Hello. I'm Dr Vicky Harmon.

I'm a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Sorry

Here. I'm going to be talking about defining the family.

We all feel like we know what family means to us,

and that's because it's socially, socially meaningful concept.

But actually, defining family can be quite complex.

We might think about blood ties when we're thinking about defining family,

our connections with our parents.

Our siblings are cousins,

and we might think of sayings like Blood is thicker than water.

We might think about relationships of care,

our primary carers who looked after us when we were Children.

We might think about relatives by marriage. Our in laws are husband, wife.

Also, we might think about wider ties, for example,

old friends that we can turn to in times of difficulty.

Some people might consider their neighbours to be like family.

Others might think about their pets that are living in the household with them.

So our definitions of family can be quite subjective,

and also they can change over the life course.

We might think about our families of origin and where we come from,

but also our families that we develop over time, for example, getting married,

having Children,

perhaps relationship breakdown and re partnering death can all

change what we consider to be our family.

So at every point in your life, not only as your family changing,

but you're also making decisions about who to include or exclude from your family

and kin network.

Now, across all of this,

we have quite an important ideology called the nuclear family.

According to Murdoch,

the nuclear family is a social group characteristic by common residents,

economic cooperation

and reproduction.

It includes adults of both sexes,

at least two of whom maintain a socially approved

sexual relationship and one or more Children own or adopted

of the sexually cohabitating

adults.

So we get a sense from this that a nuclear family is a family where

a couple is living together with dependent Children

that it is socially approved sexual relationship,

but also one that is of economic cooperation.

The nuclear family is a popular image of the family

that is commonly used in advertising

and is key to some sociological theory,

including function list perspectives.

The nuclear family can be thought of as husband and wife dependent Children

living together in the same household.

And this image,

although it's very important in terms of advertising and political discourse,

can be criticised for neglecting some of the rich

diversity of family life that we see today.

Family life is changing.

We have many people living in different family forms,

including lone parent families,

step families

and also some commentators, including feminists,

have highlighted that the idealisation of the nuclear family can emit

the dark side of family life, which can include child abuse and domestic violence.

Patterns of family life in Britain are increasingly diverse.

Key changes include the increased rates of cohabitation,

so people being more likely to live together,

perhaps to try out that arrangement before getting married.

Also as an alternative to marriage,

we see reduced rates of marriage and higher levels of partnership breakdown.

But people don't seem to be giving up on partnerships. We also see re partnering

and changes in terms of legal and social rights for same sex couples

and for mixed sex civil partners. To

this all means that Children are living in an

increasing variety of family structures throughout their lives.

So however, we define families and as I've suggested,

it's in increasingly fluid and changing ways.

We do know that families still matter.

They are, to some extent a social construction,

because what a family does varies historically

and across different cultures.

So therefore,

we can say that all definitions of family are ideological constructs.

The social and political context in which we're defining family

does matter and is very interesting.

Because of some of the difficulties around talking about family life and

the idealisation of the nuclear family that has been documented,

some commentators have said, perhaps we should get rid of the term. The family.

Perhaps we should talk about something different.

For example, personal life, kid networks, household,

and this has been hotly debated by sociologists.

Overall, it seems, though,

that there are many strengths for keeping the concept of the family.

And that's because it does appeal often intuitively.

Two people talking about their own lives,

family matters in how we're defining ourselves and

how we are celebrating important events in our lives

and

and therefore it seems to kind of resonate with people.

And it also resonates politically in terms of the policy discussions that we

see and concern at times about the changing nature of family life.

So overall family is subjective, it's still matters,

and it's a very interesting area to define and discuss