Abstract
Families in Transition has been a long awaited volume, not in the sense that the authors have been tardy, but rather in the sense that the sociology of families and relationships has been looking forward to the publication of the wave of restudies of classic empirical texts of the 1960s. Perhaps this fascination is partly to do with the way in which Sociology has recently become more interested in its empirical (as opposed to theoretical) foundations. Alternatively it may be the discipline's way of craving a kind of golden age (of innocence) which is now long past. Whichever is true, this places a heavy weight of expectation upon the restudy because it is, quite unrealistically, expected to fit instantly into the shoes of its forebear and effortlessly to carve out a space for itself in the canon. The restudy is born under a shadow and so the question is whether it can emerge from that shade to create its own impression.
Families in Transition is a restudy of Rosser and Harris' The Family and Social Change (1965) which was carried out in Swansea during the 1960s. As Charles et al. point out, the original too was a kind of restudy of the more famous work of Michael Young and Peter Willmott in Bethnal Green in the 1950s. The two studies of Swansea are nearly 60 years apart and the restudy uses largely the same research design as the original, applying broadly the same survey instruments (where feasible and sensible) and using the same four localities in Swansea. An important difference between the two is, however, the ethnographic element because while in the original this took the form of participant observation and some interviews in just two of the locations, in the restudy it consists solely of interviews in each of the 4 locations with a sample of 71 men and 122 women.
Much of Families in Transition is taken up with a discussion of the findings from the new study which are set against the findings from 40 years ago. In these chapters is to be found rich detail of the family lives of individuals living in Swansea, much of which chimes with other recent empirical studies on family life in England and Scotland. These chapters offer further evidence of the connectedness between family members, kin and sometimes friends which is so little evidenced in more populist accounts of contemporary family life. What this study achieves however is a thoroughgoing explanation of how forms of connectedness may change given changing social conditions (eg mothers' patterns of employment) whilst remaining durable. Precisely because this study can draw upon such a deep history, it is able to see continuities much more clearly. This is important because rupture is more readily detected – not least because it can be captured in the snapshot approach – while continuity requires greater patience and a longer term view. This was one of the most important findings from the Bengtson et al. (2002) study How Families Still Matter in the US. This is an ongoing longitudinal study, rather than a one off restudy, but it reinforces the idea that different methodological approaches can produce very different sociological accounts of social change. So perhaps one the most significant findings of this book, given its status as a restudy, is that ‘although the changes [Rosser and Harris] predicted have come to pass, they have not had the expected outcomes’ (p. 231). In other words, Rosser and Harris were correct in the 1960s when they anticipated further changes to women's employment patterns and increasing social and geographical mobility, but they were incorrect to speculate that this would mean that (extended) families would cease to matter (pace Bengtson).
Families in Transition also constitutes another important bulwark against the influence that theories of individualisation have had on contemporary understandings of family and kin relations. Not only do the authors offer a concise critique of these approaches, but their empirical data offers the most powerful rebuttal against the excesses of these grand theories. But as the authors also point out, this is not just an academic debate; sadly this way of thinking has infected policy making in Britain. As they argue most trenchantly, ‘[P]olicy, like much of the theory on which it is based, pays scant attention to the realities of family lives’ (p. 224). What a pity then that this book won't be read by more policy makers.
This is not to say that there are not possible flaws in the book. One issue that struck me most powerfully concerns the book's theoretical imagination which is, I feel, largely missing. This is perhaps the most detrimental legacy of walking in the shadow of a classic study. As these authors themselves recognise it is often simply not possible or appropriate to do an exact copy of a previous study because methodological perspectives, ethical considerations, and simply sociological reflexivity have all changed. But so have theoretical visions, and in particular the way in which such visions are insinuated throughout a research design. In this case of course the research design and even most of the research questions were set in the early 1960s and so this means that much of the book is untouched by more contemporary modes of theorising with and through data. It is true that the authors do discuss some key theorists at the start and they even opt ultimately for Bourdieu as their preferred theorist. But this choice feels largely instrumental and as if it were made after they collected their data – for it could surely not have happened before. There is no trace of Bourdieu in the main text of the book and he gets merely one sentence in the conclusion. If he was as helpful as the authors maintain then it would have been interesting to find more evidence of this. Perhaps this accounts for why the book, while being so useful on the one hand, also already feels a bit dated on the other. The scathing dismissal of memory for example (‘and memories are, of course, precisely this’ p. 201), or the extraction of discussions of love and intimacy (as if family life and intimacy are two separate spheres, p. 20), and the quaint use of terms like ‘divorcee’ all make the book feel as if it is part of a closing chapter rather than steps towards a new understanding. But then maybe this really is the poisoned chalice of the faithful restudy.