Personal Life Perspective

• Carol Smart

  • Sociology of family is ethnocentric (judge other families)
  • Can develop relationships with those outside family e.g pets + friends
  • People choose their own support network / family
  • Family not in decline but different
  • Interconnected concepts influencing personal relationships: memory, history of who we met, relationality
• Strengths

  • Doesn't impose trad. definitions
  • Understands how people construct and define relationships as family
  • Recognises relatedness not always positive
• Weaknesses

  • Too broad of a view > ignores specialty about relationships based on blood
  • Many still influenced by family structure
• Personal life perspective


  Interactions between people and networks connecting us
• Fictive kin

  Relationship treated as family even though it's not based on blood/marriage