Preface and Acknowledgements
This second edition of the key text A Sociology of Family Life forms an authoritative guide to sociological debates about family life, intimacies and personal relationships. The book provides a topical and comprehensive guide to key sociological debates and empirical research on personal and family life. It draws together, in an accessible form, some of the most significant concepts, approaches and events that have contributed to sociological research on family life and intimacies. This edition has been revised throughout. It could not have happened without Pablo Gracia’s superb co-authorship.
This new edition includes:
revised and updated chapters
coverage of recent development in the field
coverage of pertinent new movements, debates and events
an extensive updated set of references
a set of questions for reflection and discussion at the ends of chapters.
We extend our thanks to the following:
our respective universities, Newcastle University and Trinity College Dublin, for their supportive research environments
Jonathan Skerrett, commissioning editor at Polity for his excellent guidance in facilitating the production of this second edition and, most importantly, for inviting Pablo Gracia to collaborate in the project
Séan Lennon for his excellent contribution as research assistant in conducting an exhaustive literature review, editing references and making relevant suggestions for the new content of the book
our families, friends and personal communities who have supported and sustained us while the book was written, both before and during the Covid-19 lockdown.
Deborah Chambers and Pablo Gracia
Newcastle and Dublin
April 2021
Introduction
Recent scholarship on personal relationships and family life suggests that new intimacies and new kinds of commitment are being forged in present-day societies. Relationships and living arrangements that are now commonplace include single-parent families, cohabiting couples, post-divorce and ‘blended’ families, same-sex unions, ‘living apart but together’ (LATS), ‘families of choice’, ‘friends as family’ and queer intimacies. Family diversity is said to have coincided with aspirations towards more ‘democratic relationships’ in the sphere of intimacy. Strong desires for more egalitarian and more open personal relationships influences not only how parents relate to their children, with a new emphasis on childhood agency and the rights of the child. They also legitimate lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) relationships.1
Rising divorce rates, teenage pregnancies, single parenthood, same-sex unions and cohabiting couples are often viewed as threats to the core values of a society. However, this book explains that these trends do not amount to evidence of a decline of commitment and caregiving responsibilities. The wide range of personal relationships and living arrangements across societies is a sign that the concept of ‘family’ is becoming more fluid and variable. The approval and popularity of the term ‘family’, which is being extended to describe close friendships and alternative kinds of intimacies, suggest a strong social yearning to preserve principles of mutual commitment and reciprocity that bind people together. This diversity in living arrangements thrives despite government attempts to standardize families through housing policies, tax breaks for married couples, divorce and post-divorce parenting laws, family planning, and levels of access to new reproductive technologies, and so on.
The first central aim of this book is to document and analyse the growing diversity in personal and family life, while assessing the complex range of institutional constraints and freedoms that influence or shape these relationships. A growing public recognition of family diversity has triggered alarm among certain politicians, religious leaders, academics and journalists. The welfare of children and elderly relatives is viewed as a major issue in an era characterized by heavy employment commitments among family members, and, conversely, low pay or unemployment. Complex forms of commitment and care are being experienced by parents and wider kin at a time when governments in many countries are reducing social welfare provisions. Public debate about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ parenting has been fuelled by anxieties over collapsing moral standards caused by the decline of ‘proper’ family values. Moral panics about ‘family decline’ expressed by governments, the media and religious bodies are regularly accompanied by calls to return to the superior values of some past golden age of family life. Even though it is just one of many diverse living arrangements, the nuclear family model remains a powerful icon of tradition and stability, often perceived as an antidote to today’s social problems. However, as the following chapters show, upholding one version of family life as a model – white, heterosexual, middle class – not only obstructs knowledge about how families actually live. It can have negative consequences for individuals and families that diverge from this ideal. Family diversity is therefore a key theme within this book.
A second, related theme is intersectionality. This involves the study of the intersections of gender, sexuality, social class, race and ethnicity to assess how these social factors frame personal and family life. Intersectional approaches identify patterns of domination involving interlinked modes of oppression (Collins and Bilge 2016). Intersectionality enables scholars to scrutinize power disparities in private and public spheres that operate as forms of social stratification and inequality. Applying intersectionality perspectives to the analysis of changing family life allows scholars to spotlight social inequities, privilege and oppression as part of a critical theoretical perspective on families. Since the millennium, critical approaches have been used to frame analyses of family life to ensure that they are inclusive and relevant. As Few-Demo and Allen state:
Gender, feminist, and intersectional approaches offer critical analyses of how women, men, and children in different kinds of families experience privilege and marginalization in private and public contexts based on their gender, race, social class, sexual and gender orientations, nationality, among other forms of stratification. (Few-Demo and Allen 2020:326)
The push for legalized marriage equality for same-sex couples, Black Lives Matter and the Me Too movement are among high-profile political and social efforts aimed at securing rights and freedoms for marginalized groups (Few-Demo and Allen 2020). The growing visibility of diverse family structures, individual identities and changes in gender roles within both public and domestic spheres has transformed public conversations about intimacy and personal relations (Coontz 2016). Gender, sexuality, social class, race and ethnicity affect power relations in private and public domains, and affect families’ access to material resources. They also influence how families navigate oppressions such as poverty and discrimination. Scholars examine the interconnections between family life and stratified social systems that normalize inequalities of race, gender, sexuality and class which encompass social systems and institutions that determine who is granted access to welfare, education and health resources. Research evidence on the effects of the Covid-19 crisis reveals that the pandemic has exacerbated social inequalities across multiple spheres of family life, such as employment and home life, with a spike in domestic violence and an increased burden on women’s domestic and caring roles (Blundell et al. 2020)
A third related theme of this book is the study of changing families and intimacies through a global lens. A range of transnational topics are dealt with across the chapters
