Gender and Society: Intimacy and Personal Relationships - Essay Example

? Gender and Society: Intimacy and Personal Relationships SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACHES ON HOW THE FAMILY IS CHANGING IN BRITAIN of University/ Institution Class: Professor: Submission Date: Gender and Society: Intimacy and Personal Relationships SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACHES ON HOW THE FAMILY IS CHANGING IN BRITAIN Introduction “A family is a group of persons directly linked by kin connections, the adult members of which assume responsibility for caring for children” (Giddens & Griffiths 2006, p.206). Families are the strong foundation of society, fulfilling several vital functions. They nurture children, promote strength, resilience and moral values in young people, and provide the love and encouragement that facilitates the achievement of fulfilling lives. Scholars (Giddens 1993; Roseneil 2007) argue that in contemporary society, intimate relationships are undergoing radical changes. There is a growing debate in studies about women, gender and social change, about contemporary intimate lives, the family and its future, key changes in the composition of family membership, decline in size of families, and the forces that drive change. The drivers of family change in British society include increase in numbers of employed women from the mid-20th century, women’s emancipation, widespread use of contraception resulting in smaller families, changes in social norms promoting acceptance of alternative family forms, changes in family law, and the greater role of love and romance in married partnerships. In contemporary society, changing family structures depend on the different arrangements of people comprising the family. These include the nuclear, the extended, the lone-parent and the reconstituted families. Different forms of the family may also be based on social factors such as social class, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation, or location; and the relationships between them (Walsh, Stephens & Moore 2000). Thesis Statement: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the sociological approaches and theories that inform the phenomenon of the changing family in Britain. The Analysis of Contemporary Intimate Lives In the present day United Kingdom, a diversity of types and different forms of the family exists. The contemporary family is characterized by diversity in the context of economic and social status, ethnicity, location and sexual orientation. The family is a dynamic unit in which there is a constant process of change, as members marry, age, die and divorce. These changes lead to a shift in the relationships between the family members, as for example parents change from being providers and educators to being grandparents either dependent on their grown children or living independently. Two different approaches to the family include the ‘New Right’ and the feminist positions. For the New Right, “the family is a place of love and affection and an important provider of informal welfare” (Walsh et al 2000, p.189). For feminists, the family is a patriarchal domain, and an institution benefiting men rather than women or children. Well-known sociological theorists such as Anthony Giddens, Ulrick Beck, Elizabeth Beck-Gernsheim and others have explained the emergence of a new social order of ‘reflexive modernity’ which according to them has led to a transformation in society. That is, in the post-traditional society there is greater individualism as against earlier communalism, with men and women “progressively freed from the roles and constraints associated with traditional social ties, are compelled to reflexively create themselves through day to day decisions” (Gillies 2003, p.9). Further, structural frameworks forming the basis for heterosexual partnerships have become weak, with feminism causing increase of women in the work force and their consequent financial independence, besides greater numbers of divorces, decline in marriage and in fertility rates. Ordinary women as well as feminist groups, according to the sociologist Anthony Giddens “have pioneered changes of great and generalizable importance” (Giddens 1993, pp.1-2). These changes explore the potentialities of the ‘pure relationship’ characterising sexual and emotional equality contrasting with pre-existing forms of gender power. The ‘pure relationship’ can be exemplified in the rise of romantic love in the present day, as opposed to earlier marriages based on practical concepts unrelated to notions of love between the married partners. Women have long aspired for romantic love, and to a much greater extent than men. Beck-Gernsheim (2002) argues that family membership is shifting from being a given to a matter of choice; thus signifying a change towards the post-familial family. The traditional view of the family as a life-long entity is rapidly declining. The number of marriages are decreasing, the divorces are increasing, and there are increasing numbers of children born to unmarried or single parents. The different forms of private life are changing, with individuals taking up new lifestyles based on cohabitation, separation, and same-sex partnership. By studying the breakdown of the conventional family unit, Beck-Gernsheim (2002) predicts future living which will evolve away from the family. Breakdown of the conventional family unit would lead to new choices for individuals; and this may cause anxiety related to a loss of stability. These changes are caused by individualization as opposed to working for the common good. According to Gillies (2003, p.9), “Beck and Beck-Gernsheim’s 1995 theory of individualization articulates a similar picture”, introducing new risks and opportunities in the contemporary age of modernity, to replace the old predictablities and certainties of industrial society. The transformations have completely changed the experience of love, sexuality and family life, placing intimacy at the centre of detraditionalized and individualized life. While there is weakening of traditional social ties of kinship and marriage, the concepts of love and intimacy are increasingly pursued to obtain relief from the individual’s complete autonomy. When individuals have to invent or develop their own social setting, love forms the basis of life’s meaning (Gillies, 2003). According to Giddens (1993, p.2), “the ethos of romantic love has had a double impact upon women’s situation”. Although it has put women in their place, in their home, romantic love is also seen as an active and unprecedented engagement with the ‘maleness’ of modern society. Its key concept is that a durable and emotional tie can be created with the other based on qualities inherent to the bond itself. Romantic love indicates the pure relationship, while at the same time being in tension with it. Giddens’ (1993) term ‘plastic sexuality’ is critical to the liberation that is an inherent characteristic of the ‘pure relationship’ as well as women’s claim to equal rights to experiencing happiness in marital intimacy. “Plastic sexuality is decentred sexuality, freed from the needs of reproduction” (Giddens 1993, p.2). Plastic sexuality originated sometime in the late eighteenth century only for the purpose of limiting family size. Later the term developed further due to the spread of modern contraception and new reproductive technologies. Plastic sexuality forms an intrinsic part of the self because it can be shaped as a personality trait; at the same time it frees sexuality from the importance given to the male experience. With the initiation of the break down of male sexual control over women, the compulsive character of male sexuality is revealed more clearly. “This declining control also generates a rising tide of male violence towards women” (Giddens 1993, p.3). At present, there is an emotional rift created between the sexes, and the extent to which it will be bridged is uncertain. At the same time, the change in intimacy can have radical outcomes. It is possible that intimacy can be oppressive, particularly if it demands a constant emotional closeness. On the other hand, when it is considered as a transactional negotiation of personal ties by equals, it is apparently different in function. “Intimacy implies a wholesale democratising of the interpersonal domain” (Giddens 1993, p.3) and is equivalent to democracy in the public sphere. Other implications include that the transformation of intimacy may have the effect of rebelliousness upon modern institutions as a whole. The new social world where emotional fulfillment would replace the maximising of economic growth, would be completely different from that of the present. Thus, the current revolutionary transformations to sexuality and gender relationships influence the organization of contemporary personal and intimate lives, with consequent impacts on the changing family, leading to social change. In social theory, the breakdown of the traditional family, democratization and equalization of roles and relationships within the contemporary family, or continuity and enduring power relations are three differing interpretations of family life and intimate relationships. These centre around the theory of social capital. For promoting social resources, there has been a new interest in social capital as a theoretical framework. However, when policy makers adopt a particular model perceived as increasing social cohesion and offering several policy outcomes, the conceptualizations of social capital differ according to the theoretical approach undertaken. Applying the theory of social capital to family and other intimate relationships “focuses on the resources and support that such associations generate and on the links between family members and broader sections of society” (Gillies 2003, p.16). There is greater confrontation of individuals with competing and often incompatibe demands. The spheres of personal choice have shifted, and the new space takes into account new social regulations and controls. The concept of family values does not align with the reality of long working hours, business trips, weekend seminars and career moves. While at work, people are encouraged to pursue competition, speed and change to improve in their career prospects; at home they are expected to find community and conciliation. Beck-Gernsheim (2002) examines the outcomes of these conflicting expectations on the relationships between men, women, and children, and finds that the future post-familial family may be composed of close friends, community, colleagues, or other relationships, in the place of close family members. The diversity of family structures in modern industrialized societies such as that of Britain is a topic of intensive sociological debate. “Functionalists argue that the nuclear family is still most common or has been replaced by a similar type of reconstituted family structure” (Kirby 2000, p.65) including step parents and step children. Other sociologists agree that family life is changing, but consider this trend as an indication of moral decay. An example is New Right’s requirement for people reverting to traditional family values, or the ethical socialist concern with the adverse outcomes caused to children of absent fathers. Supporters of feminism promote the different types of family diversity based on organisation, culture, class, region, lifecycle and cohort (Kirby 2000). With significant changes in the ways in which personal life and the family are organized since over thirty years, sociologists find it necessary to decentralise the family and the heterosexual couple who have formed the primary units in society from ancient times (Roseneil 2007). Giddens (1993) states that the transformation of intimacy is taking place through individualisation and detraditionalisation. Thus, there is increased replacement of traditional life-patterns by various independently chosen alternative lifestyles and intimacies. In Britain increasing numbers of people are spending longer periods of their lives outside the conventional family unit. A greater emphasis on individualization leads to challenging the romantic heterosexual couple which forms the core of the modern family. Further, “the normative grip of the sexual and gender order which has underpinned the modern family is weakening” (Roseneil 2005, p.241). Therefore, significant proportions of people’s personal lives increasingly occur beyond the close family, between partners living apart and within networks of friends. Those living non-normative sexualities pose a challenge to the discipline of gender and society which has so far examined personal life mainly through the lens of families. Some individuals of same-sex orientation refer to their emotional networks as ‘family’. The term ‘families of choice’ refers to lesbian and gay relationships and friendship networks. This trend creates the possibility of “actually directing attention away from the extra-familial, radically heteronormative nature of many of these relationships” (Roseneil 2005, p.244). Lesbians and gay men’s networks of friends form the framework on which they structure their personal lives, outside of their original, heteronormative families who may reject them. Hence they seek emotional security and daily lives in their friendship groups, and create the newly acceptable ‘families of choice’ in same-sex partnerships. As a result of the struggle undergone by several lesbians and gay men to find a sense of home, place, and identity, the new context of intimacy and greater individualism available to them in ‘families of choice’ are based on democratic, egalitarian personal relationships. Family formations are believed to be “increasingly queered representing a queering of traditional sociological areas of enquiry” (Giffney & O’Rourke 2009, p.204), or a change towards a queer sociology. Roseneil (2005) explains that the heterosexual/ homosexual binary or difference has been erased, and the increasing flexibility in postmodern individualistic sexual identities forcefully erodes the idea of heterosexuality as the organising principle of sexuality. Sociological representations are widely prevalent, of people with numerous options choosing their way of life, selecting autonomous, egalitarian and ‘pure’ relationships based on sexual and emotional equality, and who are free to “reallocate, move up and move out if necessary” (Giffney & O’Rourke 2009, p.204). In lesbian and gay families, an egalitarian ideology and shared responsibilities form the core of the alliances. It is evident that this group achieves the ‘pure relationship’ exemplifying new forms of intimacy, where instead of intimacy being achieved through couple relationships alone, it is sought through the ‘family of friends’. Study results support the concept of the flexible, geographically and economically mobile indivdual, choosing and undertaking certain ways of being. However, Giffney & O’Rourke (2009) caution that despite the clear trend, a broader applicability of such findings should be done carefully. Although there is growing tolerance and recognition of lesbian and gay lives, and consequently increasing acceptance of their ‘families of choice’ characterised by liberal forms of sexuality and intimacy, restrictive practices based on differentiation between heterosexual and homosexual notions continue to take place. While the social and political margins of sexuality and intimacy may have transformed to some extent, the everyday situation is still based on and reinvents rigid boundaries and borders (Giffney & O’Rourke 2009). Seltzer (2000, p.1247) supports this view, stating that the although there is a “rapid increase in cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing over the past few years, it is unlikely that they will have the preferred standing of marriage and childbearing in marriage any time soon”. However, the likelihood for individuals to experiment in their family lives increases because the unstable environment impedes the enforcement of relationships obligations, or establishment of norms pertaining to acceptability of informal families. Family Policy in Contemporary Britain and other European Nations Governments in Britain and the rest of Europe are facing challenges from the changing family forms, and ‘families of choice’. Through legislation to recognise cohabitation including same-sex partnerships most governments attempts to increase the stability of unmarried couple relationships, and to facilitate access to some of the rights enjoyed by married couples. Of the European Union’s fifteen member states (EU15) to give formal recognition to non-conventional marriage and parenting, the Nordic states were the first to introduce contracts for unmarried cohabitees in the 1980s. Other EU15 states have followed the Scandinavian example. However, some countries have not introduced such legislation, in order to maintain the differences between marriage and less formal relationhsips (Hantrais, Philipov & Billari 2005). With a weakening of marital bonds and increase in alternative living arrangements, legislators are also required to ensure that the interests of children are protected. “In all EU 15 member states and most central and eastern European countries, unmarried parents have an obligation to maintain their children” (Hantrais et al 2005), but the father has to be legally recognised. Further, public policy and changing family forms are mutually interactive, with the government attempting to influence ‘families of choice’ by providing or banning entitlements for those adopting non-conventional living arrangements. For example, permissive legislation recognizes unmarried cohabitation in northern Europe. Other governments may curb change through prohibitive legislation preventing divorce or abortion as in Poland and Ireland (Hantrais et al 2005). The establishment of flexible working arrangements is considered as a means to help couples combine paid work with family responsibilities. With growth in numbers of double-income families where both parents work outside the home, one of the most serious concerns for most European governments is the female work force activity as against unpaid care work in the home, the adequacy of care facilities for young children and aging people, and the impending deficit in care caused by increasing numbers of employed women. Policy measures call for shared domestic and care duties among couples, and compensate the parent providing care in the home (Hantrais et al 2005). Conclusion This paper has highlighted the transformation and formation of new family stuctures in Britain. It is evident that there is a shifting away from traditional approaches to heterosexual married parents in conventional family structures. The prevailing approach towards gender and family in western sociologies emphasizes the diversity of family forms and experiences, and focuses on the variations in the membership of families which frequently break down through divorce, and re-form in the course of time. The sociological theory of individualism or reflexivism as opposed to thinking of the common good, has caused radical social changes towards the present-day new ‘families of choice’. These are autonomously chosen alternative lifestyles and intimacies marked by unmarried cohabitation, same-sex marriages or partnerships, lone parenting, reconstituted or blended families of divorced and remarried parents. Sociological theorists have attributed the changes to an increase in ‘pure relationships’ based on love and intimacy among partners, and on ‘plastic sexuality’ that informs same-sex partnerships freed from the needs of reproduction. The theory of social capital or the productive benefits of relationships explains the new family forms of heterosexual and same-sex cohabitation/ or living apart found today, as well as the relationships maintained in traditional families based on practical considerations. Governmental legislation is based on specific welfare ideologies, resulting in some countries such as Britain supporting individualised citizenship rights that are extended to contemporary ‘families of choice’, besides the dual-income model for couples, along with policy providing compensation for care-giving in the home. Hantrais et al (2005) support this view, adding that other countries are undecided between policies that treat women as citizen-mothers, citizen-workers or both. However, the most serious concern for central and eastern European countries is on ensuring that families secure a living wage during the process of labour market restructuring, thus supporting self-sufficiency and promoting commitment to family life. ------------------------------------ Bibliography Beck-Gernsheim, E 2002, Reinventing the family: In search of new lifestyles. London, The Polity Press. Giddens, A & Griffiths, S 2006, Sociology, Edition 5, London, The Polity Press. Giddens, A 1993, The transformation of intimacy: Sexuality, love and eroticism in modern societies, The United States of America: Stanford University Press. Giffney, N & O’Rourke, M 2009, The Ashgate research companion to queer theory, England, Ashgate Publishing Ltd. 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