By Jacqui Gabb, series co-editor of Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life. In recognition of International Day of Families.

Ideas of family have never been constant and continue to shift over time and place. Who we count as family is deeply personal and may include parents, partners, children, friends, companion animals, social solidarity networks, and colleagues. Whether families of origin or families of choice, who counts as our nearest and dearest is experienced as deeply meaningful–for better or worse. Family sociology has long debunked the myth of ‘the family’ as a unitary category. Families are what families do; they manifest through everyday practices that materialise kin relationships within the context of individual biographies and socio-cultural norms. Habituated routines thus reproduce and sustain pre-existing ideas of family through legal prescriptions, economic constraints and cultural conditions, but this does not delimit our affective imagination. We may have grown up in contexts that are antithetical to who we are now and feel far removed from ‘blood ties’. Family obligations may tether us to commitments that we might otherwise not sustain while our chosen networks of intimacy may be the source of sustenance and solace that holds us through the trials and tribulations of life. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant and perhaps lasting impact on our sense and experience of family. Politicians and ‘the science’ dictated categories of relationship: who you could see and how. In the UK, many people were physically separated from elderly relatives through the rigours of lockdowns and social distancing. Meeting up with friends was forbidden or conditional on the vagaries of the winter elements. Couples relationships were extolled to ‘get a move on and make a commitment’, with the expectation that conjugal cohabitation would result in relationship success. Single people fell off the policy radar until the introduction of ‘social bubbles’. Pet ownership soared as people worked from home and found companionship in animal-human connections. Hugging those we loved was prohibited. What we once took for granted was taken away from us. 

Mediated conversations became the norm as people struggled to sustain remote connections. Bereavement and the fragility of life is our new reality, alongside shocking rises in the incidences of domestic violence, and experiences of mental ill-heath. In other countries, the pandemic illustrated and exacerbated health inequalities and the need to think beyond national boundaries that close the door on others and promote self-interest.

What the past year has taught us about family is thus hugely important. Ordinariness has never been more precious. The everyday is now appreciated and cherished. This shift in experience and life perspective rests at the literal and conceptual heart of our series, Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life, which has a longstanding investment in understanding how we live and love, and the ways we make sense of attachments to others. 

David Morgan, one of the founding editors of the series passed last year. His death deeply impacted on us, as friends, colleagues, and sociological family of choice. David’s legacy in the field of family sociology will last the test of time. ‘Family practices’ are now the means through which we understand and study kin relations, focusing on dailyness and the meanings of interactions. Due celebration of David’s life has been put on pause until we can all meet in person. For the Palgrave series, we will honour his contribution by continuing to publish engaging and informed research on family and intimate life. Families, in all their myriad diversity, reflect the intersections of public and private lives and remain a vibrant area of sociological enquiry.