Elisabetta Ruspini - Diversity in Family Life: Gender, Relationships and Social Change

DIVERSITY IN FAMILY LIFE

Gender, relationships and social
change

Elisabetta Ruspini

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by

Policy Press University of Bristol 6th Floor Howard House Queens Avenue Clifton Bristol BS8 1SD UK Tel +44 (0)117 331 5020 Fax +44 (0)117 331 5367 e-mail

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Policy Press 2013

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I wish to deeply acknowledge the very precious help provided by Naomi Rosenthal, whose comments and suggestions helped to review the first version of the book.

This volume provides a road map through the challenges of family diversity and family change in Western societies. Family forms, what it means to be a member of a family and the expectations people have of family relationships vary with time and space. As we will shortly see, today, marriage and family relationships are formed and maintained in an environment of greater choice in how women and men can live their lives than has been possible for past generations. Following Beck (1992), choices are made in a world that no longer has universal certainties, risks and fixed models of life.

Changing gender identities1 gender identity may be defined as a persons inner sense of being a woman or a man, or another gender have had a direct impact on the processes of family formation and models of motherhood and fatherhood in the Western experience. Obviously, gender identities and gender roles provide much of the organising structure in family life (Barnard and Martell, 1995; Parke, 1995), and, we would argue, changes in gender identities and in gender relations are at the root of family and social change (Demo et al, 2000; Hall, 2000; Erera, 2002; Sullivan, 2006; Klett-Davies, 2007; Gabb, 2008; Lamanna and Riedmann, 2009; Kapella et al, 2010; Woodward, 2011).

In particular, we notice a move towards more individualised and flexible decision-making processes, distant from the formal frameworks that used to shape womens and mens decisions in matters of relationships and family life. In fact, it is possible to identify many diverse family structures today, such as one-parent families, unmarried couples with children, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, Transgender, Intersex and Queer (LGBTTIQ) families, divorced families, reconstructed families, mixed families, couples where the two partners live in separated domiciles, and asexual and childfree couples (see, eg, Demo et al, 2000; Beck-Gernsheim, 2002; Baca Zinn et al, 2010).

These new living arrangements are the communes of the 21st century, the century inhabited by the Millennial generation (also Digital or Net generation). The Millennials are the newest generation, a group of young people whose birth years range from 1980 to 1982 onwards.2 Millennials are mostly the children of Baby Boomers or Generation Xers. In recent years, the Millennial generation has emerged as a powerful political and social force. The Millennial generation has been defined as one that is competent, qualified, technological and in search of a new form of citizenship (Howe and Strauss, 2000; Balduzzi and Rosina, 2009; Benckendorff et al, 2010; Rainer and Rainer, 2011; Taylor and Keeter, 2010). They are politically and socially independent, and they are thus spearheading a period of sweeping change around the world (Greenberg and Weber, 2008). This is for various reasons.

First, they are the most ethnically and racially diverse cohort of youth in history. In the US, among those aged 13 to 29, 18.5% are Hispanic, 14.2% are black, 4.3% are Asian, 3.2% are mixed race or other and 59.8%, a record low, are white (Keeter and Taylor, 2009). Millennials are thus starting out as the most politically progressive age group in modern history.3 Second, they feel empowered, they have a sense of security and they are optimistic about the future. Unlike generations that came before them (Baby Boomers and Generation Xers), these children are not left to make key decisions on their own; the parents are involved in their daily lives. Their parents helped them plan their achievements, took part in their activities and showed strong beliefs about their childrens abilities. Third, they are extremely independent because of individual and family change (divorced families,new family forms, lone parenting, etc) and the revolution of advanced Internet technologies. The Millennials grew up with Web 2.0 technologies4 and thrive in a multimedia, highly communicative environment. Learning online is natural to them as much as retrieving and creatively creating information on the internet, blogging, communicating on cell phones, downloading files to iPods and instant messaging.5 Following Keeter and Taylor (2009), they are the first generation in human history to regard behaviours like tweeting and texting, along with websites like Facebook, YouTube, Google and Wikipedia, not as astonishing innovations of the digital era, but as everyday parts of their social lives and their search for understanding. The oldest members of this generation are now entering the workforce. At the same time, the Baby Boom generation is retiring at a much older age than members of previous generations. This may bring about intergenerational conflicts, as well as uncertainty about what the future of workforce will be.6

A book by Greenberg and Weber (2008), which explores the values, dreams and potential of the Millennial generation, shows that they (and their supporters from other generations) are poised to change the world for the better, and lays out a powerful plan for progressive change that todays youth is ready to implement. The book presents the results of a major research study into the characteristics of the Millennial generation, including an in-depth survey of 2,000 individuals and a series of 12 geographically and demographically diverse focus groups. A second book based on 1,200 interviews by Rainer and Rainer (2011) sheds lights on the relationship between the Millennial generation,