Personal understandings and cultural conceptions of family in European societies

Abstract

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.