Families & Households - The Personal Life Perspective On Family Flashcards
Why do they criticise the functionalist, Marxist & feminist perspective?
They assume the nuclear family is the dominant family type & ignores the diversity of families today
They are all structure/top down theories (assume members are passive puppets manipulated by societies structure - have to focus on members rather than ‘functions’
What are the key ideas of the personal life perspective?
To understand families you have to start from the individual’s POV & the meaning that they give to relationships
They share a bottom-up approach with interactionalism
Takes a wider view on relationships than just traditional family relationships based on blood/marriage ties
By focusing on on peoples meanings it draws attention to a range of other personal/intimate relationships that are important to people (they may not be conventionally defined as family)
What are some relationships that are not blood related by are still significant?
Pets
Dead relatives
Freinds of parents
Freinds
Gay/lesbian friend groups
What did Nordqvist & Smart say about donor conceived children?
Some parents emphasised the importance of social relationships over genetic ones in forming family bonds
Differences in appearance also led parents to to wonder about the donor’s identity, ‘donor siblings’ & whether those counted as ‘family’ for their child
Couples who knew the donor may wondered if the donor’s parents counted as grandparents or if the donor’s children was a half-sibling to the donor conceived child
Lesbian couple saw concern between the genetic & non-genetic mothers & if the donor may be treated as the ‘real’ second parent
What are the strengths of the personal life perspective on family?
Unlike functionalism it does recognise that relatedness is not always positive - violent & abusive relationships etc.
Rejects the top-down view & does see intimate relationships as performing important function (provides a sense of belonging)
Nordqvist & Smart’s study outlined the value of the perspective to understand how people construct & define their relationships as ‘family’
What are the limitations of the personal life perspective on family?
It’s accused of taking a too broad view as including a range of relationships, we ignore what’s special about blood/marriage relationships
