nine - Changing times: older people and family ties

Summary

The concerns of this book have focused on the character of family solidarities in later life at the beginning of the 21st century. For many years, there have been arguments that ‘the family’ is, in some global yet ill-defined way, no longer as supportive or as caring as it once was, especially with respect to later life relationships. This is part of a much wider discourse that perceives contemporary social formations as fostering greater individualisation at the expense of family and community commitment. According to those who subscribe to such a perspective, family ties have become attenuated, with people no longer having an unequivocal sense of kinship obligation and responsibility. Historians have, of course, challenged the view of past family relationships implicit in this model, arguing in particular that the material and demographic circumstances of previous social eras render such romanticised images suspect (see, for example, Gillis, 1997, as well as the discussion in Chapter Two above). Nonetheless, many of the changes associated with late modernity, including the growth of individualisation and the demographic shifts discussed in Chapter One, have given credence to a contemporary perception of family relationships becoming less significant in personal life than they were (Allan, 2008).

Our argument is certainly not that older people's family experiences have somehow remained static. How could this be with so much change occurring in the organisation of family life? But we do not accept that the family solidarities that older people sustain are now of little social or personal moment. Rather our argument is that there have been significant changes, but that these changes embody increasing diversity and complexity in the patterning of older people's family relationships rather than declining importance. As a result, there is greater variety in the circumstances structuring individual relationships within people's family networks. Because the lifecourse, in terms of both its family and non-family aspects, has become somewhat less certain and more varied, so too the family relationships within individuals’ personal networks are liable to be more diverse and more open to change.

As a consequence, in the language drawn on earlier in the book, the negotiations that occur within family relationships across time are likely to be more complicated than in the past when there was greater stability in family formations.