CHAPTER COMMENTARY
This chapter begins with something most students have experienced, romantic love. The
discussion describes the socio-historical specificity of romantic love and the acceptance of
love as a legitimate basis for marriage. Similarly, the idea that a good relationship is one of
equals based upon emotional communication or intimacy may dominate contemporary
Western discourse but is far from universal. All students will have deeply felt experiences of
family and personal relationships and it is tempting to introduce this topic early in a course
as everybody will have something to contribute. It also offers a clear link between ‘where
the students are’ and sociological analysis. However, by its nature this is an emotionally
charged area and, given violence and abuse within intimate and family relationships,
acknowledged in the chapter, it can prove to be a difficult topic to teach. It is important to
offer students opportunities to participate, whilst respecting their right to privacy.
The chapter introduces students the basic concepts through which social scientists discuss
family, kinship and marriage forms by introducing the standard categories of nuclear
family, extended family, monogamy, polygamy, polygyny and polyandry. From here the
text moves on to note that although family forms have never been static, students, along
with politicians and the media, are often inclined to hold a fixed and idealized view of ‘the
family’ which conflates what is with what should be and rests on a comparison with some
earlier golden age. An historical overview, using Lawrence Stone’s work as a Classic Study of
shifting forms of family life, considers changes in the form of European families from the
pre-modern to the contemporary dominance of affective individualism and a consideration
of the Victorian family and the 1950s family challenges myths of the past. Family patterns
are changing worldwide, with an erosion of the influence of kin groups and general trends
towards individualism, sexual freedom and children’s rights.
In Western societies, marriage is contracted on the basis of serial monogamy and identified
as the basis of the family. It is characterized by patrilineal inheritance (in contrast to the
matrilineal) and the neo-local residence of the nuclear unit with connections to wider kin. A
wide range of socially acceptable variations now exists side by side with these typical
characteristics, constituting a ‘plurality of norms’. Therborn identifies five major family
types in the twentieth century, structured by three main elements: male dominance,
marriage / non-marriage in the control of sexual behaviour and birth control measures in
regulating fertility. His conclusion is that family forms are not becoming increasingly
uniform, but in fact are diverging. The family forms of two minority ethnic groups stand, in
different ways, in contrast to those of the majority. South Asian families are built around
strong family and community ties. This type of family organization offers some advantages,
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Families and Intimate Relationships
including economic ones, yet the economic success of these units threatens their own
survival as moving to affluent areas breaks down the residential basis of the community. In
contrast, families of African-Caribbean origin have far more lone-parent households than
other ethnic groups. This is often interpreted as a ‘problem’, but this is both to conflate lone
parenthood with poverty and to impose a white norm, as the marriage relationship is of less
importance than extended family relationships among this group. The lone mother is
unlikely to be bringing the child up alone as she will receive the support of her own parents
and siblings, and single mothers from this group are more likely to be in employment than
other single mothers.
Divorce rates are rising as women become less economically dependent upon men, the
social stigma attached to divorce evaporates and the desire for an emotionally rewarding
relationship becomes a socially sanctioned aspiration. Lone parenthood, overwhelmingly a
female experience, has increased significantly. During the period from the late 1930s to the
1970s, the absent father theme came about because fathers were engaged in being the
breadwinner and often, too, playing military roles. Today, political and moral concern
centres upon fathers who, as a result of separation, have infrequent contact with their
children. Some commentators have argued that the absence of a father in a family unit
places an unacceptable welfare burden upon the state and produces a generation of men
who, lacking a model of adult relationships, will struggle to form such relationships
themselves.
Major changes have been occurring in recent decades in the outlook of young women in
particular and that the values of this age group contrasted with those of older generations
in Britain. Among young women they found a desire for autonomy and self-fulfilment,
through work as much as family and an increased valuing of risk-taking and pursuit of
excitement. Statistics show that such attitudes do seem to have led to changed practices;
with many women waiting to have children until later in life, and the majority believing that
single parents can bring up children as well as a couple can, suggesting that marriage is
losing its status as the primary socially sanctioned location for child- rearing.
Many homosexual men and women choose to live in stable relationships and formalize
these in civil partnerships and marriages, where these are allowed – in many countries, such
practices are not legalized, although this situation is currently transforming rapidly. Living
outside the expectations placed upon heterosexual couples and freed from gender role
expectations, same-sex relationships may offer laboratories for the creation of new forms
of coupledom.
Today, more than 40 per cent of marriages involve at least one partner who has been
previously married. Reconstituted families are seen to offer exciting opportunities for new
patterns of parenting and familial relationships. They do face many challenges, however:
the non-resident biological parent of the child may well retain a parenting role, putting the
new marriage under strain; the parenting relationship of biological parents may be
disrupted when one of them remarries; and children from different backgrounds with
different expectations may find themselves combined into one or two new family units
whilst moving between the homes of two biological parents. Some authors now speak of
binuclear families to describe this situation. There is much negotiation and improvisation
involved in these new family forms; it is clear that whilst marriages are broken up by
divorce, families on the whole are not. A study of separated and divorced parents
conducted by Carol Smart and Bren Neale showed fluid relationships between both parents
and parents and children. Cut adrift from the traditional social and moral scripts, parents
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negotiate new relationships with children and adopt a morality of care, constantly making
decisions based on their best evaluation of the right thing to do for the child at any given
time. Increasing rates of life expectancy and good health into later life also lead to ‘beanpole’ families, where three or four generations will provide support in a mutual chain of
intergenerational care.
An alternative to marriage includes cohabitation. So widespread is this pattern that it may
be more useful to think of heterosexual relationships in terms of coupling and uncoupling
rather than stressing the significance of formal marriage. Younger couples, whether married
or cohabiting, stress their bond as a commitment freely given, whilst their parents’
generation stress the significance of obligations and duties. Although increasingly popular,
cohabitation is less stable than marriage.
Beneath this change lies a range of different circumstances shaped very much by different
phases in the life course. More people than ever leave the parental home to live
independently rather than to go into a marriage; many people live a single life between
marriages or cohabiting relationships; and an increasing number of elderly people, mainly
women, live alone after their partner has died.
Inequality within the family is persistent and shaped by gendered imbalances in housework,
caring and emotional labour. Intimate violence is overwhelmingly carried out by men upon
women and children, where much sexualized child abuse is also incest. Globally, domestic
violence against women seems to be increasing.
Three theoretical perspectives on the family are considered: functionalism, feminism and
those approaches associated with theorists of risk and post-traditional society centrally
concerned to locate an analysis of the family within a broader analysis of globalizing and
modernizing change. The functionalism of Parsons and Bales is introduced as a Classic
Study, with the twin functions of primary socialization and personality stabilization and the
instrumental/affective division of labour between the married couple. The approach is
evaluated very much as a product of its time and also as normative with regard to a white
middle-class ideal. Feminist approaches to ‘the problem with no name’ are welcomed as a
corrective to earlier idealizations of the family. The three main themes identified in feminist
analysis are: the domestic division of labour based around the male breadwinner model;
domestic violence and sexual abuse; and caring activities and emotional labour. Unequal
power relationships within the family mean that some family members benefit more than
others from these arrangements and that the source of comfort and love for some can be
the site of exploitation for others.
It is to his own work and that of Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim and Zygmunt
Bauman that Giddens turns for an account of the family and intimacy which locates
changing familial and relational patterns – divorce, lone parenting, reconstituted families,
gay families, cohabitation – in the context of globalizing modernization.
In The Transformation of Intimacy, Giddens argues that the dominant ideal becomes the
pure relationship – one in which the partners remain for so long because the needs of each
of them are sufficiently met. This is characterized by plastic sexuality, sexuality separated
from reproduction and marriage; social reflexivity, the self-conscious act of choosing who
we want to be; and confluent love, love which (unlike the idea of romantic love) accepts it
is contingent and possibly temporary. Critics point to the exclusive focus upon the adult
couple in this account, which overlooks the importance of ties with children.
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Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim emphasize that greater choice and variety in
relationships means that less can be taken for granted as a matter of habit and that all
elements in a relationship are constantly open for negotiation. These negotiations take
place most often in the context of both partners being in the labour market and also
participating in wider aspects of social and political life. The ‘battle of the sexes’ has become
the central drama of our times. Apparently competing tendencies – high divorce rates set
against high rates of remarriage, declining birth rate set against huge demand for fertility
services – simply represent two sides of the same coin. All are manifestations of the search
for love: ‘an endless cycle of hoping, regretting and trying again’. Love, they argue, has
come to occupy so central a place in modern societies because it is the perceived antidote
to the impersonal, abstract and rapidly changing nature of the rest of modern life. Even
given the growth industry in counselling, self-help groups and so on which regulate personal
lives, love is seen as an authentic expression of the self and a new source of faith.
Zygmunt Bauman’s notion of ‘liquid love’ highlights the tensions inherent in
individualization as people swing between the desire for personal freedom and the need for
security. The security which comes from long-term intimacy, and from relationships that
embrace the bad times as well as the good, is sacrificed for the relative freedom of a
network of connections that can be made and broken at will, sustained through the
constant circulation of messages which say little. The quality of relationships appears to
have been sacrificed in favour of the sheer quantity of communications across the new
media.
Carol Smart takes issue with the contemporary theories outlined in this section, arguing
instead that ‘personal life’ is a more realistic concept for capturing the continuing ways in
which people maintain their ‘connectedness’ to others through shared memories and
‘meaning-constitutive traditions’. Smart reminds us that the ‘individualization thesis’ can be
overstated. The chapter concludes by considering the debate about ‘family values’.
Traditionalists are seen to overstate the problems generated by the diversity of family
forms, while the advantages are overstated by the diversity lobby. Changing social
conditions mean that it is certainly not possible to turn back the clock, especially to the
mythic time imagined by some of the ‘traditionalists’. Yet it remains a major challenge for
societies to support both hard-won individual freedoms and the human need for lasting and
stable relationships.
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TEACHING TOPICS
1. Diversity of family forms
This diversity can be considered through trans-historical and cross-cultural comparison or
through an analysis of diversity at any one time and in any one place. Diversity in
contemporary Western societies can be seen as offering a range of equally socially accepted
ways of organizing personal life and thus constitutes a plurality of norms.
2. Violence and abuse in families
In stark contrast to ideologies of the family and the hopes and aspirations of most people,
family life, far from providing ‘a haven in a heartless world’, can be the site of enormous
abuse and violence, hidden from public view. Growing public awareness of these
dimensions of family life can be seen as one of the achievements of second-wave feminism
and links the ‘Feminist approaches’ section to the sections on ‘Intimate violence’.
3. The search for intimacy
The chapter places contemporary concerns with love, communication, equality and
individualism in the context of the changing social conditions of what is variously thought of
as post-traditional society, risk society, reflexive modernity and network society. Explicitly
considered is the work of Giddens, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim and Bauman on the place and
nature of love in contemporary relationships. This theme enables a further exploration of
love as a social construct and a socio-historically specific category.
ACTIVITIES
Activity 1: Diversity of family forms
This conclusion to a review of official statistics relating to family forms reaches very much
the same conclusions as Sociology :
We do need to be careful about exaggerating claims about the differences between
family life in the 1950s and today. … [W]e [have] distinguished family life as it was
lived in the 1950s from the idealized version so eagerly promoted today. And we
have now just seen how statistical trends describing changes over the past few
decades are themselves somewhat contradictory, showing signs of both continuity
and change.
However, in spite of this qualification, we do have evidence which suggests that
family life in the UK today is different from that of post-war years and that it is its
diversity which makes it particularly different. Each of us throughout our lives may
now live in a number of different family types and our family relationships may
take a variety of forms. This suggests a marked contrast with the 1950s. Just as the
1950s were characterized by the dominance of one particular type of family
consisting of husband and wife and children living together in the family home
(sometimes labelled the nuclear family), with husband/father as breadwinner and
wife/mother caring for children and home, so the beginning of the twenty-first
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century is characterized by a diversity of family types and a diversity of
relationships within families. Lone parent families, step families, families with
unmarried parents, families headed by same sex couples exist alongside the
traditional nuclear family. … We are probably justified in saying that there did not
exist the opportunities in the 1950s that exist today for people to choose how they
want to live. Although the two-parent family remains numerically dominant today,
this institutional form no longer defines so exclusively what it is to live in a family or
what a family is.
(Norma Sherratt and Gordon Hughes, ‘Family: from tradition to diversity?’ in
Gordon Hughes and Ross Fergusson (eds), Ordering Lives: Family, Work and
Welfare, London: Routledge/The Open University, 2000, p. 57)
1. Does the evidence presented in Sociology support the conclusions reached by Sherratt
and Hughes?
2. Through either your friends or family, arrange to talk to someone who got married in the
1950s (be quite sure that they are happy to talk to you). How much choice do they feel
they had about their decision to get married?
3. Write an outline of twenty years in the life of a family showing how family composition
changes over time. How many types of family or household structure do you expect to
live in during your lifetime?
Activity 2: Violence and abuse in families
Domestic violence was for many years hidden behind closed doors, a private trouble which
both the culture of the times and the agencies of the state chose not to admit as a public
concern. The victims of such violence were, and are, typically women and children who, cut
off in the home, were likely to blame themselves for the violence. They must have done
something wrong, they thought, if only they could work out what it was. A success of the
early second wave of the women’s movement in the 1970s was the establishment of
refuges for battered wives. From this grassroots action the extent of domestic violence
began to become clear as more women spoke of their experience. Whilst individual abusers
may benefit from psychotherapeutic interventions, anger-management courses and so on, a
key dimension of the feminist analysis of violence against women points to its being
embedded in the very structures of society. These issues are discussed in the sections
‘Intimate violence’ and ‘Domestic violence’, which you should read now. A classic radical
feminist account of domestic violence comes from Elizabeth Stanko:
That women are to blame – the strongly entrenched male point of view often held
by many doctors, police, neighbours, parents and so forth – is difficult for battered
women to confront. Many women still envision a life of domestic tranquillity. Yet
the economic and emotional ties wrap tightly around women’s uncertainty about
the domestic tranquillity when violence arises. All too often, battered women’s
responses, similar to incestually assaulted or raped women’s responses, end up in
self-blame. … Battering may be interpreted by the woman as an indication, not of
her husband’s problem but as her failure as a wife and mother. Mortified,
ashamed, humiliated, a woman may then remain silent about her abuse to others,
fearing most of all that she is ultimately to blame.
…
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Keeping the relationship together, despite the violence, is also important for
practical reasons – financial support, shelter, even access to the ability to earn a
living many times rests with the husband/boyfriend. Getting out is almost as bad as
staying in the relationship.
…
Many women do leave violent husbands/boyfriends …
Reasons for returning are similar to those for staying: hope that the husband will
change or, because he has apologized, hope that he will never strike again; concern
for the children; worry over financial difficulties; resignation to the ‘inevitability’ of
violence; fear for the safety of others; fear of being outside the home; fear of losing
the status of ‘wife’; just plain fear – these are but a few of the motivating forces
affecting women's decisions to leave or stay.'
(Elizabeth A. Stanko, Intimate Intrusions: Women’s Experience of Male Violence,
London: Routledge, 1985, pp. 187–91)
1. In what ways might different social expectations about love, marriage and family life
increase or decrease the possibility of domestic violence?
2. How do economic factors contribute to women remaining in abusive relationships?
Activity 3: The search for intimacy
Giddens writes of ‘confluent love’ and Bauman of ‘liquid love’, both of which question the
continuing primacy of romantic love in contemporary life (see Sociology pages 423-4 and
426-7). Yet one of the overall characteristics of marriage in Western societies today is that it
is based on the rhetoric of romantic love, an idea which is a distinctive characteristic of
modern culture but which takes on the appearance of being ‘natural’ and timeless. The
chapter highlights studies which show that younger couples, whether married or cohabiting,
stress their bond as a commitment freely given while their parents’ generation stress the
significance of obligations and duties. The work of German sociologists Ulrich Beck and
Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim is discussed at some length on pages 424-6 which you should
have read. They conclude that love in contemporary culture is paradoxical: on the one
hand, romantic love linked to notions of personal growth has more importance than ever
before; on the other, institutions such as marriage and parenthood are now so fragmented
and diverse that there are few clear guidelines on how to achieve and sustain loving
relationships. Our intimate relationships are freed from old constraints, creating new
opportunities and new pitfalls. We occupy a social world characterized, as the title of their
book suggests, by ‘the normal chaos of love’:
[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. … Love is
becoming a blank that the lovers must fill in themselves, across the widening
trenches of biography, even if they are directed by the lyrics of pop songs,
advertisements, pornographic scripts, light fiction or psychoanalysis. …
Time-honoured norms are fading and losing their power to determine behaviour.
What used to be carried out as a matter of course now has to be discussed,
justified, negotiated and agreed, and for that very reason it can always be
cancelled. In search of intimacy the actors turn out to be their own critics, directors
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and audience, acting, watching and discussing it, unable to agree on the rules for
achieving it as fast as they are needed. The rules constantly prove to be wrong,
unjust and therefore merely provisional. In such circumstances it seems almost like
salvation to take refuge in rigidities, in new/old black-and-white thinking.
(Ulrich Beck and Elizabeth Beck-Gernsheim, The Normal Chaos of Love, Cambridge:
Polity, 1995, pp. 5, 7)
1. ‘[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.’ Using Sociology,
produce a list of examples of different forms which these institutions take.
2. The extract suggests that one source of guidance to ‘what love is’ comes from the lyrics
of pop songs. A popular song of an earlier era suggested that ‘Love and marriage go
together like a horse and carriage’: is there any truth in this sentiment in today's world?
3. Pick any love song and write a paragraph describing its view of love and relationships.
4. Alternatives to traditional forms of marriage and family life are discussed on pages 40314. How does this relate to the idea that: ‘Time-honoured norms are fading and losing
their power to determine behaviour. What used to be carried out as a matter of course
now has to be discussed, justified, negotiated and agreed, and for that very reason it can
always be cancelled’?
5. How does the observation ‘[i]n such circumstances it seems almost like salvation to take
refuge in rigidities, in new/old black-and-white thinking’ describe elements of the debate
about family values?
REFLECTION & DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
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?
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ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. In the light of contemporary diversity, how useful is it to talk about ‘the family’ in the
singular?
2. How might abusive aspects of family life be ameliorated by changes in the positions of
men and women in wider society?
3. How is the contemporary search for love linked to wider changes in society?
MAKING CONNECTIONS
Diversity of family forms
The connections between sexuality and family formation are inevitable (if not so direct as
students may initially think), so Chapter 15 is relevant. A variety of family forms from ethnic
minority groups in contemporary Britain are also discussed and link to the issues of ethnicity
raised in Chapter 16. Functionalist accounts stress the family as the site of primary
socialization and the discussion of single-person households raises issues of the life course:
on both counts, Chapter 9 is a key source.
Violence and abuse in families
Domestic violence provides a focus here and also in Chapter 21, ‘Crime and Deviance’.
These sections are very closely aligned and could easily be taken together. Domestic abuse
is above all else a gender issue and so links to Chapter 15 and to ‘The issue of gender’
introduced in Chapter 3. Violence against children can be related to the social construction
of childhood presented in Chapter 9.
The search for intimacy
This topic is discussed using the work of Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, providing a bridge to a
discussion of social change and risk society in Chapter 5 and a consideration of Beck’s
broader theoretical work in Chapter 3. Bauman’s interest in the network society could be
linked to the discussion of Castells in Chapter 3. The emphasis on negotiation and talking in
modern relationships throws new light on the importance of face-to-face communications
discussed in Chapter 8.
SAMPLE SESSION
The search for intimacy
Aims: To place contemporary patterns of personal life in the context of social and cultural
change.
Outcome: By the end of the session students will be able to:
1. Name three sources of advice on personal relationships in contemporary Western
society.
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2. Understand that changes in the institutional forms of personal life relate to broader
social changes.
3. Analyse a pop lyric as a contemporary representation of intimate relationships.
Preparatory tasks
1. Read and make notes on the section ‘The transformation of love and intimacy’ from
page 423.
2. Read Activity 3, ‘The search for intimacy’, and make notes in answer to the questions,
fully completing Question 3.
3. Bring a copy of the song you analysed to the class with you.
Classroom tasks
1. Tutor introduction highlighting that changes in the family and relationships can be
linked to the broader transformations of modernity. (5 minutes)
2. Whole group feedback of answers to Questions 1 and 2 from Activity 3, compiling
answers on board/flip chart. (10 minutes)
3. Split into three groups to discuss the songs students have chosen. Each group to select
one song and elect a speaker to feed back their analysis to the whole group. (15
minutes)
4. Feedback from groups, including playing extracts from songs. (20 minutes)
5. Tutor-led discussion of key themes from songs related back to notions of romantic love,
individualism, the pure relationship, liquid love (10 minutes).
Assessment task
Essay: How can something as personal as love be a suitable topic for sociology?
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