Baudrillard : Postmodern View of Family

• The dominant ideology taught us that getting married and having children was the social norm.

  Our life is affected by media saturation, the media presents simulacra and

  hyperreality. Simulacra is the blurring of the real and the fictional such as soap operas where people believe life is like it is portrayed in the media. Hyper-reality is the inability to distinguish reality from non-reality, such as reality TV. Baudrillard suggests that our image of

  reality is distorted.
• The dominant ideology taught us that getting married and having children was the social norm.

  We can be whatever we want to be. Our identity is like 'pic'n'mix' where we can select the parts of culture which fit in with the lifestyle we want. Baudrillard called this 'the end of the social' because the expectations and restrictions from social norms have gone.