Читать книгу A Sociology of Family Life - Deborah Chambers - Страница 8

The book’s chapters are organized in two broad ways. The first arrangement comprises an outline of major theoretical perspectives followed by critiques and reconsiderations generated by empirical studies. This approach is taken in chapters that deal with theories and debates about intimacy, parenting and childhood. For instance, new scholarship in feminist and queer studies on same-sex intimacies, parenting and household practices that contest entrenched explanations of ‘family’ and parenting have redefined approaches to family and personal life. Examples of this body of research are then assessed to show how debates about family life and intimacy have been advanced. Likewise, scholarship on Black and minority ethnic families and intimacies has either informed or challenged conventional thinking about family forms and meanings, and is included to allow students to consider the discrepancies between standard and new ways of thinking about families. Other chapters are organized around a second, case-study approach. This approach is used in sections that address global themes including migration and marriage strategies, fertility and populations, and reproductive technologies. These sections draw on circumstances and events in specific countries through a comparative set of examples to illustrate key processes and changes in family forms and practices.

Chapter 1 traces the historical roots associated with key concepts of kinship and family in sociology. Foundational approaches to the family and kinship, developed in anthropology and sociology from the late nineteenth century to the 1980s, are outlined. The way classical social theories defined family life and how their perspectives influenced modern thought are assessed. The roots of some of today’s enduring ideas about the family are uncovered by outlining the perspectives of nineteenth-century thinkers such as Marx and Engels. The early twentieth-century structural-functionalist approach, led by American sociologist Talcott Parsons, proposed that the small, nuclear version of the family was perfectly adapted to the needs of modern society. He introduced new ideas about how the nuclear family’s sex roles operate to reproduce the population and a stable workforce. For Parsons, the family served two vital functions: the socialization of children, and the stabilization of adult personalities. The strict division of sex roles, between the father’s instrumental role as breadwinner and the mother’s expressive role as homemaker, was viewed as well adapted to modern industrial society. The functionalist model has had a major impact on official discourses about the ideal nuclear family in the UK and USA from the 1960s. It influenced academic research and government strategies up to the late twentieth century through policies on child and family poverty, including childrearing practices, childhood education, the role and moral framework of parenthood, fertility and access to new reproductive technologies. Chapter 1 also assesses the impact of functionalist approaches in studies of Black and minority ethnic families in the USA and UK, where extended and matriarchal,³ one-parent families were perceived as deviations from a nuclear family form.

Public anxieties about loosening family ties in modern industrial societies proved to be unfounded, according to many studies of the mid twentieth century. The strength and importance of generational ties were revealed in classic British studies of family and kinship (for example, Bell 1968; Rosser and Harris 1965; Young and Willmott 1957). Informal relationships were highly significant at personal and structural levels. Chapter 1 also addresses the principal feminist perspectives of the 1970s and 1980s on the family, sex, gender and patriarchy,⁴ which directly critiqued the functionalist perspective. This feminist work revealed the ways in which the institution of ‘the family’ reproduces patriarchal and heteronormative versions of masculinity and femininity. Feminist perspectives contributed to new understandings of how inequalities of gender, class and race are reproduced through family and wider social structures and relations.

Public concerns about the erosion of mutual responsibility and long-term commitment lie at the heart of arguments about a decline in family values. Chapter 2 explores theories and debates from the 1990s about changes in intimate relationships. The concept of ‘individualization’ advanced by a group of scholars including Giddens, and Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, to explain the rise of more egalitarian intimate relationships is assessed in depth. The chapter explains changing ideas about love and commitment, the changing nature of the self and society, and the notion of the pure relationship. Children are held as providers of a more permanent love during a time when long-term commitment between adults is suspect. These explanations are challenged by a range of evidence from empirical research which is addressed in the second half of the chapter. A series of recent and mainly qualitative studies on intimacy has provoked a reassessment of late modern theory and fed into critiques of the individualization thesis.

Debates about changes in parenting values and practices are assessed in chapter 3. Changing notions and practices of motherhood, pinpointed by feminist debates, correspond with women’s improved education and entrance into the labour market. The identification of a ‘new’ parenthood that emerges out of separation and divorce has shaped definitions and practice of both mothering and fathering. The theme of parenting is followed by a focus on current ideas about fatherhood and masculinity. New models of fatherhood have been prompted by the erosion of the male breadwinner role, the rise in post-divorce families and families without fathers. Public discourses about a new kind of Dad, based on the model of ‘active fatherhood’, are displacing the notion of the father as ‘male breadwinner’ and unemotional disciplinarian. As a result, fatherhood is being reconstructed in law and social policy. The chapter addresses the idea of ‘involved fatherhood’ promoted by the state in the UK and USA, followed by a critical analysis of the harmful consequences of domestic violence, especially among women and children. The chapter also addresses the issue of parenting among ethnic minority families. Furthermore, the challenges and opportunities faced by LGBTQ+ parents in contemporary societies are examined in the chapter.

Chapter 4 traces changes in childhood. It highlights the tensions between opposing accounts of childhood: a traditional romantic ideal which affirms that the right of a child is ‘to be a child’, and the idea of the child as an active agent with rights. The practicalities of contemporary childrearing practices are set against this romantic ideal and often lead to confusion among both parents and children. Childrearing is now depicted as a negotiation between parent and child, within a process monitored by the state and other agencies such as schools. The impact on childhood of post-divorce families, lone parenting and poverty are examined. Contemporary approaches to childhood draw attention to children’s accelerating contact with the media, commercialism and new digital technologies. Children’s sustained engagement with media devices complicates the idealized and sentimental notion of childhood. For example, the introduction of a wide range of media gadgets into the home, together with children’s access to mobile devices, prompts a renegotiation of household relationships between children and parents. The chapter also shows that in certain non-western societies, childhood is now shaped by elements of privatized and individualized family life familiar to western societies, suggesting that a western trend of home-based privatized childhoods may be a globalizing tendency. Changes occurring in contemporary urban China are outlined to offer an insight into the way these changes are impacting transnationally.

Chapter 5 focuses on ageing societies and the life course in the context of the family. The term ‘life course’ is used in sociology to indicate an individual’s passage through life, which is generally studied as a sequence of significant life events that include birth, marriage, parenthood, divorce and retirement. Major changes in family responsibilities over the life course have been driven by a rise in life expectancy, an extension of the age of reproduction and longer periods of ‘post-parental’ life, as well as rising divorce rates. In ‘ageing’ western societies, it is often assumed that older people are a growing burden on the young. However, patterns of reciprocity between older and younger family members show that older relatives, particularly older women, often take on considerable responsibilities as grandparents. The chapter looks at ageing and intergenerational ties to examine how families and households deal with the anxieties of caring for the elderly in both the global north and global south. Various configurations of social support, including friends, neighbours and extended kin, are now centrally involved in caregiving in an ageing society, as exemplified by non-traditional family forms, such as LGBTQ+ couples. New research agendas that address the global dimensions of family life have been developed, with the maintenance of generational and network-based ties across different nation states focused on. The chapter therefore assesses the impact of migration on the care of the elderly by describing a series of case-study examples.

Scholars have tended to study globalization in terms of capital, changing state and market mechanisms and new technologies. In chapter 6, globalization is approached in a specific manner that spotlights the ways in which globalization shapes and is shaped by families. Family systems and family relations interconnect with and support large-scale processes of economic globalization. How families negotiate and are impacted by international migration and other transnational connections is addressed. Patterns of marriage, migration and global processes have strengthened, reshaped or destabilized families. These trends are analysed by focusing on topics ranging from the migration of care workers to arranged marriages, internet dating and mail-order brides. Local and international marriage and labour markets are interconnected processes that are mediated by local practices and customs of kinship and marriage.

Chapter 6 is divided into three sections to address general themes. The first section examines the growing mobility and global migration of families or family members triggered by the demand for care workers in the West, by raising important questions about the global political economy of formal and informal care. The second section examines transnational marriage strategies that form part of geographical and social mobility. Academic responses to transnational marriage are often influenced by western values of romance, such as the idea of the pure relationship. These values shape the idea that commercial imperatives in spouse selection undermine the authenticity of the marital relationship. Involving young women and adolescent girls, marriage is often viewed as a business deal that transforms a kinship association into a form of human ‘trafficking’ (Palriwala and Uberoi 2008). Forming part of the study of the effects of migration patterns on family structures and experiences, the third section examines the political economy of marriage transactions by addressing the ways in which marriage is exploited for social mobility, including arranged marriages and commercially negotiated marriage, ‘mail order brides’ and internet dating.

The theme of families and fertility is examined in chapter 7 through a series of historical and contemporary case studies that have gained currency in global debates about population and fertility control. It investigates national population issues including birth control, family planning, infant mortality and unsafe abortions. How religious and cultural customs, state policies and global agencies have dealt with fertility and influenced family structures and values transnationally is explored. The first case study refers to Japan, which has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world. Japan’s low fertility rate is explained by unfavourable employment opportunities and conditions for women, coupled with family values that favour full-time motherhood. The aggressive family and demographic policies of the Ceauşescu regime are described within the second case study, to demonstrate how women were coerced into bearing children by the state banning of contraception and abortion for women of all ages (Kligman 1998). The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) prompted a dramatic shift in the field of population and development. The ICPD produced a programme of action that recognized that reproductive health and rights, women’s empowerment and gender equality should underpin all population and development programmes. This was prompted by several issues, including revelations about the extent of misery inflicted on families by the population policies of Romania under the brutal dictatorship of Ceauşescu between 1966 and 1989. The chapter examines empirical evidence of ways in which the state and traditional customs in western and non-western cultures coalesced in regulating fertility and family practices. The legacy of the regime is further discussed in the context of the subsequent massive rise in Romanian orphans.

The third and fourth case studies addressed in chapter 7 address the impact of son preference and modern population policies on families, and particularly on the lives of women and children. Son preference is a deep-rooted cultural norm in non-western countries. How this custom has been defended and negotiated in relation to government attempts at fertility control and the availability of sex-selective abortion technologies are described in the context of India’s family planning policies and China’s one-child policy. The cases are chosen because they constitute two of the most highly populated countries of the world, with some of the most highly controversial or problematic sets of practices and customs. Son preference and preferred family composition are powerful customs that place pressure on women to make fertility decisions which conform to a deeply held tradition about the composition of the ‘proper family’. The third case study addresses sex-selective abortions in India, which have skewed the ratio of boys to girls. The chapter examines the impact of sex-selective abortions on the lives of women and girls in India, as well as government attempts to curtail the practice. China’s family planning programme, known as the one-child policy, forms the fourth case study. The effectiveness of this dramatic population policy is linked to the country’s unique system of government control. However, the strong tradition of son preference – which existed in China for more than 2,000 years – continues to be a factor discouraging compliance with the policy. Furthermore, the chapter analyses the ‘demographic transition’ in developed places such as Europe and Japan by exploring the way policies have addressed fertility issues in these ageing societies.

By exploring a further means by which government policies impact on families’ fertility decisions, chapter 8 addresses the impact of new reproductive technologies in a number of societies and among particular ethnic groups. The chapter summarizes controversies about the moral dilemmas surrounding in vitro fertilization (IVF), assisted reproduction and surrogate motherhood. The legal regulation and restrictions imposed on the use of these technologies highlight the complexities involved in definitions of parenthood, and often expose the ideology that binds ideas about kin. Issues of legitimacy are called into question by reproductive technologies. If motherhood and fatherhood were once inevitable and given, they now require definition by law. Ethnic and religious differences, migration and the effects of globalization are examined. Discrepancies between government policy and family fertility practices in the Middle East and India are explained. Feminist debates are drawn on and tested to illustrate the role feminist approaches play in understanding these past and present practices.

The final chapter deals with three key themes that characterize the book as a whole by illustrating the major challenges that have faced sociological developments in the study of family and intimate life. The first theme is family values and public perceptions of a decline in commitment and trust in family and intimate relations. This pessimistic view corresponds with the family values discourse despite recent empirical research that refutes these claims. Traditional family values are evoked by governments to identify and defend the moral standards of the nation (Stacey 1999). This family values discourse is regularly expressed in the political speeches of heads of state who realize that a discourse of family crisis and the promotion of a nuclear family form is a vote catcher. The ideology that underpins family values is addressed because it sets the parameters of public debate and has serious implications for policy formation and scholarship on family and personal life.

This focus on the exploitation of family values by political leaders includes a discussion of the racialized reproductive politics of Donald Trump during his presidency. This politics frames right-wing populist attitudes, not only about economic dissatisfaction but also about women and gender issues, and Black and minority ethnic groups. Using an intersectional approach, this section therefore addresses the politics of family, race and nation. It spotlights the global impact of the Meghan and Harry crisis that erupted in response to the Oprah interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in March 2021, which exposed racism in both the media and the British monarchy. This set of events reveals not only the intersection of institutionalized racism and sexism, but also the framing of traditional family values as ‘white’ virtues. The Black Lives Matter movement spotlights the ways in which anti-Black racism informs and shapes the everyday lives of Black families. The events surrounding this movement are addressed in this section to explain the ways in which historical and pervasive anti-Black prejudice in the US deeply impacts family life within Black communities.

The second theme considers global approaches to intimacy and family life to highlight the importance of examining interconnections between intimacy and global processes. Changes in the global economy and the global flow of ideas correspond with changes in family relations and values. Sociological reassessments of the traditional and false separation of ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres of society draw attention to the relationship between economic and intimate spheres of life. The fusion of macro- and micro-sociological methods and debates is needed in order to understand the ways in which public and private realms of politics and work correspond with intimacy and family. This section explains intersecting local and global trends affected by conservatism and nationalism in relation to right-wing populism, to show that traditional views on gender and the family lead to harsh anti-immigration policies and racism. It highlights the restrictive immigration and family reunification practices of several European countries, which have placed the human rights of refugees and their children at risk. The interchange of neoliberalism and nationalism has also been scrutinized in research on ‘welfare chauvinism’, which is directed at migrants as a feature of the neoliberal reordering of the state. This section also considers the connection between economic, emotional and caregiving practices as fundamental features of family relations. The Covid-19 global pandemic spotlights the disproportionate effects of the crisis on low-income and lower-middle-class parents, and parents in Black and minority ethnic families, when compared to white and socio-economically privileged parents.

The final theme describes the lead taken by queer theory in accenting and celebrating new kinds of intimacies and household arrangements that bring into play concepts of family, friendship and community to authenticate relationships that were once stigmatized and rendered marginal. It foregrounds some of the major ways in which the biological nature of family relations is being challenged and reconfigured. Friend-like relationships and the voluntary nature of relationships are now increasingly being privileged over compulsory relationships bound by duty. These friend-like relationships often enhance kin ties rather than replacing them. In the light of these trends, it discusses concepts that are sufficiently flexible and inclusive to identify and embrace relationships that counter or differ from conventional nuclear or heterosexual family forms. These include LGBTQ+ relationships and reconfigured kinship networks and friendships, as well as single-parent families, post-divorce unions and cohabiting couples. Attention is drawn to those non-kin relations that are taking on or challenging family-like meanings and form part of present-day studies of intimacy and family life. Intimacies framed by friendship are now being adopted as ‘family’ or ‘family-like’ relationships. This final section endorses the term ‘personal life’, a term developed by Carol Smart to foreground the significance of personal connectedness and the embeddedness of today’s personal relations. As a sensitizing concept, the value of the term ‘personal life’ lies in its accent on inclusiveness and diversity, to enhance our understanding of today’s rich and multiple modes of intimacy and family relations.