hoping, regretting and trying again
Bauman(2003): ‘Liquid Love’, in a world of constant change, the
‘top pocket relationship’ is instantaneity and disposability
incarnate. Networks and connections, not relationships, replace
quality with quantity
Smart (2007): these three are too pessimistic. People are still tied
in to shared memories and meaning-constitutive traditions, i.e.
they exhibit ‘connectedness’ which we can uncover if we focus
on ‘personal life’ (rather than family or individual)
32. Diversity of family forms
• Are all family forms equally socially acceptable in modern Britain?
• What emotional, social and economic advantages could polygyny or polyandry
offer women and men in a modern society?
• How can growing divorce rates indicate that the marriage relationship has
become more not less important?
Violence and abuse in families
• Why is family life not always happy and harmonious?
• Is violent behaviour an individual personality problem or part of the structure of
society? Can it be both?
• What social measures could be taken to reduce levels of violence within
families?
• Which is more important: protecting privacy or protecting people from violence?
The search for intimacy
• When people talk about a ‘return to family values’, what do they actually mean?
• Is romantic love a secure basis for a lasting relationship?
• Do arranged marriages offer a basis for the formation of an emotionally intimate
relationship?
• Is it possible to do intimacy by text?
• Will the future bring decay of marriage and partnerships?
• Will emotional and sexual relationships become more bitter and violent?
Notes de l'éditeur
HMSO – explain – her Majesty’s stationery office i.e. legislation