The personal life perspectives on families

• Believe all other theories suffer from 2 weaknesses:
• 1. They tend to assume that the traditional nuclear family is the dominant family type: This ignores the increased diversity of families today. Compared with 50 years ago. many more people now live in other families, such as lone-parent families, stepfamilies and so on.
• 2) They are all structural theories: they assume that families and their members are simply passive puppets manipulated by the structure of society to perform certain functions - e.g. to provide the economy with a mobile labour force, or to serve the needs of capitalism or men.
• Sociologists influenced by interactionist and postmodernist perspectives reject the structural view. They argue that structural theories ignore the fact that we have some choice in creating our family relationship.
• They argue that to understand the family today, we must focus on the meanings its members give to their relationships and situations, rather than on the family's supposed 'functions'.
• The sociology of personal life:

  It is strongly influenced by interactionist ideas and argues that to understand families, we must start from the point of view of the individuals concerned and the meanings they give to their relationships.
• The sociology of personal life:

  Contrasts with other theories:

  • Functionalism, Marxism and feminism take a 'top down', structural approach.
  • Personal life shares the 'bottom up' approach of interactionism. It emphasises the meanings that individual family members hold and how these shape their actions and relationships.
• The sociology of personal life - Beyond ties of blood and marriage:

  Take a wider view of relationships than just traditional 'family' relationships based on blood or marriage ties.
• The sociology of personal life - Beyond ties of blood and marriage:

  Personal life perspective draw our attention to a range of other personal or intimate relationships that are important to people even though they may not be conventionally defined as 'family'. E.G. all kinds of relationships that individuals see as significant and that give them a sense of identity, belonging or relatedness.
• The sociology of personal life - Beyond ties of blood and marriage:


  Relationships with friends: who may be 'like a sister or brother' to you.
• The sociology of personal life - Beyond ties of blood and marriage:

  Fictive kin: close friends who are treated as relatives, e.g. your mum's who you called 'auntie'
• The sociology of personal life - Beyond ties of blood and marriage:

  Gay and lesbian 'chosen families': made up of a supportive network of close friends, ex-partners and others, who are not related by blood or marriage.
• The sociology of personal life - Beyond ties of blood and marriage:


  Relationships with dead relatives: who live on in people's memories and continue to shape their identities and affect their actions.
• The sociology of personal life - Beyond ties of blood and marriage:

  Even relationships with pets: Tipper - found in her study of children's views of family relationships, that children frequently saw their pets as 'part of the family'.
• The sociology of personal life - Beyond ties of blood and marriage:


  These and similar relationships raise questions about what counts as family from the point of view of the individuals involved. E.G. Nordqvist and Smart - research on donor conceived children 'what counts as family when your child shares a genetic link with a 'relative stranger' but not with your partner?'
• The sociology of personal life - Donor-conceived children:

  Nordqvist and Smart - found that the issue of blood and genes raised a range of feelings. Some parents emphasised the importance of social relationships over genetic ones in forming family bonds.
• The sociology of personal life - Donor-conceived children:

  However, difficult feelings could flare up for a non-genetic parent if somebody remarked that the child looked like them. Differences in appearance also led parents to wonder about the donor's identity, about possible 'donor siblings' and whether these counted as family for their child.
• The sociology of personal life - Donor-conceived children:


  For lesbian couples, there was additional problems. These included concerns about equality between the genetic and non-genetic mothers and that the donor might be treated as the 'real' second parent.
• The sociology of personal life - A03:

  Nordqvist and Smart's study illustrates the value of the personal life perspective as compared with top down, structural approaches. It helps us to understand how people themselves construct and define their relationships as 'family', rather than imposing traditional sociological definitions of family from the outside.
• The sociology of personal life - A03:

  However, it can be accused of taking too broad a view. Critics argue that, by including a wide range of different kinds of personal relationships, we ignore what is special about relationships that are based on blood or marriage.
• The sociology of personal life - A03:

  It rejects the top down view taken by other perspectives, such as functionalism.
• The sociology of personal life - A03:

  It does see intimate relationships as performing the important function of providing us with a sense of belonging and relatedness.
• The sociology of personal life - A03:

  However, unlike functionalism, the personal life perspectives recognises that relatedness is not always positive. E.G. people may be trapped in violent, abusive relationships or simply in ones where they suffer everyday unhappiness, hurt or lack of respect.