Personal life perspective

• Structural Theories two major weaknesses

  1. Ignores family diversity, assuming the traditional nuclear family is the most dominant family type.
  2. Assume members of the family are puppets manipulated by the structure of society to provide service.
• To understand families today, we must focus on the MEANINGS its members give to relationships and situations rather than the family’s ‘functions’.
• PLP takes family definition beyond blood or marriage


  The following relationships are viewed as significant for individuals:

  1. Relationships with friends
  2. Fictive kin (close friends as family)
  3. LGBTQ+ / chosen families
  4. Relationships with dead relatives who live on in memories.
  5. Relationships with pets

  • Tipper (2011) found many view pets as family members
• PM view - Giddens & Beck 


  Individualisation Thesis

  • We have been freed or disembeded from traditional roles and structures so we are able to choose the family that meets our needs and wants at the point in our lives.
  • Giddens: This has been caused by advancements in availability of contraception and female independence. Which has also changed the basis of free relationships - pure relationships.
• PM View - Stacey.


  Greater freedom and choice has benefitted women. She used life history interviews in silicon valley and found that women have led change in families not men.

  • Divorce-extended family
• By focussing on meanings behind relationships, we choose families based on what we want and need (experience not choice)


  Smart & Nordqvist: looked into donor conceived children and found their definition of a mother was more linked to the time taken to raise a child rather than the cell that started it. However difficult feelings can flare up for the non-genetic parent. For LGBT mothers, is the donor the ‘second parent’ as well as possibilities of ‘donor siblings’ or grandparents?
• AO3:

  • _ Too broad, by including a range of different kinds of personal relationships we ignore what is special about blood or marriage based relationships.
  • + Helps us to understand how people construct and define relationships as ‘family’ rather than traditional sociological definitions based on blood or genes.