Compare And Contrast Beck And Gernsheim

What Beck & Beck & Gernsheim demonstrate here is that Giddens’ assertion of gender equal relationships (1992) do not hold up. New forms of intimacy may have transgressed through forms of gender oppression such as equal opportunities for women in the labor market; however men and women are still not classed as legally or naturally equal in terms of the capacity to care for a child once a relationship has broken down. Beck & Beck & Gernsheim also argue the rise in divorce rates have instilled individualistic attitudes in the younger generation. Children who experienced their parents divorcing when they were young are viewed as more likely to follow in their footsteps; in 1999, The National Opinion Research Council reported that adult children

Although taking a contrasting approach, Smart does however acknowledge that individualization theories have somewhat revitalized interest in the study of family life and intimacy, and has used them as a platform to change the way we approach personal life studies. Smart extended the work of David Morgan (1996), who argued the family was not an institution but instead a range of flexible practices; ‘families are what families do’ (Morgan, 1996). She elaborated the study of the family to the study of ‘personal life’, by incorporating all sorts of non-conventional relationships such as friendships, families, kin and non-heterosexual romantic relationships. Her approach is concerned with exploring bonds between individuals, the role of the memory in forming relationships, the significance of positive and negative emotions and how family secrets are kept and change through time (Smart, 2007). What differentiates Smart’s approach from that of the individualization theory is the emphasis on connectedness; although she acknowledges the centrality of the individual nature, she does not assume separateness (Smart,