Conflicting norms in modern British kinship: Case studies of domestic violence and competition for care in North Wales, 1920–1996

Abstract

Sociologists have characterized the norms of British kinship as weakly encoded, with kin defining their mutual obligations in an ad hoc way on the basis of very general principles. This article draws a distinction between the articulation of norms and the non-verbal enactment of norms. Weak verbal encoding need not imply weak standardization or weak emotional commitment to internalized norms. The examples discussed concern the link between care of the elderly and expectations of inheritance. The study uncovered strong but unverbalized norms in five case studies from North Wales. In each case the invocation of unarticulated norms proved emotionally potent enough to undermine self-esteem as based on more conventional constructions of gender and family roles. It is argued that the conflicting norms derived from different streams in British culture and that more attention should be given to understanding the different sources of the varieties of ‘family values’, even in societies where ethnic and other ‘sub-cultural’ differences are not obvious.