Religion and Personal Life by Woodhead Linda;

Author:Woodhead, Linda;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Darton, Longman & Todd LTD
Published: 2013-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

ROSALIND EDWARDS, Professor of Sociology at the University of Southampton4

When we think of a traditional family we’ve not only got an image of the husband and the wife living together with their biological children, we’ve also got an image of the husband being the breadwinner and the wife being the homemaker. This image evokes stability and continuity; comfort and being together; togetherness, obligations, reciprocity; somebody always being there for you, and so on. But it’s quite a narrow view of family, and it’s become clear from the figures which Linda presented that this is not actually the family that many of us live with any more.

We’ve not only got declining marriage rates, people who get married are older than previously. There’s the rise in the proportion of children born outside marriage, and the proportion of lone mothers growing steadily. Stepfamilies are common.

Some people would argue that this is very good, they see the demise of the traditional family as an escape from oppressive relationships or unequal relationships, and think that we can replace that with purer, more democratic relationships.

Others view these changes as much darker. They see people becoming more individualistic and pursuing their own selfish ends, leaving a trail of broken relationships, damaged children and a broken society.

My view is that that debate about whether changes in the family are good or bad is confused. It assumes that change in the form of the family is the same as change in the substance of people’s lives. Instead, my own and other people’s research reveals a more complex picture not only of continuity as well as change, but of change as continuity.

It’s very clear that most people still value family life. They want to do the right thing by each other, they want to put their children first, they’re looking for long-term relationships and they value commitment. But those commitments don’t always take the form of what we think of as a traditional family. That focus on commitment and on doing the right thing, I think you could call that the wine of old family content in the bottles of new family forms.

Also, because society’s changing, for families to stay the same in terms of their content they have to change. Marriage is still the most common family form but its meaning has changed. It’s become unhooked from sex and from child-bearing and child-rearing. It’s no longer the only respectable way to create a family, but it still remains a prevalent aim. People are doing things in a different order. They cohabit, they have children (which is why you get so many children born outside of marriage), then they save up enough money and have a big white wedding.

What people always ask is, ‘Don’t children do better when they’re brought up in the traditional family form?’ Research does often purport to show that children are better behaved and achieve more if their parents are married. I’m sorry to use jargon, but as a sociologist you have to think about what we call ‘selection effects’.

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