4.2.2 - Postmodern and Personal Life Perspectives on the Family

From norm to diversity

Older perspectives such as functionalism often treated the nuclear family as the form best suited to modern society, while the New Right tends to defend it as the most desirable form for social stability. Postmodern approaches reject that search for one normal or best family type. They argue that social change has weakened older certainties about marriage, gender roles, sexuality, and household structure, so family life has become more diverse and less predictable.

In this context, a "grand narrative" means a big, taken-for-granted story about how people ought to live. Applied to families, the postmodern argument is that the old story of lifelong heterosexual marriage with fixed gender roles has lost its authority. Economic change, women's increased employment, contraception, divorce, and broader recognition of different relationships have all helped produce greater diversity, though this does not mean every group experiences change in the same way.

These changes are not only cultural. Deindustrialisation, rising female employment, housing costs, welfare rules, divorce law, and state recognition of different relationships all shape which family forms are practically possible. In that sense, postmodern diversity is still connected to the economy and to state policy, not just to free personal choice.

Judith Stacey - argued that contemporary family life is best understood through diversity, fluidity, and choice. In her research on family change in Silicon Valley, she found that people often moved through divorce, remarriage, step-parenting, and reworked kinship networks rather than fitting one stable model. Stacey calls this the postmodern family: adaptable, shifting, and lacking one dominant structure.

Stacey also highlights women as important agents of change. As women have had more opportunity to leave unsatisfying relationships and organise care differently, family life has become less tied to patriarchal expectations. That is one reason postmodernists see diversity as a sign of social change rather than social decline.

An important exam distinction follows from this. Radical postmodern thinkers such as Baudrillard argue that society has moved beyond modernity altogether and that stable meanings have weakened sharply. By contrast, Giddens and Beck are usually better described as late modern rather than postmodern because they still see people as acting reflexively inside modern society, not after it.

Individualisation and intimacy

Late modern theorists agree that family life has changed, but they explain this change less through the collapse of all structure and more through individualisation. The central claim is that tradition has less control over personal life, so individuals have to make more choices for themselves. Relationships become matters of negotiation rather than duty.

Anthony Giddens - argues that late modernity has transformed intimacy. He says romantic love, with its promise of lifelong commitment, is increasingly replaced by confluent love, which lasts only while both partners gain satisfaction from it. This produces the pure relationship: a relationship entered into for its own sake and maintained only so long as both partners feel it is rewarding. Giddens links this to reflexivity, meaning people constantly reflect on who they are and how they want to live. He also argues that plastic sexuality, where sex is less tied to reproduction, gives people more freedom to shape intimate life around fulfilment rather than duty.

Beck and Beck-Gernsheim - develop the individualisation thesis further. They argue that in late modern society people must build their own "do-it-yourself" biographies. Family relationships therefore become negotiated families, held together by discussion, compromise, and continuing agreement rather than fixed tradition. This can increase freedom, but it also creates insecurity because relationships become more fragile and exist only "until further notice". Beck and Beck-Gernsheim call this tension the normal chaos of love.

The strength of these ideas is that they explain why family diversity can expand without family life disappearing. People may still want intimacy, care, and commitment, but they seek them in more flexible forms. At the same time, the late modern view can sound too optimistic about equality. Negotiation is easier when both partners have similar power and resources.

Giddens' pure relationship concerns why a relationship is maintained: the relationship itself must satisfy both partners, rather than being sustained by external duty. This differs from romantic love's ideal of permanent commitment.

Beck and Beck-Gernsheim also examine how people organise family roles when tradition supplies fewer fixed rules. Partners must negotiate care, paid work and individual goals. Satisfaction as a condition of commitment and negotiation over everyday responsibilities are related but distinct processes.

Personal life beyond the household

The sociology of personal life pushes this debate further. Carol Smart argues that sociology should not focus only on "the family" as a legal or household unit because that misses many relationships that people themselves see as central. Instead, sociologists should study personal life: the web of relationships, memories, commitments, and meanings through which people actually live.