Special issue: Family understandings in contemporary Europe

Summary:

Family lives in Europe have undergone considerable changes during the past decades. These changes have made it difficult or even impossible to grasp what people mean by ‘a family’ in their everyday life by an objective, pre-defined set of criteria.

Marriage, a couple relationship, parent-child relationships based on shared bio-genetic substance, a shared household or functions such as reproduction or primary socialisation remain important characteristics of some of the most frequent family forms.

However, against the background of an increasing destandardisation of family trajectories, growing importance of family ties across households, complex stepfamily constellations, advanced reproductive technology and negotiated gender relations, they do not hold up as definitions for the family as such.

Articles:

Introduction: Personal understandings and cultural conceptions of family in European societies
Detlev Lück, Anna-Maija Castrén

Clear in its core, blurred in the outer contours: culturally normative conceptions of the family in Germany
Detlev Lück, Kerstin Ruckdeschel

Understandings of family among wives and husbands: reconciling emotional closeness and cultural expectations
Aino Luotonen, Anna-Maija Castrén

Family practices among Swedish parents: extracurricular activities and social class
Daniel Sjödin, Christine Roman

Do economic resources play a role in bargaining child care in couples? Parental investment in cases of matching and mismatching gender ideologies in Germany
Natalie Nitsche, Daniela Grunow

Anthropology of kinship meets human rights rationality: limits of marriage and family life in the European Court of Human Rights
Linda Hart