Lea Shamgar-Handelman
Old Concepts - New Realities
Abstract
The main point of departure of this article is that the familial concepts presently in use are out of date, insofar as they do not adequately capture the changes in the positions and roles of family members in contemporary societies. The author focuses mainly on the age-based categories, showing that the previous clear age boundaries with respect both to parenthood and childhood no longer holds, due to changes in norms and the influence of modern technology.
Riitta Jallinoja
Alternative Family Patterns; Their Lot in Family Sociology and in the Life Worlds of Ordinary People
Abstract
The article examines the way the succesive family sociological discourses since the fifties have dealt with alternative family patterns. The modern role theory of the fifties regarded alternative family patterns as deviant behaviour; liberal theory normalized them, while post-modern theory obscures the distinction between the family model and its alternatives. None of these theories, it is argued, captures the essence and diversity of subjective reality. The latter is mostly mixed in character. The traditional family co-exists with various alternatives, often in various combinations. The article traces some of these.
Heinz-Hermann Krüger, Peter Büchner and Manuela du Bois-Reymond
The Family Culture of Negotiation - A Result of Changing Parent-Child Relationship
Abstract
Case studies of parent-child relations in three different European regions - West Germany, East Germany and the Netherlands - offer material for the comparative analysis of the ongoing intra-familial process of modernization and civilization in post-war West European societies. The data are drawn from extended narrative interviews with twelve-year-olds and from parallel but separate semi-structured "mirrored' interviews with the same children and their parents. The results of the analysis show that family relations, in general, and parent-child relations, in particular, are increasingly marked by a familial "culture of negotiation'. This suggests that the balance of intergenerational power relations is currently in the process of change. To a greater or lesser extent, contemporary family relations are characterized by situationally grounded processes of negotiation between parents and children.
Aino Ritala-Koskinen
The Family Structures are Changing - But What About the Idea of the Family?
Abstract
In contemporary societies, step-families usually emerge following divorce and re-marriage. This family form has become more prevalent in Finland during the eighties. The present article focuses on the public discourse surrounding the step-family as this is reflected in family and women's magazines. This discourse reveals the still prevailing strong cultural norms regarding family life: living in a family is defined as the normal way of living, with bonds of belonging together and biological ties defined as primary. The step-family is expected to fulfil these expectations. The ideology governing the ste-family is therefore very similar to that of the traditional nuclear family unit.
Chiara Saraceno
Communiting Between Households: Multiple Memberships, Shifting Boundaries
Abstract
As of recently, attention has been drawn in the social scientific literature and research on the effects of changes in family structure on the individual and family life cycle. With reference to the Italian situation, the author discusses the way in which in contemporary societies an increasing number of individuals go through different kinds of families/households over their life, commuting, during specific life phases, between different households and families on a more or less permanent basis. The phenomenon of commuting between households renders the boundaries of the family household less clear and more permeable, challenging the meaning of family membership and of family boundaries.
Rudolf Richter
Post-adolescennce as a New Phase in the Family Cycle?
Abstract
The article investigates the phenomenon of post-adolescence and its implications for the persons affected - both the young people and their parents - as well as for social policy. The emergence of an extended "moratorium' phase for young people still in the educational system, living alone yet financially dependent on their parents is related to changes in the value systems of modern societies, the rising economic prosperity for a greater proportion of the population, the earlier age of achievement of physical maturity as well as to structural transformations at the level of the labour market.
Rivka Bar-Yosef
Family Sociology in the Light of Social Change and Biotechnical Innovations
Abstract
The article examines the implications for family sociology of the changes in contemporary societies regarding family structures and of the innovations in the field of bio-technology. The latter especially highlight the tension between social and biological parenthood. Family sociology is called to focuse its attention more on the level of description and analysis of the diverse and often confounding reality and to move away from trying to make sense of this reality through comprehensive, albeit exclusive and short-sighted, unifying concepts.
Ilona Kickbusch
Principles and Strategies of Interventions
Abstract
The article examines the implications of changes in the relationships underlying the institution of the family for social policy and, specifically, health policy. Greater flexibility and sensitivity is called for in the design of health policies if these are to support the "family' to do its job right.
Daniel Bertaux
Families and Mobility: The European Experience
Abstract
This paper introduces a new method - Social Genealogies Commented and Compared - for observing how social trajectories of individuals and families are shaped. The basic features of this method - its focus on families rather than individuals, the flexibility of interviewing, the comparison of case studies of families´ histories - make it complementary to survey research. It is argued that the contention of survey research to be the only scientific method of sudying social mobility rests upon a newtonian conception of science that has become obselete even in the natural sciences. Surveys work best in societies which have stable social structures and a large degree of social homogeneity nation-wide, and where individual achievement, not family ties, is the key factor in shaping individual trajectories; this is not the case for most European societies. Techniques for collecting and analyzing Social Genealogies are described. Issues such as representativity and generalization, family legends and the breackdown of nuclear families are briefly dealt with. The pedagogical usefulness of this form of data collecting is stressed.
