6 results
11 - Troubling loss? Children’s experiences of major disruptions in family life
- Edited by Jane Ribbens McCarthy, The Open University, Milton Keynes, Carol-Ann Hooper, Val Gillies, University of Westminster
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- Book:
- Family Troubles?
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 07 September 2022
- Print publication:
- 04 April 2013, pp 135-150
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Summary
Introduction
This article draws on young people's perspectives on extraordinary changes – the disruption of biographies, families and households – that may be experienced as loss. We take it for granted that young people's own insights into the constraints and possibilities of adjusting to, recovering from or repairing such disruptions are of intrinsic value and interest. The focus is not on the psychological mechanism involved in mourning (Bagnoli, 2003) or on how the absent are dealt with in memory (Cait, 2008), but, rather, on the interpersonal, systemic and discursive processes involved in deflecting, minimising or amplifying the trouble loss brings. The theoretical starting point draws from insights shared by a range of sociological understanding of the development of selves (Mead, 1934; Goffman, 1959; Berger and Luckman, 1967; Giddens, 1984; Bourdieu, 1986; Smith, 1987; Holdsworth and Morgan, 2007; Holmes, 2010). This approach places the biographical origins of the self-reflexive self, ‘me’ and ‘I’, in emotionally charged relationships with primary carers during infancy. In childhood, the influences shaping and sustaining the self rapidly open out to a larger constellation of close relationships and other social systems bestowing a sense of belonging, competence and worth, including the education system and other institutions rewarding performance. Scholars of personal life have used various terms to describe the constellation of close relationships that are influential to a sense of self as well as a source of practical and emotional support and ‘capital’ (Bourdieu, 1986): ‘significant others’ (Berger and Luckman, 1967; Ketokivi, 2008), ‘network of care’ (Hansen, 2005), ‘personal communities’ (Wellman et al, 1988; Spencer and Pahl, 2006), ‘connected lives’ (Smart, 2007) and ‘family configurations’ (Widmer and Sapin, 2008). Such personal relationships and wider social systems bestowing belonging and competence are often intertwined. Micro worlds of personal interaction are always framed by institutionalised social and discursive cultural systems, which structure access to resources and ideas, shaping the possibilities for working on and imagining the self. This theoretical approach regards the self and subjectivity as always open to at least partial refashioning. Working with the limits of inner resources and the affordances of wider social and cultural systems, people, children and adults, refresh and remake something of themselves in social interaction with significant others and through their performances.
twelve - Solo living, individual and family boundaries: findings from secondary analysis
- Edited by Linda McKie, Sarah Cunningham-Burley
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- Book:
- Families in Society
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 18 January 2022
- Print publication:
- 21 September 2005, pp 207-226
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Summary
Introduction
There is a growing proportion of adults living alone, at ages that have conventionally been associated with coupledom, marriage and childrearing, as well as among older people and, given differential mortality, particularly older women. To what extent does the increase in people living alone mean a redrawing of boundaries around ‘family’ and ‘household’? Those who live in one person households are not in ‘family households’ but to what extent have they stepped outside of families? If people now move in and out of situations in which they live alone across their adult life, has this reshaped the boundaries between youth and adulthood? If men and women display very different patterns of moving in and out of solo living, what are the implications of this for gender boundaries?
Solo living has been portrayed as removed from conventional family life in both optimistic and pessimistic terms. In Britain, a popular image of the single woman living alone was created in the novel Bridget Jones's Diary. Bridget's diary reveals her preoccupations with her weight, diet, appearance and, above all, her desperation for a boyfriend. This portrayal is somewhat more sympathetic than some stereotypes offered in popular media. Portrayals of ‘laddish culture’ among young and not so young men and ladettes, their female equivalent, suggest that people are too selfish, self-obsessed or otherwise preoccupied with consumption, fun and personal project to sustain relationships with others (for example, as in the novel, Morvern Callar). These portrayals suggest that solo livers are atomistic and, wittingly or unwittingly, place boundaries of selfishness between themselves and others. These negative stereotypes seem to fit with academic accounts that are very pessimistic about the future of personal life (Bellah et al, 1985; Beck, 1992; Bauman, 1995; Putnam, 2000). But in this realm of speculation, it is equally plausible to fit trends in solo living to more optimistic accounts of personal life (Skolnick, 1991; Giddens, 1992). Then, living alone is not about selfishly cutting others off but creating a base from which equal and intimate relationships with others can be sustainedmacFollowing the optimistic account of social change offered by Anthony Giddens (1992, 1998), women would be placed at the vanguard in this interpretation of solo living, seeking to develop more equal and deeper relationships and working to redraw boundaries by demanding more democracy and intimacy in their personal relationships with men.
eleven - Boundaries of intimacy
- Edited by Linda McKie, Sarah Cunningham-Burley
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- Book:
- Families in Society
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 18 January 2022
- Print publication:
- 21 September 2005, pp 189-206
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Introduction
This chapter reviews how the concepts of boundaries and boundary work are deployed in theorising intimacy, in order to assess how these concepts further our understanding of intimacy and social change. In everyday current usage, intimacy is often presumed to involve practices of close association, familiarity and privileged knowledge, strong positive emotional attachments, such as love, and a very particular form of ‘closeness’ and being ‘special’ to another person, associated with high levels of trust. Recent discussions of intimacy emphasise one particular practice of generating ‘closeness’ above all others, selfdisclosure. Intimacy of the inner self, ‘disclosing intimacy’ or ‘self expressing intimacy’ has become celebrated in popular culture as the key to a ‘good relationship’ although some academic work has suggested that this type of intimacy may be more of an ideological construct than an everyday lived reality. The practices attended to in such a conceptualisation of intimacy suggest an absence or lowering of boundaries among intimates in comparison to the presence or heightening of boundaries between intimates and those outside their intimate relationships. In accounts of personal life, intimates are described as if encapsulated together by a protective boundary that stops distractions that would otherwise interfere with their intimacy or by an exclusionary boundary that keeps non-intimates out.
Although often not explicitly named as such, reference to boundaries and boundary work has been a longstanding aspect of theorising the place of personal life in social change. For social theorists of the emergence of ‘modernity’, the reconfiguration of ‘public’ and ‘private’ as separate spheres and renewed emphasis on individualism, and the conceptualising of individuals as having unique inner selves, were necessary precursors to the association of intimacy with private personal relationships. For some, private intimacy was also the product of another facet of modernity: the development of divisions of labour, specialisation and bureaucracy, resulting in interaction organised around the functions people perform or positions they occupy rather than ‘whole persons’. Hence it is argued that individuals need intimacy to re-establish themselves in “holistic, multifaceted interactions that contrast with the segmental, single-faceted interactions of the relatively many rolerelations” (Davis, 1973, p xxii).
two - Teenagers’ relationships with peers and parents
- Edited by John F. Ermisch, Robert E. Wright
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- Book:
- Changing Scotland
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 20 January 2022
- Print publication:
- 01 July 2005, pp 17-32
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In the 1990s, researchers seriously began to investigate children's views (Hill and Tisdall, 1997; Christensen and James, 2000), complementing earlier research on young people aged 16+ (Hutson and Jenkins, 1989; Wallace, 1989; Banks et al, 1992). With the exception of a few pioneering studies (Mitchell, 1985), this was the first time children's views of parenting, families and family life had been investigated. In a number of studies, researchers found that many children defined ‘family’ fairly flexibly and inclusively, and that the overwhelming majority saw parents as crucial to their well-being (Brannen et al, 1994, 1999, 2000; O’Brien et al, 1996; Borland et al, 1998; Morrow, 1998; Douglas et al, 2000; Dunn et al, 2001; Smart et al, 2001). This period was also a time of new studies of children's friendship and school-based peer relationships (Mac an Ghaill, 1994; Griffiths, 1995; Hey, 1996; Connolly, 1998), demonstrating that friendship was a major focus in most children's lives and also central to their well-being (Criss et al, 2002).
Interest in listening to children and young people has been stimulated by changes in how we think about children and childhood (Jenks, 1996; James and Prout, 1997). The new ‘social studies of childhood’ approach conceives of the child as a knowledgeable social agent with the ability to comprehend, reflect upon and effect change in his or her social world. Concern to investigate children's views of their families was an attempt to understand children's experience of widespread changes in family life and to begin to document children's perspective on the impact on their wider social world of events such as a family household regrouping from two parents to one parent. In this chapter, we explore the insight into family and friendship in the lives of 11- to 15-year-olds offered by the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS).
The BHPS is one of the few quantitative data sources in Britain to incorporate young people under the age of 16 into an otherwise adult study. Since 1994 (wave D), the British Youth Panel (BYP) has provided insights into young people's lives. In that year, all children aged 11-15 in the 605 BHPS households with children of this age (as of 1 December) were asked to participate in the BYP; an 89% response rate produced an original sample of 773 young people.
INTIMACY TRANSFORMED? A CRITICAL LOOK AT THE ‘PURE RELATIONSHIP’
- LYNN JAMIESON
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It has recently been claimed that a particular form of intimacy, ‘the pure relationship’ is increasingly sought in personal life. For a couple, ‘the pure relationship’ involves opening out to each other, enjoying each other's unique qualities and sustaining trust through mutual disclosure. Anthony Giddens (1992) postulates a transformation of intimacy in all personal relationships with radical consequences for the gender order. Popular discourse supports the view that heterosexual couples are more equal and intimate. However, stories of everyday lives told to researchers paint a very qualified picture. Much of personal life remains structured by inequalities. Gendered struggles with the gap between cultural ideals and structural inequalities result in a range of creative identity and relationship-saving strategies. More, perhaps much more, creative energy goes into sustaining a sense of intimacy despite inequality than into a process of transformation. Moreover, the rhetoric of ‘the pure relationship’ may point people in the wrong direction both personally and politically. It feeds on and into a therapeutic discourse that individualises personal problems and down-grades sociological explanations. In practice, intimacy remains multi-dimensional and for the contenders for successful heterosexual equality, acts of practical love and care have been more important than a constant dynamic of mutual exploration of each other's selves.