Personal Life Perspective

• What does the personal life perspective believe about the family ?

  Due to greater diversity of life choices and how people often form more meaningful relationships with individuals who are not their blood relatives, family is hard to define
• Explain the connectedness thesis

  Smart argues that we are fundamentally social beings whose choices are always made "within a web on connectedness"
• What does Finch & Mason say about the connectedness thesis ?

  Finch & Mason (1993)

  
  

  Their study of extended families found that individuals are embedded within family connectedness which restricts their freedom of choice

  
  

  We are also embedded in Class & Gender structures which limit our choices about the kinds of relationships, identities and families we can create for ourselves
• While Postmodernists argue these structures are disappearing, May (2013) argues that they are just being reshaped
• What does Anna Einasdottir argue?

  Anna Einasdottir (2011)

  
  

  While lesbianism is now tolerated, heteronormativity means that many still feel forced to remain in the closet