Abstract
Friendships have been described as the ‘least structured of intimate relationships’ (Jamieson, 1999: 482) and the ‘archetype relationships of choice’ (Pahl and Pevalin, 2005: 435). For many people, they are also the most significant, often precisely because of their mostly voluntary or chosen nature. In this chapter, I draw on the findings of ESRC-funded research (Jones-Wild, 2011) to focus on friendship and explore what might be understood by ‘families of choice’. I consider the concept of a family of choice as potentially encompassing all relationships that are actively and voluntarily maintained. Popularized by Weston (1991), families of choice and fictive kin are often primarily associated with gay men and lesbians. However, my findings suggest that the phenomenon may be more than a ‘gay way of doing things’. I argue that the creation of claimed families and families of choice both enable and are enabled by a redefining and broadening of what ‘family’ means.
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© 2012 Rachel Jones-Wild
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Jones-Wild, R. (2012). Reimagining Families of Choice. In: Hines, S., Taylor, Y. (eds) Sexualities: Past Reflections, Future Directions. Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137002785_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137002785_9
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