The Personal life perspective establish two weaknesses with the feminism, marxism and functionalism...
1. It assumes the traditional nuclear family is the dominant family type and that they ignore the increased family diversity
2.They are structuralist theorys and suggest that the members of the family are passive and manipulated by society
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Main Assumptions
Takes an interactionist and postmodernist view and ignores the structuralist view
Argues that the structuralist view ignores the concept that people have some choice in creating family relationships
They argue to understand family relationships rather than looking at the functions of the members, we need to look at the meaning the members put behind their relationships
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The sociology of personal life
A new perspective of families
Functionalism, marxism and feminism offer a top down structural approach to family
Personal life perspective offers a bottom up interactionist approach and puts emphasis on the meaning of family relationships
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Beyond ties of blood and marriage
The personal life perspective draws on other personal or intimate relationships even if the people are not related...
1.Relationship with friend- your close friends may be like a brother or sister to you
2.Fictive Kin- Close family friend e.g you mums best friend that you may call auntie
3.LGBTQ+ Chosen Family- a supportive network of close friends or ex-partners who are not related by blood or marriage
4.Relationship With Dead Relatives- the memory of dead relatives may live on in someones memory and continue to shape how someone behaves
5.Relationship with pets- Becky Tipper found that children frequently saw pets as part of the family
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Donor conceived children
Nordqvist and Smith found that the issue of blood and genes raised a lot of feelings when it came to parenthood
Some people emphasised the importance of social relationships over genetic ones
Problems in families included involving a donors parents as grandparents and the donors children as siblings
For Lesbian couples problems included the equality between the genetic and non-genetic mothers- the donor might be treated as the real seconed parent
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Evaluation of the personal life perspective
Nordqvist and Smiths study highlights the importance of the personal life perspective over the structuralist approach
The perspective helps people to understand how people themselves construct and design their relationships
It can be accused of being too broad in its view
It rejects the top down approach taken by other perspectives such as functionalism
Sees intimate relationships as performing the important function of providing us with a sense of belonging and relatedness
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