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http://soc.sagepub.com/ Sociology
http://soc.sagepub.com/content/38/5/1043The online version of this article can be found at:
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
SAGE Publications
London,Thousand Oaks,
New Delhi
R e v i e w E
s s a y
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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
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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
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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-
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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
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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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