Читать книгу A Sociology of Family Life - Deborah Chambers - Страница 6

Recent scholarship on personal relationships and family life suggests that new intimacies and new kinds of commitment are being forged in present-day societies. Relationships and living arrangements that are now commonplace include single-parent families, cohabiting couples, post-divorce and ‘blended’ families, same-sex unions, ‘living apart but together’ (LATS), ‘families of choice’, ‘friends as family’ and queer intimacies. Family diversity is said to have coincided with aspirations towards more ‘democratic relationships’ in the sphere of intimacy. Strong desires for more egalitarian and more open personal relationships influences not only how parents relate to their children, with a new emphasis on childhood agency and the rights of the child. They also legitimate lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) relationships.¹

Rising divorce rates, teenage pregnancies, single parenthood, same-sex unions and cohabiting couples are often viewed as threats to the core values of a society. However, this book explains that these trends do not amount to evidence of a decline of commitment and caregiving responsibilities. The wide range of personal relationships and living arrangements across societies is a sign that the concept of ‘family’ is becoming more fluid and variable. The approval and popularity of the term ‘family’, which is being extended to describe close friendships and alternative kinds of intimacies, suggest a strong social yearning to preserve principles of mutual commitment and reciprocity that bind people together. This diversity in living arrangements thrives despite government attempts to standardize families through housing policies, tax breaks for married couples, divorce and post-divorce parenting laws, family planning, and levels of access to new reproductive technologies, and so on.

The first central aim of this book is to document and analyse the growing diversity in personal and family life, while assessing the complex range of institutional constraints and freedoms that influence or shape these relationships. A growing public recognition of family diversity has triggered alarm among certain politicians, religious leaders, academics and journalists. The welfare of children and elderly relatives is viewed as a major issue in an era characterized by heavy employment commitments among family members, and, conversely, low pay or unemployment. Complex forms of commitment and care are being experienced by parents and wider kin at a time when governments in many countries are reducing social welfare provisions. Public debate about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ parenting has been fuelled by anxieties over collapsing moral standards caused by the decline of ‘proper’ family values. Moral panics about ‘family decline’ expressed by governments, the media and religious bodies are regularly accompanied by calls to return to the superior values of some past golden age of family life. Even though it is just one of many diverse living arrangements, the nuclear family model remains a powerful icon of tradition and stability, often perceived as an antidote to today’s social problems. However, as the following chapters show, upholding one version of family life as a model – white, heterosexual, middle class – not only obstructs knowledge about how families actually live. It can have negative consequences for individuals and families that diverge from this ideal. Family diversity is therefore a key theme within this book.

A second, related theme is intersectionality. This involves the study of the intersections of gender, sexuality, social class, race and ethnicity to assess how these social factors frame personal and family life. Intersectional approaches identify patterns of domination involving interlinked modes of oppression (Collins and Bilge 2016). Intersectionality enables scholars to scrutinize power disparities in private and public spheres that operate as forms of social stratification and inequality. Applying intersectionality perspectives to the analysis of changing family life allows scholars to spotlight social inequities, privilege and oppression as part of a critical theoretical perspective on families. Since the millennium, critical approaches have been used to frame analyses of family life to ensure that they are inclusive and relevant. As Few-Demo and Allen state:

Gender, feminist, and intersectional approaches offer critical analyses of how women, men, and children in different kinds of families experience privilege and marginalization in private and public contexts based on their gender, race, social class, sexual and gender orientations, nationality, among other forms of stratification. (Few-Demo and Allen 2020:326)

The push for legalized marriage equality for same-sex couples, Black Lives Matter and the Me Too movement are among high-profile political and social efforts aimed at securing rights and freedoms for marginalized groups (Few-Demo and Allen 2020). The growing visibility of diverse family structures, individual identities and changes in gender roles within both public and domestic spheres has transformed public conversations about intimacy and personal relations (Coontz 2016). Gender, sexuality, social class, race and ethnicity affect power relations in private and public domains, and affect families’ access to material resources. They also influence how families navigate oppressions such as poverty and discrimination. Scholars examine the interconnections between family life and stratified social systems that normalize inequalities of race, gender, sexuality and class which encompass social systems and institutions that determine who is granted access to welfare, education and health resources. Research evidence on the effects of the Covid-19 crisis reveals that the pandemic has exacerbated social inequalities across multiple spheres of family life, such as employment and home life, with a spike in domestic violence and an increased burden on women’s domestic and caring roles (Blundell et al. 2020)

A third related theme of this book is the study of changing families and intimacies through a global lens. A range of transnational topics are dealt with across the chapters and examined in depth within a group of three key chapters (chapters 6 to 8). These sections focus on family migration and the transnational nature of intimate relations (chapter 6); the impact of population policies on fertility patterns and family life (chapter 7); and the use of new reproductive technologies to create the ‘perfect’ or ‘proper’ family (chapter 8). Global issues are approached with a particular emphasis on family structures and family relations in developing and under-developed countries.² They cast light on the ways in which personal and family life is influenced by transnational labour dynamics, state policies and changing cultural values in relation to issues such as fertility, arranged marriages, transnational caregiving and marriage migration.

The range of case-study examples drawn on from non-western societies are chosen according to whether reliable research data are available. The aim is to consider those family structures, customs and patterns of social change that contrast with western experiences or challenge western ways of thinking about ‘the family’. Reflecting the availability and relevance of research from these regions, a focus on India and China is a consistent thread. This is particularly the case in the chapters that deal with transnational family processes at a macro-sociological level by assessing how individuals and families negotiate wider and large-scale social systems, including the link between globalization and marriage strategies, the regulation of families through state policies on population and fertility control, and transnational comparisons of the management and uses of reproductive technologies. All these topics draw attention to the ways in which state policies, religious and cultural customs, and patriarchal structures are shaped by, and regulate, families – particularly women’s and children’s lives.