FAMILY

• Individualism


  Emphasis on the individual and their independence from social groups
• Relationality


  Emphasis on the importance of social relationships and interdependence
• Two problems for sociological approaches to the family

  • How to define the family: the question of family identity
  • How to define family changes: the question about family changes
• Perspectives on the couple and family relationship

  • Marital Decline Perspective
  • Marital Resilience Perspective
• Perspectives on the family

  • Family as a depersonalizing agent (Cooper)
  • Liquid love (Bauman)
  • The normal chaos of love (Beck)
  • De-institutionalization and re-definition of marriage (Burgess)
  • Decline of "companionate marriage" (Cherlin)
  • Social construction of marriage (Berger and Kellner)
  • Semantics of "love conversation" (Cavell)
  • Specificity of the institutional and compositional aspect in the couple (Kaufmann)
  • The couple as pure communication (Luhmann)
  • Marriage as a barrier to individual happiness (Adorno, Horkheimer)
  • Pure relationship (Giddens)
• Individualization


  The process by which individuals become more independent from social groups and institutions
• Bauman: 'Loneliness generates insecurity, but so does the romantic relationship. In a relationship, you can feel as insecure as you would be without it, or even worse. Only the names you give to your anxiety change. The protagonists of this book are men and women of our contemporaries, who yearn for the security of aggregation and a hand they can count on in times of need. Yet they are the same ones they are afraid of becoming entangled in stable relationships and fear that a close relationship will bring burdens they do not want or think they can bear.'
• Beck: 'The normal chaos of love is the one that arises from the contradiction between the overwhelming weight that the discourse on love has in our society and the difficulty observed by all, normal indeed, of loving. Men and women, having dissolved the integrative structures of family and kinship, are forced to give themselves the rules of their life individually. Faced with the overestimation of love in public discourse, largely made up of advertising and entertainment, in the reality of the couple it becomes more and more an empty form that is left for lovers to fill with meaning.'
• Giddens: 'Intimate relationships, following the profound changes they have undergone, tend increasingly towards the 'pure relationship' model. Before, there was romantic love with the inevitable marriage 'until death will not separate us'; today, there is convergent love. It "presupposes equality in the accounts of affective giving and having, all the more so as the love relationship approaches the model of the pure relationship" (Giddens 1995, p. 72). "What keeps the pure relationship standing is acceptance by both partners, 'until further notice', of the fact that each draws sufficient benefits from the relationship to be deemed worth continuing "(ibidem, p. 73).'
• Relational approach


  Focuses on relationships rather than defining what a family is
• Family genome


  • Latent structural pattern present since the beginning of the history of civilisation in all past cultures, consisting of a dual relationship with unique characteristics:
  • It connects the male and the female genders
  • Produces vertical bonds between the generations
  • Creates interrelated genealogies
• How to identify the family

  As a social relationship of full reciprocity between sexes and generations, to be neither replaced nor confused with anything else
• Elements of the family genome

  • Gift
  • Reciprocity
  • Generativity
  • Sexuality as conjugal love
• Religo


  To inter-link
• Refero


  To refer to
• Generative dimension


  Wherever a bond is formed, the subjects' history is altered, thus generating novelty, a surplus which can only emerge when considering the relationship itself rather than just the individuals
• Family transition


  A critical phase following an event which significantly modifies a family's social system and requires an adaptation of the family's relationships
• Types of family transitions

  • Normative
  • Non-normative
  • Due to internal factors
  • Due to external factors
• Relationist approaches


  Do not adopt an ontological viewpoint when focusing on relationships, attempt to sidestep the definition of what a family is, in favour of a more comprehensive approach
• Relationist approaches


  • Configurational perspective (Widmer)
  • Study of family practices (Morgan, Smart, Finch & Mason)
• Configurational perspective


  • Families are defined by actualised relationships rather than predefined units
  • Dyads should be considered part of a wider network of relationships
  • Both structural aspects and individuals' identities/perceptions/projects must be considered
  • Historical and spatial dimensions are emphasised
• Configuration


  A set of interdependent and mutually oriented individuals, where each dyad is influenced by the shape of the whole
• Family network method


  A "socio-cognitive" approach that identifies existing relationships among all members of the family configuration, not just with respect to the interviewee
• Riitta Jallinoja


  Analyzes the dualism between the abstract and concrete in concepts of family, kinship and family configurations, using the rule of genealogical proximity
• Family configurations


  Outcome of ongoing assembling processes, based on constantly changing movements of re-association and re-assembly
• Types of family configurations

  • Friends
  • Alliance
  • Brothers & Sisters
  • Relationship
  • Vertical
  • Nuclear
  • Without Partner
  • Post-Divorce
• Configurational perspective


  Families are ever evolving through time, in ways that are never fully intended by individuals belonging to them
• Life trajectories


  1. Marriages

  2. Births

  3. Sicknesses

  4. Residential moves

  5. Divorces

  6. Deaths of family members
• Types of family configurations

  • Friends
  • Alliance
  • Brothers & Sisters
  • Relationship
  • Vertical
  • Nuclear
  • Without Partner
  • Post-Divorce
• Families "that matter" - that is, people deemed important and significant - go far beyond the nuclear family
• For women forming a new family, both the new and the previous alliance represent important sources of interdependence
• Carol Smart


  Her main interests over the last few years have been family life and intimacy and how people conduct their personal lives
• Smart has done much research on divorce and separation and how this affects children, the couple and other kin, and on gay and lesbian civil partnerships and their commitment ceremonies
• Smart was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to the social
• Rationality


  The term relationality indicates that people are always related to others, not necessarily relatives; people exist within intentional networks, that is, intentionally created and on which there is a strong investment
• Memory


  The term memory indicates the capacity by which families influence and shape what should and should not be remembered, thus shaping a common history and thus an identity
• Biography


  The term biography indicates the attention to be had with respect to the explanatory power of individual histories, highlighting the differentiation of family members' experiences, overcoming homogenization and homologation
• Embeddedness


  The term embeddedness indicates the tenacity and strength of the relationship that makes people bond as part of a whole, manifested in physical similarity, shared tastes, as well as values and passions
• Imaginary


  The term imaginary indicates the way in which relationships exist in our thoughts, made explicit in family practices (planning vacations, collecting photos, forbidding talk of illness or death)
• Jennifer Mason


  Research about kinship, 'relatedness', affinities, and connectedness in everyday personal lives