Postmodernism & Family Diversity - Giddens, Beck + Personal Life Perspective

1. do-it-yourself biography > standard biography

   Annotations:

   • instead of growing up to a certain path already made up for you, you decide your own life and make your own choices.

1. people can choose their own life path, fixed roles are no longer a thing

   Annotations:

   • e.g. people were expected to get married and to take up their appropriate gender role
2. DISEMBEDDED

1. it exaggerates how much choice we have about family relationships
2. traditional norms still limit people's choices
3. we are not free floating individuals

Annotations:

• family and marriage has been transformed by greater choice and more equality between women and men.

1. Contraception
   1. sex + intimacy > reproduction
2. Feminism
   1. more independence due to feminism and more opportunities in education and work

1. TODAY couples are free to define their relationship themselves

   Annotations:

   • e.g. nowadays, couples don't have to marry to have children and divorce is readily accessible

1. Relationships no longer held together by law, religion, social norms or traditional institutions
   1. The pure relationship
      1. individual choice & equality
      2. solely existent to satisfy each partner's needs
      3. held together by love, happiness and sexual attraction
      4. + choice = - stability
         1. relationship as a rolling contract rather than permanent commitment
            1. + FAMILY DIVERSITY
               1. lone-parent families
               2. one person households
               3. stepfamilies
               4. and more

1. creating new family types
2. creating more democratic and equal relationships
3. not influenced by tradition like heterosexual relationships
   1. family structure based on each partner's needs rather than traditional pre-existing norms
      1. Weeks
         1. friendship networks functioned as kinship networks to gay and lesbian couples

1. risk socetiety
   1. tradition has less influence and people have more choice
   2. making choices involves calculating the risks and rewards of the different options open to us
2. greater gender equality
   1. women now expect equality both at work and marriage
3. greater individualism
   1. people's actions are based on self-interest rather than by obligation to others
4. patriarchal family replacement
5. according to the members' expectations and whishes
6. + equal = - stable
   1. individuals are free to leave if their needs are not met
      1. + family diversity

1. family cannot offer stability neither security anymore therefore its members can't lean on it looking for support
2. it appears to be alive but it's in fact dead