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No / According to leading sociological theorists we have now entered a 'late modern' epoch of 'de-traditionalisation' and 'individualisation'. Families are crucial in this vision, where the social ties of kinship and marriage are weakened, increasingly replaced by the project of self. In this paper we take three geographical indices of central elements of the individualisation thesis, examining the distribution in Britain of same sex couples, births to cohabitants, and mothers' withdrawal from the worker role. Analysis of all three indices give support to two levels of criticism of individualisation theory. First, pre-existing social structures have not gone away; the prevalence and the effect of the components of family form and change examined here seem deeply influenced by pre-existing local structural conditions. Secondly, the analysis supports the criticism that while people might indeed have more room for manoeuvre in late modern society, and may well be less constrained by older traditions, this does not necessarily mean individualisation. The behavioural components of individualisation theory may be a non-sequitor from the observation of changing family forms. We conclude that it seems likely that individualisation may be better conceptualised as one part of pre-existing social and structural processes, and that its behavioural assumptions are unjustified.

ABSTRACT CHANGING PATTERNS OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY IN ENGLAND FROM THE LATE MEDIEVAL TO THE EARLY MODERN AGES ULUD&Uuml / Z, &Ouml / ZLEM M.S. Department of History Supervisor: Assist. Prof. Dr. Recep Boztemur August 2003, 132 pages This thesis analyzes the changing patterns of the institutions of family and marriage in England. The period covers the late medieval ages to the early modern ages until the middle of the eighteenth century, 1753, which represents the acceptance of an important Act on marriage by the English Parliament that ended ambiguities on the law of marriage. This study attempts to investigate the family institution and marriage practices of England, which represented a different character from other European countries throughout the period. Many important historical factors occurred throughout the period, which influenced the family structure and marriage practices such as the Reformation. Within this framework, throughout this thesis, the religious, political, economic and social factors that paved the way for transition in family and marriage will be analyzed. iii

Extended households are far from a rare phenomenon in Latin America and their prevalence does not seem to be in decline. In Chile, they accounted for about a quarter of all households over the 1990–2011 period. This persistence contrasts with the dramatic transformations that have taken place in other dimensions of family life, such as the fall in fertility and marriage rates, and the increase in cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births. Recent studies on extended living arrangements in the region have mainly understood household extension as a strategy to face economic deprivation, giving little attention to other factors affecting it, such as gender inequalities and changing needs for support over the life course. In this dissertation, I contribute to the understanding of extended households Chile through the analysis of adult women living in family units over the 1990–2011 period. Unlike most other studies, I recognise the unequal positions that individuals and families occupy within the extended household, by distinguishing between women that head an extended household and those that join it as subfamilies. Using quantitative methods, I analyse a nationally representative household survey: the CASEN survey. This is the most complete data source on demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the Chilean population. This dissertation offers a new assessment of the relationship between extended living arrangements and economic deprivation. Its findings only partially support the hypothesis of household extension as a family strategy to face economic hardship. Other key factors emerge when explaining extended living arrangements, including mothers’ full-time employment, the vulnerability of informal family structures, and other needs of support connected to the life course. There has been an increasing trend across 1990–2011 for young women who have started their family life to live in extended households. Multivariate analyses reveals that this increase was mainly influenced by the rising prevalence of cohabitation and single lone motherhood among younger generations, and to a lesser extent by the increase in young women’s full-time employment. These findings raise important theoretical issues for the Chilean context and show that patterns of social modernisation and family change in Chile have gone hand-in-hand with an increasing importance of the support provided by the extended family. This dissertation fills an important gap in the research on intra-household gender inequalities by analysing women’s economic dependence on extended household members. It shows that women in subfamilies are more likely to be economically dependent than those in head-families. Full-time employment, as well as marriage and cohabitation, emerge as highly protective factors against economic dependence. Special attention is paid to lone mothers, who are often excluded from research on women’s economic dependence. Lone mothers in subfamilies benefit economically from being in an extended household. Yet overall they have decreased their likelihood of being economically dependent over the 1990–2011 period. I argue that this reflects the increasing social protection towards lone mothers and recent legal reforms aimed at the equalisation of rights among couples and children irrespective of the marriage bond.

This thesis explores diaspora experiences among Somali-Swedish parents and their daughters where the girls are enrolled in a Muslim-profiled school. The thesis uses migration theory with a transnational perspective, with findings that depart from the traditional view of migrants’ rootedness in a single country. It adopts the new paradigm for the sociology of childhood, where childhood is regarded as a social construction and children are considered to possess agency and competence. Anthony Giddens’s structuration theory and its main concept ‘duality of structure’ was employed as a theoretical tool. Methods that were used were participant observation, interviews (individual and in group) and analysis of essays. The thesis consists of three studies. The first study explores how Somali-Swedish parents explain their choice of a Muslim-profiled school for their children. The results refute the traditional view that such choices are solely faith-based, showing faith as important but not determining. Important factors were finding a school that met their high educational ambitions and  made both parents and children feel trusted, safe and not disrespected because of their faith and skin-colour. The second study explores transnational experiences, particularly the transfer of transnational practices from the Somali-Swedish parents’ to their children and the construction of a transnational social space, built on close global relationships. The results show that transnational practices are feasible irrespective of physical travel. The study also exemplifies the group’s readiness to relocate between countries by the onward migration from Sweden to Egypt, and implications for the children are illuminated. Somalis in diaspora often explain their propensity to move by their past nomadic life-patterns, but this study shows as strong factors the desire for better opportunities in combination with experiences of cultural and economic marginalisation in the West. The third study analyses how girls in grade 5 (about eleven years old) imagine their future career and family life by analysing essays. The findings reveal that their dreams are both consistent with the expectations of their families (in particular, high educational ambitions) and inspired from elsewhere (particularly in terms of future family life). How the girls imagine their adulthood could be seen as an example of how their original culture is subject to change in a new environment. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1: Manuscript.</p><p> </p>

Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht kulturelle Vorstellungen und Praktiken von Elternschaft in Deutschland. Wie Familien ihre Kinder erziehen ruft ein steigendes Interesse von Seiten der Politik, Wissenschaft und weiterer (Bildungs-)Professionen hervor. Gegenwärtig wird von Eltern erwartet, dass sie sich mit Expertenwissen auseinandersetzen, welches oftmals kostspielige und zeitaufwändige Praktiken nahelegt. Zur gleichen Zeit nehmen staatliche Akteure verstärkt Einfluss auf das familiale Leben und insbesondere die Kindererziehung. Als Folge dieser Entwicklung haben sich die kulturellen Vorstellungen von Elternschaft in Deutschland gewandelt. Mit diesen Entwicklungen beschäftigt sich die vorliegende Arbeit in drei Aufsätzen. Im Einzelnen betrachten die Artikel: (1) die Bedingungen von familienpolitischen Reformen, (2) die elterlichen Diskussionen um sich wandelnde Erwartungen sowie (3) die Auswirkung der elterlichen Klassenposition auf deren Erziehungspraktiken. Um diese Fragen zu beantworten greifen die Artikel sowohl auf Umfragedaten als auch digitale Daten zurück, die mit neuen Methoden der computergestützten Sozialforschung analysiert werden. Insgesamt erweitert die vorliegende Dissertation unser Wissen um den aktuellen Wandel von Elternschaft in Deutschland. Zudem werden innovative Methoden der computergestützten Sozialforschung in die Familiensoziologie eingeführt. Zuletzt wurde mit kulturellen Leitbildern von Elternschaft ein Zugang vorgeschlagen, der es erlaubt den gegenwärtigen Wandel von Elternschaft zu untersuchen. / The thesis at hand investigates conceptions and practices of parenthood in Germany. How families approach their childrearing has attracted growing interest in politics, science, and by (education) professionals. Today, parents are encouraged to seek expert advice to inform their childrearing. Such advice often involves the expenditure of considerable amounts of time and money. At the same time, the state has become increasingly active in the intimate life of families and, in particular, their parenting practices. As a result, the cultural models of parenthood in Germany have been changed. At the background of these changes, I designed three papers that analyze (1) the conditions of family policy change, (2) the way parents adopt changing expectations and demands, and (3) the relationship between parenting practices and social class. In order to address these questions, the respective articles use survey and digital data as well as methods from the computational social sciences (CSS). In sum, the dissertation expands our knowledge on the current recalibration of parenthood in Germany. It also introduces innovative methods from CSS to family sociology. Finally, cultural models of parenthood are proposed as a way to organize the research on changing standards and norms of parenthood.

Families are conceptualized and accomplished in increasingly diverse ways in the 21st century. A constructionist framework was utilized to examine a widespread contemporary family form, the interspecies family. This mixed-method approach relied on both quantitative survey data and qualitative interview data. First, survey data from the 2006 Constructing the Family Survey were analyzed to understand who in America counts pets as family. Many social demographics were associated and predicted counting pets as family but gender was one of the strongest associations. However, marital status moderated the relationship between gender and counting pets as family at a statically significant level. Men who are currently or have ever been married are less likely to count pets as family than never married men. Second, I conducted 32 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 39 people during 2014-2015 in Central Florida to understand how people who count their cats and dogs as family members narrate this process. Narrative strategies documenting exactly how cats and dogs become family members within interspecies family narratives include: time-related narratives, timeless narratives, and patchwork narratives. Additionally, all participants considered their cats and dogs family but only some of them felt like pet-parents. Narratives of childless participants are compared with narratives of parents to examine the impact of family form on the construction of pet parenting narratives. Implications for the family change literature are discussed.