retheorizing families

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DOI: 10.1177/0038038504047186

2004 38: 1043Sociology Carol Smart

Retheorizing Families

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Retheorizing Families

s Carol Smart

University of Leeds

Karen Struening

New Family Values: Liberty, Equality, Diversity

Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002, 17.99 pbk (ISBN 0 7425 1231 2)

Vern L. Bengtson,Timothy J. Biblarz and Robert E.L. Roberts

How Families Still Matter:A Longitudinal Study of Youth in Two Generations

Cambridge: CUP, 2002, 42.50 hbk (ISBN 0 521 00954 5)

Jane Ribbens McCar thy, Rosalind Edwards and Val Gillies

Making Families: Moral Tales of Parenting and Step-Parenting

Durham: sociologypress, 2003, 17.50 pbk (ISBN 1 903457 05 X)

Over the last decade the family has become interesting to sociology again. Not only

have issues of family and personal relationships been taken up by major social the-

orists, but this means that theorizing about intimacy and relationships has a kind of

sociological street cred that was never the case in the days of Willmott and Young

in the 1960s or even when the patriarchal family was the focus of serious feminist

critique in the 1980s. Alongside this new vogue is a longer running, indeed almost

interminable preoccupation, namely the debate over the decline of ‘the’ family and

the demise of proper family values. The power of this debate has, arguably, tended

to frame the agenda of a considerable amount of recent sociological work on fam-

ily life. It has reached into the work of the theorists such as Bauman (2003) and

Beck-Gernsheim (2002) who now produce images of the future of families as

dystopian as any produced by the pro-family right. The debate has also shaped

much empirical work because it frames such a dominating question that it contin-

ues to demand an answer. As tiresome as the question of whether ‘the’ family is in

decline or not has become, it has led to a regeneration of interest and to a renewed

intellectual investment in understanding family and kinship. It has also given impe-

tus to research on emergent or diverse modes of intimacy that are not defined by

1043

SociologyCopyright © 2004

BSA Publications Ltd®

Volume 38(5): 1043–1048

DOI: 10.1177/0038038504047186

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kinship and/or marriage and heterosexual cohabitation. But it has also had a con-

straining effect in as much as there has been a constant pull towards a rhetorical

debate and a ‘social problems’ framework rather than developments based on more

novel exploration. The three books which are the focus of this review all reflect dif-

ferent trajectories within this broad intellectual project. All take as their startingpoint the debate on the (apparent) decline of the family and family values in the

post-industrial world. Yet, while each book engages with this debate, they each do

so in quite different ways, drawing upon different arguments, forms of evidence and

types of empirical research. One book is a small scale qualitative study of British

step families with a focus on how such families construct a new normative order.

The next is the distilled findings from a very large scale, survey based, longitudinal,

cross-generational US study on family change since the 1970s. And the third is more

a work of political theory and policy analysis which debates the values that under-

pin certain approaches to family policy in the US. The last is essentially a normativeexercise compared with the first two which are predominantly based on new empir-

ical research. Each contribution has different strengths (and weaknesses) but taken

together they are an indication of the extent to which the debate over the family is

flourishing. I shall deal with each contribution in reverse order.

New Family Values is a feminist contribution to the policy debate occurring in

the US which focuses on whether there is a superior (natural) form for ‘the’ family

(namely the male breadwinner nuclear model) and whether this model alone produces

stable, law abiding and motivated citizens. This debate may have more bite in the US

than the UK at present, but it certainly chimes with debates going on in and aroundthe current government approach to supporting families here. Struening argues that

both the religious pro-family right, and also the family communitarians, in the US

support the idea that the ideal family is the male breadwinner, female carer, nuclear

family. But her argument is with the communitarians such as Popenoe, Blakenhorn

and Elstain more than the religious right because she argues that the communitarians

use sociological evidence (rather than theological rectitude) in pursuit of a particular

set of moral values. She therefore sees them as more influential and as more difficult

to challenge. Her argument is, in a sense, with the misuse (as she sees it) of sociolog-

ical data and she seeks to expose value-laden interpretations of these data to scrutiny.

The core activity of this book is therefore to offer alternative interpretations to those

provided by the communitarians (and occasionally by some feminists) by invoking

other data or simply by asserting another way of understanding statistical trends and

current behaviours. Sometimes she simply collapses into assertion:

In those dual-earner families in which women work full-time, men should do half

of the total amount of housework and childcare. (p. 112)

or

Marriage should not be touted as the only or the best way of maintaining an active

paternal presence in the lives of children. (p. 115)

This book is useful inasmuch as it reveals some of the inconsistencies in the com-

munitarian defence of the superiority of the male breadwinner family. But the

1044 Sociology Volume 38 s Number 5 s December 2004








criticisms marshalled by Struening are so diverse and wide-ranging that she fails to

convince the reader that she has a sustained or identifiable position herself. The

book is also quite frustrating to read. This is because the reader becomes witness to

a kind of relentless battle between argument and counterargument with several

points raised and demolished on almost every page. What is even more frustratingis that the reader is urged to dismiss the communitarian argument solely on the basis

of the greater rectitude of the values that Struening espouses. While the values she

espouses may be noble (viz. liberty, equality and diversity) she asserts them as self-

evidently good while appropriating evidence to support her claims, rather in the

same manner as the communitarians are accused of doing. Moreover, her arguments

are already familiar and reach predictable conclusions, namely that the gender order

must be reconfigured, that a welfare state based on the Nordic model is the most

desirable, and that single mothers should be paid a living wage. In this sense this

book feels like it is in a time warp because, although her case is energetically argued,we arrive at conclusions that were the focus of discussion in the UK at least twenty

years ago. What is more she offers no serious analysis of exactly how these changes

can be brought about.

How Families Still Matter is in quite a different category. This book also

engages with current debates on ‘the’ family but engagement arises through detailed

empirical research findings. The authors seek to challenge some of the pro-family

rhetoric by demonstrating how families work rather than by asserting a preference

for a different value system. The research on which this book is based is the

‘Longitudinal Study of Generations’ based at the University of Southern California.It started in 1970 as a cross-sectional study of three-generation families. In the first

wave there were 2044 individuals from 349 separate families. In 1985 a longitudi-

nal element was started and thereafter the same families have been contacted every

three years. In 1991 a fourth generation (generation Xers) was added. There have

now been seven waves and three more are planned. The study relies on self-

completed questionnaires and these have been supplemented occasionally by in-

depth interviews on specific themes with selected sub samples. Although there are

limitations on the data collected through (repeat) questionnaire surveys, the strength

of this research has come to reside in its longitudinal and cross generational scope.

As the authors point out, most commentaries on changing family life are based on

comparing ‘one-time snapshots of different families taken in different historical

periods, by different researchers, guided by different research questions’. What is

unique about this study is that it follows the same families over time, guided by the

same core research questions, the main elements of which were designed to under-

stand both continuity and change across and between generations. In other words

the study started out with the intention of monitoring change and so means of

accessing or recording change (and sameness) were factored in from the start. These

are important strengths, but this book reflects more than ‘just’ a report of findings

from a valuable data set, it is also a very theoretically sophisticated study which

operates on a number of levels at the same time. This book is a valuable source for

anyone trying to theorize generational and cohort change/development, while being

sensitive to the social, historical and cultural conditions that prevail at a given time

1045Review Essay Smart








and which also change over time. The authors give consideration to individual life

trajectories located in space and time; they include both reflections on cohort and

generational change and they look at interactions between generations including

trends in aspirations and well-being. The complexity and richness of the data is hard

to convey in a short review but essentially the authors found that in relation to themost recent cohort, the generation Xers, feelings of solidarity and closeness with

parents had not changed when compared to the previous generation. In other words

they found that young people today have as much affection for and respect for their

parents as their parents’ generation had for their parents. They found that neither

divorce nor mothers’ employment affected child well-being to any noticeable degree;

in fact they argue that recent generations of mothers invest just as much in their chil-

dren as did the previous generations of mothers who may not have worked outside

the home. They also found that parents still influence their children and that gener-

ation Xers model themselves on their parents just as previous generations had done.The idea that parents have lost the ability to influence and guide their children was

therefore not supported by their data. In sum they argue that families still matter to

children and that their study offers no support to those who insist that the family is

in decline. However, they do not present an idealized vision of families, rather they

see families as processes which change and adapt as conditions around them change.

For Bengtson et al. families are what families do. In this respect it is possible to see

echoes of David Morgan’s (1996) work on family practices with his emphasis on

‘doing’ relationships rather than structures and status. But there is a major difference

between Morgan and Bengtson et al. For the latter, families are essentially about rais-ing the next generation of children and the intergenerational transmission of values,

characteristics, social capital and so on. In this model families are teleological pro-

cesses rather than relationships in their own right. This standpoint is somewhat at

odds with the British sociological tradition where families are conceptualized as

spheres of intimacy and interaction, and where the meanings attributed to and gen-

erated by relationships are constructed by family members (in a cultural and histor-

ical context) rather than in relation to naturalistic reproductive and/or socialization

functions. This is perhaps a minor point but it does reflect the very different theoret-

ical traditions to be found in American and British sociology of family life.

Making Families: Moral Tales of Parenting and Step-parenting also starts with

the debate over family decline but here the similarity with the two previous books

ends. In the first place this book engages more with sociological theorists like Beck-

Gernsheim (2002) and Giddens (1992) rather than with the policy focused debates

associated with the pro-family right. McCarthy et al. take as their prime target the

individualization thesis which argues that families are becoming more fragile and

that the desire for ‘pure’ relationships is giving rise to impermanence and fluidity.

They dispute this depiction of contemporary family life on the grounds that the fam-

ily members they have interviewed did not see families, partnership and kinship as

contingent at all. This is despite the fact that couples in step families would be pre-

cisely the people one would imagine fitted with the image of the individualized, self-

actuating, risk aware, and contingently committed man or woman of the

individualization thesis. Yet, as McCarthy et al. argue, these couples and their chil-









dren created a ‘community of need’, giving priority to support and obligation

between family members.

This book is also quite different to the others reviewed here because unlike

Struening’s book this is based on empirical research and unlike the study by

Bengtson et al., it is a small scale in-depth interview based study (with 46 individu-als), providing a snapshot of a relatively small number of step families or clusters

(23 ‘clusters’ in total). The sample was generated by snowballing methods and the

interviews were almost exclusively with adults. But what this study lacks in terms

of a statistically representative sample or in terms of longitudinal or cross genera-

tional data, it gains in the richness of data generated by much more open interviews

designed to elicit the experiences and views of parents. Making Families gives access

to different sorts of processes when compared with those that are central to How

Families Still Matter. The processes here are individual reflections and reasonings

which provide an insight into how people navigate changes and decisions in theirown lives. In this regard McCarthy et al. are in step with a number of recent British

contributions on moral reasoning in family life and kinship obligations. They treat

their interviewees’ accounts of their actions not as truthful (or untruthful) reflections

on things that have been done, but as a way of representing the complex interplay

between thought, language and action. They suggest that words and actions are in

a mutually constitutive relationship and that ultimately one can access the moral

values that influence what parents do through an analysis of their accounts.

However, they nonetheless take issue with what they see as a tendency in recent soci-

ological research to celebrate moral diversity and/or situational morality. Theyargue that, in their interviews with parents, there was a clear moral absolute to be

found in the accounts. This moral absolute was the requirement to put the needs

and interests of children first. Moreover, they argue that how parents articulated and

sought to demonstrate putting children first is deeply enmeshed in gender and social

class. Thus working-class families met the needs of their children by forming recon-

stituted (non-biological) families in a single household, while middle-class parents

met these needs by sustaining the biological family across separate households. But

the point that they insist upon is that this sense of responsibility for dependent chil-

dren was what step-family life was framed around. They found no evidence of the

postmodern couples engaging in pure but transient relationships. Most of the cou-

ples in these interviews wanted to be in ‘normal’ families and although they adhered

to a range of definitions of the family, they predominantly emphasized lasting bonds

and ‘natural’, ordinary relationships. ‘Natural’ in this context did not have to mean

biological or genetic, rather it appears to have meant something that could be both

taken-for-granted yet also very important.

Making Families sits within the genre of writing on family life which seeks to

reveal how families work, while also seeking to extract from what people say

exactly what it is that matters about family life. It is interesting to reflect on how far

the sociology of families has travelled since the high point of feminist critique of

‘the’ family. Sociological studies, in Britain at least, seem to have moved closer to

telling stories of family life rather than being preoccupied with whether or not ‘the’

family supports patriarchy or capitalism or some other system outside the family

1047 Review Essay Smart








itself. There is now a much greater interest in the interiority of family life and with

the meanings that ordinary people themselves give to their relationships. At the

same time there is less emphasis on what the family is for and more on what fami-

lies – in all their guises – do. The problem that we face, however, may be the widen-

ing gap between meta-theorizing and the cottage industry of small scale qualitativeresearch. I have a nasty suspicion that an old-fashioned gender order may be

reasserting itself here; with sociologists of the masculine persuasion doing the grand

theorizing and large scale survey work, while those of the feminine persuasion are

doing the equivalent of the essential, but hardly visible small scale housework. But

perhaps I’ve just got a suspicious mind.

References

Bauman, Z. (2003) Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds. Cambridge:Polity Press.

Beck-Gernsheim, E. (2002) Reinventing the Family: In Search of New Lifestyles.Cambridge: Polity Press.

Giddens, A. (1992) The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticismin Modern Societies. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Morgan, D. (1996) Family Connections. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Carol Smart

Is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre for Research on Family, Kinship and

Childhood. She is also Deputy Director of CAVA (the ESRC Research Group on Care,

Values and the Future of Welfare) at the University of Leeds. She is co-author, with Bren

Neale and Amanda Wade, of The Changing Experience of Childhood: Families and Divorce

(Polity Press, 2001) and was Guest Editor of the Special Issue of Childhood: A Global

Journal of Child Research, on New Perspectives on Childhood and Divorce, May 2003Vol 10 no 2.

Address: School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK.

E-mail: [email protected] Web: www.leeds.ac.uk/family







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