Women (not) troubling ‘the family’: Exploring women’s narratives of gendered family practices

Carter, Julia

Abstract

This paper is concerned with examining the ways in which young woman make choices about their family lives and in so doing reproduce traditional unequal gender norms and family practices. In a time when it is (supposedly) increasingly easy to live alternatives lives (living apart together, for example) a significant number of young people continue to marry and live together in heteronormative family units. By exploring the narratives produced in interviews with 22 young, heterosexual British women, this paper aims to understand why unequal gender norms continue to guide behaviour regarding sexuality in relationships, name-changing on marriage and household divisions of labour. Exploring how decisions are made in a bricolage of reflexive, habitual and taken-for-granted ways, this paper concludes that by piecing together ideas from past and present, constraint is reconfigured as choice in order to provide legitimacy and power over life decisions bounded by gendered expectations and inequalities.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 11, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Nov 2, 2018
• Publication Date: Nov 1, 2019
• Deposit Date: Sep 11, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 11, 2018
• Journal: Journal of Family Issues
• Print ISSN: 0192-513X
• Electronic ISSN: 1552-5481
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 40
• Issue: 16
• Pages: 2264-2287
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X18809752
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/857364
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X18809752
• Additional Information: Additional Information : © 2018. Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications
• Contract Date: Sep 11, 2018