Postmodernists, like Tamara Hareven, criticize the modernist idea that there is a dominant family type. They say that this structural app roach ignores two key facts: that, as individuals, we make our own choices about relationships and that family diversity has increased so much that there is no longer a single ‘best’ family type. Hareven uses an approach called life course analysis to focus on individual family members, the choices they make and how they make them. This is based on the increased flexibility and variation in relationships and family types – in both choices made and the timing or sequence of events in their lives. Clare Holdsworth and David Morgan use this approach to examine the different paths that young people take when they leave home, in relation to when they become fully independent and how their decisions are influenced by others. Subsequently, life course analysis focuses on the meaning that people give to decisions and events in their lives. Life course analysis places strong importance on what family members think looking at families and households from the point of view of the people involved. Sociologists such as Hareven, Holdsworth and Morgan believe that family structure is a result of members’ personal choices and therefore there can be no ‘norm’ as everyone makes different decisions about their lives. Morgan is adamant that you can’t make large-scale generalisations about families; instead sociologists should pay more attention to how people create their own diverse family lives
Another Postmodernist David Cheal, says that we no longer live in a ‘modern world’ with functional structures such as the nuclear family, and that society has now entered into a chaotic postmodern stage where people have more choice about their relationships and lifestyles and therefore there is no longer a single ‘normal’ family type, but many different dominant types. He believed that increased diversity gives people much more freedom to plan their own life course (e.g. choosing to live in a single-person-household or part of a gay/lesbian partnership) but also a greater risk of instability (divorce leading to single-parent or reconstituted families).
This thought is shared by Anthony Giddens who believes that changes in morals have left couples free to define their relationship themselves rather than having to follow laws and traditions. He has labelled this a ‘pure relationship’ where couples may not necessarily marry but stay together (maybe cohabiting) because of love, happiness or sexual attraction. But he also believe that this new dominant family type is unstable as each partner can end the relationship quite easily, leading to increased risk of family breakdown.
Ulrick Beck says that we live in a ‘risk society’ where people have more choice because tradition has less influence on the ways people act in society. In the past, people were expected to get married and, once married, assume their roles (men as financial supporters and women as housewives and mothers). He says that a new type of family, which varies according to wishes and expectations of members, has become the ‘norm’. He calls this family the ‘negotiated family’.
The change in family patterns is also important to Postmodernist Jeffrey Weeks, who believes that the change in family type due to the transferral of sexual morals from religion/tradition to personal choice. This secularisation has led to a growing acceptance of sexual and family diversity. He says that although family patterns are mostly still traditional, sexual diversity and change in family type are undeniable fact.
Feminists, like Judith Stacey, also criticise the negative New Right approach to family diversity. She says that greater choice benefits women and allows them to break free from patriarchal, oppressive situations. By constructing case studies on postmodern families in California, she discovered that most of the women rejected the traditional housewife and mother role, instead choosing to work, return to education, improve their job prospects, divorce and re-marry. The women decided to create what she calls “divorce-extended families’ to suit their own needs. From this research she found that postmodern families are diverse and depend on people’s personal choices such as whether to get divorced, cohabit or come out as gay.
Furthermore, the Rapoports believe that diversity is the most important concept when trying to understand family life today. They talk about five types of family diversity: organisational (differences in members’ roles within families), cultural (difference in family structure depending on culture, ethnicity and religion – e.g. Mormons having plural wives in contrast to the more widely accepted monogamous family structure), social class (differences in family structure stemming from social class or income), life-stage (family structure differs depending on which stage you are in your life – a university student’s family is different from a married mother) and generational (different generations have different views on sexual and family diversity). They, like many other sociologists say that this diversity is a direct result of the secularisation and pluralisation of society.
In contrast, Robert Chester does not agree that the nuclear family is no longer the norm in today’s society. Although he recognises the increase in family diversity, he thinks it is both positive and insignificant. He believes that the only significant change is from a conventional family (in which the husband is the breadwinner and the wife a homemaker) to what he calls a ‘neo-conventional family’ where both spouses go out to work. He says that the nuclear family is still the ideal which people aspire to. He says that many people currently living in single-person households (divorcees, widows or young unmarried people) were either part of a nuclear family before or will be in the future. Like functionalists, he sees the nuclear family as still dominant but identifies a change to the neo-conventional family.
We can see, from Item B, that Somerville also believed the changes were irrelevant. He said that the apparent diversity of family life is based on just one snapshot in time. If you take a life-cycle approach you will discover that most people live in a conventional nuclear family at some point in their lives.
In conclusion, it is clear that the nuclear family is no longer the norm in society. Although it is still prevalent in society today and many people aspire to be a part of a nuclear family, for many it is becoming a unrealistic or undesirable family structure, so an increasing number of people are choosing to live in different family types which meet their own specific needs.
