Rethinking the Family Life Cycle: Sexual Divisions, Work and Domestic Life in the Post-war Period

Abstract

Moral panics about the state of ‘The Family’ have a long history (Weeks 1981). However, in the decades following the Second World War apparent public disquiet about the social consequences of changing patterns of family and household life has received increasing media attention. As a result ‘family life’ has emerged as a public issue in the sense first described by Wright Mills: An issue is a public matter: some value cherished by publics is felt to be threatened. Often there is a debate about what the value really is and about what it is which really threatens it. This debate is often without focus if only because it is in the very nature ofan issue that it cannot very well be defined in terms of the immediate and everyday environments ofordinary [women and] men. (Wright Mills, 1959: my addition.) KeywordsFamily LifeDomestic LabourPublic MoralityDomestic LifeFamily Life CycleThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.