Introduction

Abstract

Over the last two or three decades, individualism has provided a grand frame of reference for family sociologists in their interpretations of the transformation of families and family life. Carol Smart (2007b: 17) characterizes individualism as the ‘big idea’ that became hugely popular and that seemed to offer an explanation for everything. In the 1980s and 1990s, in a world that witnessed the triumph of individualization it was natural that numerous studies on family transition examined certain phenomena in this light. Subjects like the increase in divorce, blended families, cohabitation, ‘living-apart-together’, ‘parenting-across-households’, same-sex and singleparent families were all regarded as new family arrangements whose logic was interpreted similar to that of individualism. In the 1990s, three names were unparalleled for their theorizing about these phenomena in accord with individualization theory: Anthony Giddens (1991, 1992), Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim (1999, 2002; Beck-Gernsheim, 2002). They were the protagonists at the centre of the scene, where changes in family and intimate lives were categorized and theorized as the thousands of references to them indeed prove. This approach also attempted to liberate society from traditions and other normative constraints that the ‘monolithic’ family, or the notion of the nuclear family had previously set. In this context, criticism was unanimously directed at Talcott Parsons, who seems to bear the main responsibility for modelling families normatively on the nuclear family format (e.g. Jamieson, 2005: 191–4; Smart, 2007b).