Deborah Chambers - A Sociology of Family Life

Chapter 4traces changes in childhood. It highlights the tensions between opposing accounts of childhood: a traditional romantic ideal which affirms that the right of a child is ‘to be a child’, and the idea of the child as an active agent with rights. The practicalities of contemporary childrearing practices are set against this romantic ideal and often lead to confusion among both parents and children. Childrearing is now depicted as a negotiation between parent and child, within a process monitored by the state and other agencies such as schools. The impact on childhood of post-divorce families, lone parenting and poverty are examined. Contemporary approaches to childhood draw attention to children’s accelerating contact with the media, commercialism and new digital technologies. Children’s sustained engagement with media devices complicates the idealized and sentimental notion of childhood. For example, the introduction of a wide range of media gadgets into the home, together with children’s access to mobile devices, prompts a renegotiation of household relationships between children and parents. The chapter also shows that in certain non-western societies, childhood is now shaped by elements of privatized and individualized family life familiar to western societies, suggesting that a western trend of home-based privatized childhoods may be a globalizing tendency. Changes occurring in contemporary urban China are outlined to offer an insight into the way these changes are impacting transnationally.

Chapter 5focuses on ageing societies and the life course in the context of the family. The term ‘life course’ is used in sociology to indicate an individual’s passage through life, which is generally studied as a sequence of significant life events that include birth, marriage, parenthood, divorce and retirement. Major changes in family responsibilities over the life course have been driven by a rise in life expectancy, an extension of the age of reproduction and longer periods of ‘post-parental’ life, as well as rising divorce rates. In ‘ageing’ western societies, it is often assumed that older people are a growing burden on the young. However, patterns of reciprocity between older and younger family members show that older relatives, particularly older women, often take on considerable responsibilities as grandparents. The chapter looks at ageing and intergenerational ties to examine how families and households deal with the anxieties of caring for the elderly in both the global north and global south. Various configurations of social support, including friends, neighbours and extended kin, are now centrally involved in caregiving in an ageing society, as exemplified by non-traditional family forms, such as LGBTQ+ couples. New research agendas that address the global dimensions of family life have been developed, with the maintenance of generational and network-based ties across different nation states focused on. The chapter therefore assesses the impact of migration on the care of the elderly by describing a series of case-study examples.

Scholars have tended to study globalization in terms of capital, changing state and market mechanisms and new technologies. In chapter 6, globalization is approached in a specific manner that spotlights the ways in which globalization shapes and is shaped by families. Family systems and family relations interconnect with and support large-scale processes of economic globalization. How families negotiate and are impacted by international migration and other transnational connections is addressed. Patterns of marriage, migration and global processes have strengthened, reshaped or destabilized families. These trends are analysed by focusing on topics ranging from the migration of care workers to arranged marriages, internet dating and mail-order brides. Local and international marriage and labour markets are interconnected processes that are mediated by local practices and customs of kinship and marriage.

Chapter 6is divided into three sections to address general themes. The first section examines the growing mobility and global migration of families or family members triggered by the demand for care workers in the West, by raising important questions about the global political economy of formal and informal care. The second section examines transnational marriage strategies that form part of geographical and social mobility. Academic responses to transnational marriage are often influenced by western values of romance, such as the idea of the pure relationship. These values shape the idea that commercial imperatives in spouse selection undermine the authenticity of the marital relationship. Involving young women and adolescent girls, marriage is often viewed as a business deal that transforms a kinship association into a form of human ‘trafficking’ (Palriwala and Uberoi 2008). Forming part of the study of the effects of migration patterns on family structures and experiences, the third section examines the political economy of marriage transactions by addressing the ways in which marriage is exploited for social mobility, including arranged marriages and commercially negotiated marriage, ‘mail order brides’ and internet dating.

The theme of families and fertility is examined in chapter 7through a series of historical and contemporary case studies that have gained currency in global debates about population and fertility control. It investigates national population issues including birth control, family planning, infant mortality and unsafe abortions. How religious and cultural customs, state policies and global agencies have dealt with fertility and influenced family structures and values transnationally is explored. The first case study refers to Japan, which has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world. Japan’s low fertility rate is explained by unfavourable employment opportunities and conditions for women, coupled with family values that favour full-time motherhood. The aggressive family and demographic policies of the Ceauşescu regime are described within the second case study, to demonstrate how women were coerced into bearing children by the state banning of contraception and abortion for women of all ages (Kligman 1998). The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) prompted a dramatic shift in the field of population and development. The ICPD produced a programme of action that recognized that reproductive health and rights, women’s empowerment and gender equality should underpin all population and development programmes. This was prompted by several issues, including revelations about the extent of misery inflicted on families by the population policies of Romania under the brutal dictatorship of Ceauşescu between 1966 and 1989. The chapter examines empirical evidence of ways in which the state and traditional customs in western and non-western cultures coalesced in regulating fertility and family practices. The legacy of the regime is further discussed in the context of the subsequent massive rise in Romanian orphans.

The third and fourth case studies addressed in chapter 7address the impact of son preference and modern population policies on families, and particularly on the lives of women and children. Son preference is a deep-rooted cultural norm in non-western countries. How this custom has been defended and negotiated in relation to government attempts at fertility control and the availability of sex-selective abortion technologies are described in the context of India’s family planning policies and China’s one-child policy. The cases are chosen because they constitute two of the most highly populated countries of the world, with some of the most highly controversial or problematic sets of practices and customs. Son preference and preferred family composition are powerful customs that place pressure on women to make fertility decisions which conform to a deeply held tradition about the composition of the ‘proper family’. The third case study addresses sex-selective abortions in India, which have skewed the ratio of boys to girls. The chapter examines the impact of sex-selective abortions on the lives of women and girls in India, as well as government attempts to curtail the practice. China’s family planning programme, known as the one-child policy, forms the fourth case study. The effectiveness of this dramatic population policy is linked to the country’s unique system of government control. However, the strong tradition of son preference – which existed in China for more than 2,000 years – continues to be a factor discouraging compliance with the policy. Furthermore, the chapter analyses the ‘demographic transition’ in developed places such as Europe and Japan by exploring the way policies have addressed fertility issues in these ageing societies.