Article
SOCIAL THEORY IN PRACTICE

A FAMILY FEUD
Social Conservative versus Postmodernist perspectives on family life

INTRODUCTION
Ideas have roots. They can be traced back - as it were, organically - to the seeds from which they have grown. So, theories of the family are rarely, if ever, just theories.
Of course, they are ideas about how human beings should organise their sexual relations and their domestic and household arrangements, and by whom children should be created and how they should be reared. But they are also ideas whose origins can be seen to be embedded in grander theoretical and philosophical arguments about:

• the relationship between the individual and society;
• the benefits and dangers of modernity;
• the nature of freedom and human fulfilment;
• and the route to the good life and social progress.

It is one of the basic arguments of this article that any real understanding of the debates about the family today can only be achieved by appreciating the theoretical and philosophical roots of these opposing positions. We need to start by looking at arguments about welfarism and the nuclear family.

WELFARISM
According to Stephen Savage, in Britain the Welfare State has four main components:
The Four Core Features of the Welfare state (Savage, 1986,p.3)

* medical care through the National Health Service (NHS)
* education at primary, secondary schools and further and
higher education institutions
* social insurance, covering pensions (retirement and
disability), family allowances, unemployment and
sickness benefits and supplementary benefits (for those
would otherwise fall below the official poverty line)
* social services in support of children, the elderly, the
homeless and others whose circumstances make them
vulnerable

However, it is important to recognise that Welfarism is not just a form of state support for any old lifestyle. By the very ways in which welfare provision is structured, targeted and delivered, certain ways of living are promoted while others are discouraged. For example, Welfarism has been a major sponsor of one of the principal features of the nuclear family model - that the husband, is supposed to provide material support for his economic dependents, and the wife's role is to work as the family's home-maker. Historically, this gendered domestic division of labour, as the jargon puts it, has been at the heart of the nuclear family, and is based upon a distinction between the male, public, world of paid work and the female, private, world of unpaid domestic work in the home.

In effect, here the Welfare State is specifying how married women's lives should be lived, and is constructing their identity as housewives. The point is that Welfarism is not a benign, neutral instrument, but inevitably acts as a sort of 'disciplinary device' in the way it intervenes into family life: it is, in essence, a kind of sculpting tool, which fashions and moulds certain kinds of family relationships and certain kinds of family identities as desirable - even essential.

This article contrasts two opposed views about whether the nuclear family should be promoted by Welfarism as the ideal family form.

TWO OPPOSED VIEWS

• On one side of the argument are SOCIAL CONSERVATIVES, who believe in both the virtues of nuclear family living and in the argument that the state should provide Welfarist support for this unit.
• On the other are INDIVIDUAL LIBERATIONISTS, or POSTMODERNISTS.
  They see nuclear family living as just one more lifestyle choice and not a superior way of organising either sexual activity, adult relationships, or the biological and social reproduction of children. These thinkers are opposed to Welfarist support of the nuclear family, but are in favour of other forms of state support being made available to allow people to pursue their own route to individual fulfilment.

Exercises
Look out for the answers to the following questions as you read this article:
How does Welfarism act as a 'disciplinary device'?
How did Durkheim describe human individuals?
Why does the nuclear family play such an important role for Social Conservatives?
Why is language so important for postmodernists?
Describe the 'freedom' postmodernists think human beings have.
Why has Sociology been such an important part of modernity?
What does relativism mean?

SOCIAL CONSERVATISM
This approach is rooted in the ideas of the sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858 - 1917). According to Durkheim, in all social worlds there is the constant threat of a lurking individualism breaking through the surface with the potential to cause waves it becomes impossible to control. Durkheim described the human individual as, in essence, selfish and hedonistic, with limitless desires, constantly pursuing personal gratification. Social collectivities are threatened with disorder and disintegration unless their members' behaviour and ambitions can be limited and directed for the good of themselves as well as for the social whole.
The individual needs to be liberated from the influence of instincts, and to be converted into a social being whose ambitions and needs are coincident with those of the group.

This is why socialisation has such a crucial role. For those in this tradition social order cannot be guaranteed, nor individual happiness promoted, unless the members of a social collectivity learn properly the social rules - the norms and values - which hold it together. By proper socialisation, particularly in the family, a consensus about 'how people ought to behave' is transmitted from one generation to the next. The individual is incorporated into a community of similarly-socialised, and, therefore, like-minded, others, with this shared set of beliefs and expectations - a collective conscience - guaranteeing social and individual health. Without norms constraining behaviour, in Durkheim`s words:
'humans develop insatiable appetites, limitless desires and general feelingsof irritation and dissatisfaction'.
This is why figures in this tradition so often bemoan evils like a 'loss of social cohesion', a 'loss of a sense of community' and a 'lack of shared values' in a population. This is why the National Curriculum, once tried to identify a set of 'National Values' which could be converted into a list of 'Ten Commandments' for all schools to promote in the classroom. This is why Gillian Shepherd, the last Tory Minister of Education, set up a Commission of the great and the good to try to come up with a similar set of approved values we should expect all schools to instill in their children, whatever their background. (They found it difficult). This is also why Tony Blair has not only pledged that 'Education, Education, Education' is his Government's top priority, but has consistently preached the need to promote civic responsibility among Britain's citizens - 'responsibilities as well as rights' - in order to foster in them a sense of partnership with, and obligation towards, each other and to encourage a move away from narrow, self-centred agendas.
Such projects are rooted in the Durkheimian fear that modernity inevitably promotes selfish individualism.

The nuclear family is seen as a crucial barrier against these selfish, egotistical and anti-social tendencies. It is the principal place where we can learn properly that the pursuit of rights should be matched with a recognition of obligations, where a sense of responsibility for others can be fostered, and where the needs of the collectivity can be promoted ahead of the needs of the individual. From this perspective, then, anti-social behaviour and deviance leading to social disorder are a consequence of cultural failure - particularly of the inadequate socialisation of kids into the collective conscience - and the dysfunctional family is the main culprit in the commission of this crime.

Though this is the philosophy underpinning the current ideas of Tony Blair and New Labour, in post-war 20th century sociology this perspective had already prospered, particularly in the USA, with the work of the American functionalist followers of Talcott Parsons ( 1902 -79 ) being among the most notable examples.
In more recent times, the British work of sociologists such as Norman Dennis (Rising Crime and The Dismembered Family ,1993; Families without Fatherhood , 1993 ) and the 'Communitarian' ideas of the American sociologist Amitai Etzioni (The Spirit of Community , 1995; The Parental Deficit , 1995;The New Golden Rule ,1997) exhibit classic Durkheimian preoccupations.
In addition, among newspaper columnists and self-styled social commentators the pronouncements of such as Melanie Phillips (Daily Mail), Libby Purves (The Times), Sarah Sands (Daily Telegraph) and Anne Atkins (Thought for the Day) also promote the Social Conservative line on the role of marriage and the family in contemporary society.

POSTMODERNISM AND FAMILY LIVES: FREEDOM
FROM THE TRUTH MERCHANTS
In the 1970s, a new form of social theorising emerged, strongly influenced by developments in French philosophy, which argues for the centrality of language and discourse in social life. While, like all living things, humans experience reality via their senses, they alone can know what these experiences mean. This is because they have systems of knowledge - such as languages - which provide them with these meanings. However, though uniquely empowered in this way, there is a sting in the tail, for no human has any choice about the meanings contained in the language he or she learns. Thus, it is an array of pre-existing languages which determines our knowledge for us.
Although we are empowered to be human because of languages, paradoxically, we have no control over which knowledges we learn.
For those in this tradition, most notably Michel Foucault (1926 - 1984), all knowledge systems - which he calls discourses - work like languages. Thus we 'know' mad people are ill and not, for example, bewitched, because medical knowledge tells us. We 'know' unmarried women shouldn't really be mothers but, once married, we 'know' they should be mothers. Such 'knowledge', however, is a cultural feature, which has emerged, historically, just as ordinary languages have done. Therefore, just as we'd be pretty stupid to claim that one of the languages we have learnt - say French - is 'better', or more accurate, or 'truer' than another, - say Spanish - so we should realise that other forms of knowledge from our own are not better or worse - or more accurate at depicting reality - but just different ways of knowing.

Our ways of defining our world, are no nearer 'The Truth' than any others. Thus, those subjected to other discourses in other cultures 'know' different truths. For example, the members of some cultures 'know' marriages should be arranged for economic and political reasons rather than because of romantic attachment; members of some cultures 'know' that young girls should be circumcised or 'protected' to ensure their chastity before marriage; while the members of some cultures 'know' that polygyny - a husband with more than one wife - or polyandry - a wife with more than one husband - is the 'right' arrangement for married men and women.

Exercise
When you have read this article try to define the following terms:
Gendered division of labour
Welfarism
Relativism
Individualism
Meta-narrative

But why is this liberationist thinking? Surely it is just as fixed as Social Conservatism? Since we are limited by the particular languages/discourses we happen to encounter, how can this be freedom ? For the discourse theorist, though we are certainly not free to live just as we choose, we can still have a sort of freedom, since we are free from accounts of reality which claim to be objectively true. That is, we are free to be different from 'the Other' and yet to feel free to tolerate 'the Other', in a way in which notions of good and bad, promoted by Social Conservatism, cannot allow.

Since there is no 'True' knowledge, just as there is no 'True' language, we are liberated from the presence, pursuit, and promotion of Truth. This, is the true nature of human liberty: to be allowed to be who we have to be, and therefore to be accepted by others (who have to be someone else) as not 'wrong' or 'deviant'; to be free to be as our knowledge permits, without being despised or distrusted or hated or punished for it, just as we allow these others to be free to live as their own forms of knowledge direct. It is the freedom that comes from the fact that we can only know via language and discourse, and languages and discourses can never be true or false. That is, they are truths which are always relative to a time in history and a place in the world.

It is here that the relevance of this sort of theorising for our story becomes apparent, for it raises the crucial debate, particularly for family theories today, between modernist thinking and postmodernist thinking. As we shall now see, for modernist thinkers, we can only be free if we do what 'they' tell us we should, whereas for the postmodernist we are only free when nobody feels able to tell us what to do.

MODERNITY AND META-NARRATIVES
Modernity is the term used to describe the features of modern societies ushered in by the changes that Karl Polanyi called 'The Great Transformation'. Modernity has economic, political, intellectual and demographic aspects, meaning changes in productive life and in the nature of work, political life, in forms of knowledge and belief, as well as in the size and the distribution of a society's population.

However, modern societies do not just become modern and then stay still, for modernity is a process involving continuous change and development. Indeed, fora society to merit the term 'modern', constant change and the pursuit of what is believed to be betterment and progress has to be one of its hallmarks. This is why subjects like sociology have been so much a part of modernity. Sociological theorising - indeed, all social science theorising - involves humans reflecting on their social circumstances and explaining them. Because of these explanations it becomes possible to deliberately change things to achieve improvements - greater freedoms and more progress - and to build a better society.
With the rise of reason, and, therefore, of science, it becomes possible for humans not just to reveal how things have come to be as they are but to use this knowledge to control, predict and improve. This is known as the 'Project of Modernity`: the never-ending pursuit of knowledge by humans to achieve progress in their lives by their own hands. This is what knowledge is for in modernity - this is the point of acquiring it.

So modern human theories about different aspects of their reality, whether constructed by biologists, physicists, chemists, sociologists, historians, psychologists, or whatever, are self-conscious attempts to better the lot of human-kind. They are stories, or narratives, about the nature of things, which, when put into practice, will improve people's lives. And because they are true, proven, stories, they apply wherever humans are found. That is, they are meta-narratives: 'big stories' - all-embracing, always applicable, truths about the causes of particular aspects of the human condition.

Much sociological theorising about family life has this modernist, meta-narrative, character. So, claims such as: 'the nuclear family best suits the needs of industrial society' or 'a child needs to be brought up by both its parents' or 'the stability of a family depends upon parents being married' are typical elements in the modernist Social Conservative's own family meta-narrative. This is a story about human existence in particular conditions which always holds true, with the explicit intent of
directing the path down which people should go to achieve happiness for themselves and betterment for their society.

POSTMODERNISM AND RELATIVISM
Because modernity implies constant change, some commentators describe the condition of contemporary modern societies, some two hundred years or so after the beginnings of the Great Transformation, as 'late' or 'high' modernity.
However, others think the changes that have produced and characterised contemporary societies are so different from those typical of earlier kinds of modernity that we should abandon the term. Instead, they argue, we should realise that such societies exhibit postmodern characteristics - meaning they have gone beyond modernity - and have acquired unique and distinct features completely different to those referred to by the term 'modern'.

Though postmodern thinking involves a number of aspects, the one relevant here is the postmodernist rejection of the modernist pursuit of meta-narratives.
This is because, as we have suggested above, the postmodernist rejects the possibility of humans ever acquiring 'The Truth' about anything. According to this view, all human ideas are relative to the time and place in which their user lives. Relativism means no-one can stand aside from the social and cultural influences that have made them who they are and their ideas what they are. All ideas, all theories, are the creation of a particular time in history and a particular cultural context and can never be objectively true. So, meta-narrative statements such as 'it is woman's biological destiny to be a mother' or 'it is unnatural for homosexuals and lesbians to raise children' or 'surrogacy is morally wrong', even if they are subscribed to by all or most members of a society,
are merely judgements considered appropriate by people subjected to the particular influences of the particular world they happen to find themselves in.

The debate between modernism and postmodernism is central to many contemporary arguments about the family. Those steeped in a modernist tradition argue that it is not only possible, but essential, to identify what is good and bad about adult relationships, domestic arrangements, child-rearing and so on, while those of a relativist, postmodern persuasion insist that no-one should be allowed to impose their versions of how to live a family life on others who have just as much right to disagree. For the latter, we should be able to live as we wish, in whatever lifestyle we choose, so long as others are not harmed or inconvenienced, free from restrictions or regulations which, in the end, are simply the subjective viewpoints of others which is masquerading as objective truth.

Exercise
Write down these two headings:

SOCIAL CONSERVATIVES - Believes in 'Truth'
POSTMODERNISTS -Does not believe in 'Truth'

Now write down under each heading key ideas drawn from each position. We have given you a start already.
Think about the ways the two approaches differ from each other. What do you think are the strengths and weaknesses of each approach?

CONCLUSION
According to the strongest supporters of Social Conservatism, the1960s and 1970s were a time of triumph for moral and emotional individualism.
The 1960's sayings such as 'Anything goes' 'Do your own thing' or 'Let it all hang out' are supposed to have reflected the dominance of a culture of selfishness and hedonism, the very things Social Conservatives are opposed to in social populations. To the extent that this happened in the 1960s, much of this pursuit of individual satisfaction took the form of a pursuit of commodities, and was triggered by a growth in affluence.

However, the Social Conservatives focus their gaze exclusively on prevailing ideas, and the so-called 'permissiveness' of that decade is, for them, a sign of the self-centredness they claim was around at the time.
When post-modern theorising arrived in the 1970s they claimed this provided alegitimacy for this self-obsession and the preoccupation with personal happiness; if there are no moral certainties and truths, then surely anything really does go?

Added to this, according to this story, was the economic individualism characteristic of the 1980s and early 1990s - the culture of greed and materialism fostered by Thatcherite New Right ideas. So, not only had it become OK to pursue selfish moral agendas of the 1960s and 1970s, but now it was OK to enrich oneself - whatever the cost to others.

For more than 30 years, then, so the story goes, Social Conservative preoccupations - with solidarity, social cohesion, the importance of community and of civic responsibility and so on - had been washed to one side by successive waves of individualism. However, the late 1990s and the beginning of the 21st century have seen a resurgence of Social Conservative values, at least in political discourse.
The British, it is argued, have tired of greed, self-indulgence and self-centredness and have returned to the beliefs of the good old post-war days. The huge landslide for New Labour in 1997, as well as the remarkable collective reaction to Princess Diana's death, is supposed to be testimony to a country which once again demands moral renewal.

While Durkheimian preoccupations certainly feature strongly in New Labour thinking (witness the Welfarist intent of Home Secretary Jack Straw's 1998 Green Paper entitled Supporting Parenting) the idea that this heralds a return to a pre-1960s 'Golden Age' in which everyone will live happily ever after in stable nuclear families is almost certainly wide of the mark. First, this so-called 'golden age' was certainly not that golden for those huge numbers of women whose economic dependency on men limited their chances of surviving adequately outside a marriage-based family unit. Second, the advances made in securing new opportunities and promoting new aspirations for women since those times mean that things can never be the same again. The Feminist Genie cannot be put back into the bottle: women cannot be expected to 'unthink' the liberating ideas that have swept the modern world over the last thirty years or so. But Feminist views of Social Conservatism are, as they say, another story.

References
Durkheim, Emile (1974) Sociology & Philosophy, New York, Free Press
Dennis, Norman and Erdos, George (1993) Rising Crime and the Dismembered Family, London, IEA Health & Welfare Unit
Dennis, Norman (1993) Families without Fatherhood, London, IEA Health & Welfare Unit
Etzioni, Amitai (1995) The Parental Deficit, London, Demos
Etzioni, Amitai (1995) The Spirit of Community: Rights, Responsibilities and the Communitarian Agenda, London, Fontana
Etzioni, Amitai (1997) The New Golden Rule: Community and Morality in a Democratic Society, London: Profile
Savage, Stephen (1986) The Welfare State, Leicester, Hyperion Press

Pip Jones, Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge

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