The family: What is it, how do we study it and why?

Abstract

Defining what constitutes a family, and thus what constitutes family studies, has been hotly contested over recent decades. As Engelhardt (2007, p. 27) notes, 'if there is anything that characterizes the contemporary understanding of the family, it is the lack of a common understanding. We share no consensus.' Such debates occur not only in academics spheres, but also in political, social and economic domains of life, as defining who is in and who is out of a family has implications for eligibility for government benefits, immigration status, distribution of assets, and so on. Gilding (1997) outlines three main ways in which families can be defined, referencing different ontological assumptions and thus bringing with them different epistemological and methodological gazes. First, families can be defined in reference to objective characteristics, such as their biology, marital status and living arrangements. Such definitions dominate our legal and political understanding of the family--and are assumed in much family research. Second, family can be thought of as fulfilling social roles and functions that position the family as the 'basic building block of society' (Lindsay & Dempsey, 2009, p. 5). The material, psychological and socializing functions that are performed by families are the major focus of family research. Assessments of the effectiveness of different 'kinds' of families, the resources afforded to them, and the ability of members thereof to fulfill these functions are prevalent. Third, Gilding suggests that families can also be defined by the personal meanings people assign to them. Australian Aboriginal definitions of 'kinship,' 'families' and the difficulties posed by trying to enumerate these with objective references to lineage and 'households' provide a useful way of accessing the subjective nature of such understandings (Morphy, 2006). Such difficulties also question who is privileged in research and administrative processes as being able to define what is family, its affects and effects. Comparing, contrasting and combining these spheres of family research produce new ways of understanding the organization, role and purpose of contemporary families and how these speak back to the larger social and cultural systems that maintain or subordinate them. In the coming issues of the Journal of Family Studies, I will take advantage of the opportunity provided by the editorial, and draw on the articles within each issue, to examine how we define, operationalize and research the family; and the material, political and symbolic implications of such choices. Our ontological and epistemological assumptions about what is real and how this reality can be accessed have practical consequences. For example, in a review of Australian child support research published in the Journal of Family Studies, we found that most research focused on the economic capacity of separated mothers and fathers, and how the recalibration of the child support rules produced economic 'winners and losers' (Cook, McKenzie, & Knight, 2011, p. 121). What was absent from the research literature was a focus on why parents made the child support decisions they did and how they experienced and understood the system in which they operated (Natalier, McKenzie, & Cook, 2013). More striking was the absence of research that included children. In child support research, the relevant functional actors were marked out as the parents, and the resources required for them to function effectively were almost exclusively economic. This issue of Journal of Family Studies marks a move away from the previous aims and scope of the Journal which focused on the wellbeing of children in families in the process of change, such as marital breakdown. The revised aims take a broader perspective; one that is reflected in the array or articles presented herein, and the increasingly complex configurations of the definitions, affects and effects of family life, outlined above. …