Personal Life Perspective

• Personal Life Perspective believes that we can choose to create our own familial relationships
• Personal Life Perspectives criticises structural theories for two main reasons;

  • Assume the nuclear family is the dominant one
  • Assume people are 'passive puppets' in society
• A passive puppet would mean someone has no choice in defining their own identity
• People have choice in their family by many ways, such as non-blood family and donor children
• Non-blood family can be 'fictive kin' - were someone have created their own family that is not conventionally created
• Nordquist and Smart say that family can be based on 'social relations'