Family Life
Chapter 9 Summary

This chapter identifies the agencies at work in modern society, which promote nuclear family living. Different perspectives on the virtues of this form of family are examined and the assumptions about individual freedom and obligation underpinning these are explored. The central idea is of the historical and cultural specificity of nuclear family living - that it is not 'natural' or inevitable, or God-given, but a family form which emerged as an ideal in a particular kind of place at a particular time in history. The chapter begins with a comparison of Parsonian and Foucauldian ideas and explores the impact of medical discourses on family life. The impact of welfarism and the reaction of various perspectives to it provide the context for an examination of viewpoints about the nuclear family. Towards the end, evidence about an increase in diversity in family living offers an opportunity for alternative theories of modern family life to be articulated. In conclusion, the chapter examines the importance of the concept of life-course, as a way of introducing postmodern approaches to family life, with their emphasis on diversity and difference.