Monthly Talk – ‘The Family’: From the Modern to the Postmodern?

By Dr Jack Fawbert.

We all talk about our ‘families’, but what does ‘family’ really mean and is its meaning changing? In the 1950s, sociologists, in the western world at least, used to talk about the ‘nuclear family’, one that consisted of a heterosexual couple with children, as the ‘ideal’ and as the norm in modernity.
However, it is now argued by many sociologists that in the postmodern world there have been profound economic, social and political changes in society that have rendered such notions of ‘the family’ as atypical or even as obsolete.
Postmodern societies emphasize individualism and ‘choice’ rather than the structural constraints of modernity. This talk explores the changes in what we might regard as ‘the family’ as well as questioning whether what was once known as ‘the cereal packet family’ was ever ‘ideal’ or, indeed, the norm.