Families and households topic 2

Chambers points out that indivdualization has been a central explanation for key changes in ideas about love, commitment and family decline.There has been a development in a new kind of personal relationship focused around the individual.

Beck-Gernsheim describes individualisation as the process where traditional social relationship, bonds, norms and values and beliefs that used to regulate peoples lives have been losing more of their meaning and influence.

Bauman (postmodernist) says that growing individualisation has brought about uncertainty and constant change of kinship networks and weaker bonds in society.

Beck-Gernsheim offers the following causes of individualisation:

• Develeopment in modern medicine eg. contraception and artificial insemination
• Growing equality of women and rise of feminism - 2/3 of divorces are initated by women.

• With growing individualisation the concept of 'love' is changing. 
• Confluent love is an active and conditional love, in which intimate relationships are characterized by trust, emotional intimacy and understanding between two people. It is conditional i the sense that love doesn't last forever and is maintained 'until further notice'. It lasts forever for as long as it meets the needs of the couple rather than 'forever qualifies'.
• Giddens states that the pure relationship is one where a couple choose to stay together because it meets their emotional and sexual needs and only lasts while each partner gains sufficient benefits to make it worth while rather than having the external pressures from wider family and friends.

Smarf thinks the individualization thesis exaggerates the extent of family decline, and that people's personal lives and family ties still involve strong social and emotional bonds and connections. Chambers and Smarf suggest that the individualization thesis really only seems to 'fit' the experiences of a small section of the white heterosexual middle class, and some same-sex couples, and ignores for example social class and ethnic differences.

• Changes in the law making divorce cheaper and easier to obtain 
• Welfare state- support for lone parents
• Changing role and attitudes of women and their growing financial independence ( individualization )
• Changing social attitudes causing less stigma- divorce more socially acceptable
• Secularization- less religious importnace attached to marriage
• Wider availability of effective contraception
• Higher expectations of marriage- people demand more of their marriages today

• The changing role of women- Women's growing financial independace means they have less need for the security of marriage and support by men. Marriage has therefore become less of a financial necessity for women and cohabitation provides an alternative relationship for personal fulfilment wothout legal, financial and housework commitments involved in marriage.
• Changing social attitudes and reduced social stigma- Older people compared to younger people are more likely to think that 'living outside marriage is always wrong'. This revelas more easygoing attitudes to cohabitation among the young, showing reduced social stigma attached to it. This may also partly be result of growing secularization.
• Growing secularization- Marriage and cohabitation are now more about individual and practical choices than sacred, spiritual unions. Less than a third of marriages today invloves a religious ceremony.
• Reducing risk- Beck suggests we are living in what he calls a 'risk society'. More people may simply be choosing to avoid the risk involved in long-term legal commitments like marriage.

Levin suggests:

• divorce and separation rates have continued to increase, and the LAT relationship has become a more common and socially acceptable way of dealing with the fall-out from previously broken relationships.
• with growing individualization and choice in relationships, and as people live longer and healthier lives, they may become more prone to seeking out new partners.
• changes in labour market have meant it is more difficult for partners to find or retain their existing jobs and incomes in other areas.
• moder technology, like video links, mobiles and email,easier and faster travel, mean close contact can be maintained between 'apartners'. This internet can also create LATs as people may form virtual relationships which may turn into long-distance LATs.

• The greater economic independence of women- Women have greater economic incependence today, both through more job opportunities and through support from the welfare state. This means marriage, and support by a husband, is less of an economic necessity today, compared to the past.
• Improved contraception, changing male attidtudes and fewer 'shotgun weddings'- with the wider availability and approval of safe and effective contraception, and easier access to safe and legal abortion, men may feel less responsibility to marry and cohabit with women and support them should they become unitnetionally pregnant, and women may feel under less pressure to marry and cohabit with the future father. There are therefore less 'shotgun weddng'.
• Reproductive technology is available to women- enabling them to bear children without a male partner, through surrogate motherhood and fertility treatments like IVF.
• Changing social attitudes- There is less social stigma attached to lone parenthood today. Women are therefore less afraid of the social consequences of becoming lone parents.

Caribbean families:

• Berthoud points out that Caribbeans are less likely to live with a partner than either white people or South Asian and those who do have a partner are less likely to have married them, and those who have married are more liekly to seperate or divorce- the proportion who seperate or divorce is around twice as high as for white people.
• The combination of low rates of partnership, and high rates of single parenthood and of mixed marriage means that only a quarter of black children live with two black parents.

South Asian families:

• Berthoud sees family lid in South Asia communities as based on 'old-fashioned values', in the sense that many of their present family characteristics were once found in the past among white families, but have now been rejected. These include a commitment to marriage, tight-knit familes with a strong sense of family loyalty, births within marriage, respect for parents, arranged marriages, husbands' authority over wives, women's roles as housewives and mothers, and having large numbers of children.

Modified extended families tend to be more common in the working class, and privatized nuclear families more common in the middle class. Differences in income and and wealth will also lead to differences in lifestyle, life chances, amounts of cultural and economic capital, and possibly in parenting practices and  the household division of labour, between families from different social classes.

Regional diveristy

Older industrial areas and very traditional rural communitites tend to have more extended families; and the inner cities have a higher proportion of families in poverty, lone parent families and ethnic minority families.

• Refers to the way families may change through life, for example as partners have children, as the children grow older and eventually leave the home, as partners seperate and form new relationships, as people retire, grow older and have grandchildren. All these factors mean the family will be constantly changing. For instance, levels of family income will change as children move from dependence to independence, levels of domestic labour and childcare will change, levels of women working in paid employment depending on children's age. This means there will always be a diversity of family types at different stages of the family life cycle.