postmodernists - families and households

• The central idea of postmodern views of the family is that there's a much wider range of living options available these days - because of social and cultural changes. There are traditional nuclear families, stepfamilies, cohabiting unmarried couples, single people flat sharing, more divorced people etc.
• postmodernist sociologist Judith Stacey (1990) reckons there's such a diversity of family types, relationships and lifestyles that they'll never be one dominant type of family in Western culture again. She says that family structures in Western society are varied and flexible. This means that people can not get stuck in one fixed family structure.
• Postmodernists say the key thing is the idea that contemporary living is so flexible that one individual can experience lots of different types of family in their lifetime.
• Postmodernists see this diversity and flexibility as positive - because it means individuals can always choose from several options depending on what suits their personal needs and lifestyle. People aren't stopped by tradition.
• O'Brien and Jones concluded from their UK research that there was less variety in family types than Stacey reported, that most individuals actually experienced only one of two different types of family in their lifetime.