Stacey : postmodern families

• what does Stacey argue?


  -greater freedom & choice has benefitted women

  -enabled them to free themselves from patriarchal oppression and shape their family arrangements to meet their needs
• what did Stacey find?

  -women have been the main agents of change in the family

  > many women she interviewed had rejected the traditional housewife-mother role

  > they worked, returned to education as adults, improved job prospects, divorced, remarried

  -these women created new family types to better suit their needs (divorce extended family)
• divorce extended family


  -many women make & maintain social connections with people they met through relationships that have now ended

  > keeping in touch with ex-in-laws

  > members usually female
• Pam Gamma - divorce extended family

  -Pam created a divorce extended family

  -she married young and then divorced & cohabited for several years before remarrying

  -her second husband was also married before

  -she formed a divorce

  -extended family with Shirley, the woman cohabiting with her first husband

  -helped each other financially & domestically
• what does the case of Pam Gamma illustrate


  -postmodern families are diverse

  -their shape depends on the active choices people make about how they want to live their lives
• what does David Morgan argue?


  -it's pointless trying to make large-scale generalisations about 'the family'

  -it isn't a simple thing like functionalists say it is

  -family is simply whatever arrangements those involved choose to call their family
• what does David Morgan say sociologists should focus their attention on?


  -how people create their own diverse family lives & practices

  -can explore this by means of life course analysis