Introduction

Abstract

Ronald Frankenberg has recorded how, as a young researcher in a Welsh village in the 1950s, he ‘would often climb a hill and look sadly down upon the rows of houses of the housing estate and wonder what went on inside them’ (1969, p. 16). What goes on inside houses is home life, and this is something about which relatively little is known because it is fundamentally a private affair, curtained off from the public gaze. Researchers trying to build up a picture of home life face serious problems of access, so that, in general, ‘they can only deduce social process from the information they can collect by questioning people in their homes or elsewhere’ (Frankenberg, 1969, p. 16). Since this observation was made other methods of research have become available, and Frankenberg is among those who have pioneered their use (Hunt and Frankenberg, 1981; Hunt, this volume), but with these as with more conventional questionnaires the researcher remains essentially an outsider allowed only temporary and partial access to the private lives which people lead in their homes. Penetrating the veil of secrecy which surrounds home life in order to arrive at a balanced assessment of its nature and significance is no easy matter.