Civil Society and the Family 9781447355540

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Civil Society and Social Change

Civil Society and the Family Esther Muddiman, Sally Power and Chris Taylor

CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE FAMILY

Also available in the Civil Society and Social Change series Civil Society Through the Life Course Edited by Sally Power HB £75.00 ISBN 978 1 4473 5483 3 200 pages October 2020

Putting Civil Society in its Place Governance, Metagovernance and Subjectivity By Bob Jessop

Civil Society and Social Change

Putting Civil Society in Its Place Governance, Metagovernance and Subjectivity

HB £75.00 ISBN 978 1 4473 5495 6 304 pages September 2020

The Foundational Economy and Citizenship Comparative Perspectives on Civil Repair Edited by Filippo Barbera and Ian Rees Jones HB £75.00 ISBN 978 1 4473 5335 5 286 pages September 2020

Published with the Wales Institute of Social & Economic Research, Data & Methods Civil Society Research Centre

For more information about the series visit bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/civil-society-and-social-change

Bob Jessop

CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE FAMILY Esther Muddiman, Sally Power and Chris Taylor

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Policy Press, an imprint of Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1-9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +44 (0)117 954 5940 e: [email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press 2020 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-4473-5552-6 hardcover ISBN 978-1-4473-5554-0 ePdf ISBN 978-1-4473-5555-7 ePub The right of Esther Muddiman, Sally Power and Chris Taylor to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press. Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the author and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Bristol University Press and Policy Press work to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design: Clifford Hayes Front cover image: Black and white geometric pattern © Freepik.com Bristol University Press and Policy Press use environmentally responsible print partners. Printed in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Contents Tables vi Figures vii Notes on the authors ix Acknowledgements x 1

Starting points

1

2

The paradoxical positioning of the family and civil society

13

3

The challenges of researching the ‘private sphere’ of the family

25

4

The uncertain business of raising citizens

47

5

Keeping the faith? Secularisation, the family and civic engagement

75

6

Mothers, grandmothers and civic engagement

99

7

Family arguments: finding one’s voice

125

8

Politicising family food practices

141

9

The upward transmission of civic ‘virtues’

159

10

Reframing civil society and the family

177

References 185 Index 197

v

Tables 2.1 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 4.1

5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 7.1 7.2 7.3

Representations of civil society and the family Survey responses and key demographic information Relationship of adult respondents to child respondents Our families Parent characteristics for study families Grandparent characteristics for study families Summary of family study participants by key characteristics Levels of transmission between parents and their children on a range of topics, issues or activities relating to civil society Civic engagement and religion among parents Religious affiliation and social participation among young people Religious affiliation and political engagement among young people Religious affiliation and civic engagement among young people Religious affiliation of young people relative to their parents and grandparents Religious affiliation of grandparents, parents and children Being there for grandchildren: which grandparent(s) young people said they saw the most often Young people who have something in common with parents and grandparents Young people who admire parents and grandparents Young people who learn a lot from parents and grandparents Grandparents’ relationships with their grandsons and granddaughters Associational membership and frequency of domestic arguments Distribution of organisation participants by frequency of arguments Distribution of organisation participants by frequency of arguments

vi

19 30 30 32 33 35 36 53

77 78 78 80 86 87 102 106 106 106 107 133 134 134

Figures 2.1 3.1 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 7.1 7.2 7.3

Eto’s map of the three layers of associative activities with the family and the state Example of a family tree map Forms of political engagement John’s family tree map highlighting political party allegiances Julia’s family tree map highlighting political party allegiances Nicole’s family tree map highlighting political party allegiances Ruth’s family tree map highlighting political party allegiances Abby’s family tree map highlighting political party allegiances Nicole’s family tree map highlighting religious faith and volunteering Abby’s family tree map highlighting religious faith and volunteering Daniel’s family tree map highlighting religious faith and volunteering Miranda’s family tree map highlighting religious faith and volunteering Bridget’s family tree map highlighting religious faith Natasha’s family tree map highlighting religious faith Abby’s family tree map highlighting family closeness Frankie’s family tree map highlighting family closeness Bridget’s family tree map highlighting family closeness and volunteering Eve’s family tree map highlighting family closeness and volunteering Ffion’s family tree map indicating family closeness and political engagement How often do you argue with your mother, father or closest grandparent? The ‘top two’ things by frequency of mention that children are likely to argue about with their mother The ‘top two’ things by frequency of mention that children are likely to argue about with their father

vii

21 38 54 59 61 62 64 67 81 81 91 92 95 96 103 105 110 111 120 129 130 131

Civil Society and the Family

9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4

Charlotte’s family tree map indicating environmental concerns Bridget’s family tree map indicating environmental awareness Miranda’s family tree map indicating environmental awareness Daniel’s family tree map indicating environmental awareness

viii

170 171 172 173

Notes on the authors Esther Muddiman is a postdoctoral researcher based in the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data & Methods (WISERD) at Cardiff University, UK. Her research explores the intersections between education, civil society and youth engagement. Building on a background in the sociology of education, Esther’s current work considers the role of family and the inheritance of certain values and behaviours in people’s accounts of civic, political and environmental engagement. Sally Power is a professor in the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, UK, and Director of WISERD. She directed the ‘Generations Theme’ of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)/WISERD Civil Society Research Centre. In addition to her work on civil society, she is also interested in young people’s trajectories and the sociology of education policy. Chris Taylor is a professor of Social Sciences at Cardiff University, UK, and is the Academic Director for the Cardiff University Social Science Research Park. Chris has undertaken a wide range of interdisciplinary research in the fields of education and civil society, and has published extensively on issues of participation and inequalities.

ix

Acknowledgements First and foremost, we would like to thank our participants, who gave up their time and thoughts. Particular thanks go to the families – the parents and grandparents – who opened their houses to us and were happy to share their experiences and perspectives. We also need to thank the hundreds of young people who not only undertook the survey, but who then passed the survey on to their parents and grandparents. Additionally, we would not have been able to reach these young people without the kind support of the schools they attended. We would like to thank all those involved in the development of the research instruments and the management of the data. Special thanks go to Rhian Barrance, Hannah Blake, Constantino Dumangane Jr, Dan Evans and Rhian Powell for helping us with the data collection, as well as the two students, Josie Phillips and Louise Taylor, who helped us trial the intergenerational ‘maps’. For helping us manage and archive the data we collected, we are very grateful to Catriona Dickson and Samuel Jones. Administrative support from Liza Donaldson, Jane Graves, Chris Phillips, Alex Williams and Tina Woods has also been generously given. We would like to thank our academic and stakeholder partners, who discussed the research findings with us. We found the seminar held at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations in London in November 2018 on ‘The Family and Civil Society: Across the Generations’, and the contributions of Julia Brannen, Hilary Graham, Veronique Jochum, Mario Quaranta and Emily Rainsford, particularly helpful. Many of our WISERD and Cardiff University colleagues have also helped us formulate our ideas. In addition to our team member, Kate Moles, we would like to thank Helen Blakely, Stuart Fox, Jen Hampton and Martijn Hogerbrugge, to name but a few. We would also like to thank the series editors, Paul Chaney, Ian Rees Jones and Mike Woods, for their encouragement to take this book forward. This research would not have been possible without funding from the ESRC/WISERD Civil Society Research Centre (award number [ES/L009099/1]). Finally, while we could not have written this book without the support of these various people, we take full responsibility for any errors or misinterpretations.

x

1

Starting points Introduction This book explores the relationship between civil society and the family – a relationship that we do not think has received sufficient attention. Despite the family’s central role in social, cultural (and biological) reproduction, it is largely absent from the majority of contemporary literature on civil society. This is surprising given the continued importance of family life in the routines and responsibilities of individuals around the world. Ideas (or ideals) about family life colour our decisions about where to work, where to live and how to spend our time and our money. In this book, we explore the extent to which family relationships and connections can help us to understand civic and political engagement. We feel that our contribution is particularly timely given that many of the challenges facing society today are being confronted within the domestic sphere. The interconnectedness of global concerns and family life are evident in family debates about the implications of how to heat the home, what car to buy or what holidays to take. The kind of food that gets put on the dinner table may no longer reflect cultural heritage or personal preferences, but rather be the outcome of family discussions around animal rights or concerns about the environmental costs of meat production. Newspaper coverage of the environmental degradation caused by excess plastic waste is reflected in the products in bathroom cupboards and family policies on recycling. Debates and practices around environmental sustainability are also often underpinned by ideas about intergenerational justice. Thoughts of leaving a legacy for future generations are powerful mobilising forces, particularly in relation to environmental sustainability (Graham et al, 2017), and it is likely to be familial obligations and family events, such as parenthood and grandparenthood, that bring these thoughts into focus. Narratives of intergenerational injustice were prominent in media coverage of the UK’s 2016 referendum on whether or not to remain part of the European Union (EU). Commentary often focused on the ‘intergenerational rifts’ created by the different voting patterns of

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Civil Society and the Family

younger and older citizens, with one article in The Guardian, titled ‘Family rifts over Brexit’ (Cosslett, 2016), quoting a young person as saying ‘I can barely look at my parents.’ The public outcry surrounding the divergent political perspectives of children, their parents and their grandparents drew attention to the often taken-for-granted idea that families tend to share similar social and political outlooks. It is especially strange, then, that research into the relationship between families and civic or political engagement is so scarce. A notable exception to this is the work of Paul Ginsborg (2013), who uses the metaphor of the ‘golden chain’ to describe the connections between individuals, families, civil society and the democratic state. Ginsborg (2013) argues that some links have received far more attention than others. For example, while there is significant research on individuals and families, as well as on the relationship between civil society and the state, the link between the family and civil society remains strangely neglected. He questions why civil society theorists have written at length on the subject of ‘associationalism’ but have largely failed to mention that most powerful and ubiquitous association – the family. Relations between families and civil society are, he argues, ‘uncharted territories’ (Ginsborg, 2013: 17). Ginsborg’s ‘golden chain’ helps to frame our own investigations. In this book, we draw on an empirical research project, employing a range of methods to further our understanding of how family values and practices might foster or stifle engagement with civil society. Exploring the relationship between civil society and the family is important not only to fill a gap in the literature, but also because we believe that the family will become an increasingly important agent of social change. The decline of the large collective institutions of civil society, such as the church and the trade union movement, has been well documented (for example, Willman et al, 2007; Brown, 2009). Their decline may mean that the family – that ‘small collective of a special kind’ (Halsey and Young, 1997: 785) – will play a more important role. Our starting points are a set of four broad empirical research questions that we explore from four sociological perspectives. We elaborate on each of these in the following sections.

Research questions The overarching aim of this research is to explore empirically the civic contribution of the family. One reason why the relationship between the family and civil society has been so overlooked might relate to

2

Starting points

the complex and sometimes contradictory way in which they are positioned in social theory. The two ‘domains’ are often located on either side of simplistic binaries of ‘public’ and ‘private’, or the ‘state’ and the ‘market’. These binaries not only place the family firmly outside the public sphere, but can also even present the family as being antithetical to civil society (see, for instance, Pateman, 1989). However, it is likely that the relationship between the family and civil society is far more complex and multifaceted than these theoretical representations can accommodate. We therefore start this book from the premise that the relationship between civil society and the family requires empirical exploration rather than theoretical positioning. Our empirical exploration is driven by four research questions: • Does the family strengthen or weaken civil society? • How are civic virtues transmitted within families? • How does the family link the ‘golden chain’ between the individual and civil society? • Is the domestic sphere a political space? Does the family strengthen or weaken civil society? We set out to explore the ways in which the family contributes to civil society, and potentially acts as an agent of social change. The drivers of social change are often seen to operate outside of the family, and potentially even against the family. In general, the family is portrayed as a conservative institution that acts as a brake on social change (Jaspers et al, 2008). Indeed, in most sociological literature (for example, Lareau, 2011), the family is the institution that lies behind the reproduction of social, cultural and economic inequalities. From a feminist perspective, the family contributes to the reproduction of patriarchy and the oppression of women. As we shall see in Chapter 2, it sometimes appears as if the family belongs to the political Right and civil society is the territory of the political Left. It is certainly the case that ‘the family’ in general, and ‘family values’ in particular, are regularly invoked by right-wing politicians (Abbott and Wallace, 1992). Often based on fundamentalist religious beliefs (Buss, 2003), the precise nature of what these values are is often left unsaid. However, they usually coalesce around conservative visions of a ‘natural family unit’ in which two heterosexual married parents raise well-mannered, disciplined and morally virtuous children in a home where the mother is the homemaker and the father is the breadwinner. As Gillis (1997: xvi) argues, these are ‘imagined families

3

Civil Society and the Family

and mythic homes’ – the families ‘we live by’ rather than the families ‘we live with’. These representations bear little relation to the characteristics, orientations and social practices of real families. Without denying the ‘dark side’ of families in their contribution to the perpetuation of economic, cultural and sexual inequalities, there is no reason why the family might not also be usefully seen as an agent of social change. By exploring the relationship between civil society and the family, we investigate the potential for family relationships to play their part in ‘world making’. While this perspective is not particularly radical (and will be familiar to scholars of phenomenology, symbolic interactionism and feminist-Marxism), our attention is often diverted to overarching systems and institutions rather than kinship bonds (Jamieson, 2016). The remaining research questions therefore direct our attention to those dynamics of the family that may have salience for evaluating its contribution to civil society and social change. How do families ‘transmit’ civic virtues? While the family is clearly one of, if not the, principal agent in the socialisation of the young, the transmission of values and dispositions is far from straightforward. While large-scale data sets clearly reveal patterns of intergenerational transmission, the discontinuities can be significant. As Lahire (2003) notes, sociology in general finds it difficult to move from the generality to the singular. In exploring how ‘civic virtues’ may – or may not – get passed down across the generations, we draw on Lahire’s exposition of the relationship between dispositions, values and practices, conceptualising dispositions as the product of past experiences that influence individual perspectives and behaviours. Therefore, family relationships are important in developing certain dispositions, and certain dispositions help to constitute family relationships (that is, certain practices and values give shared meaning to family members about who they are as a group). In this sense, a shared family identity and the way in which participants make sense of family life through their interview narratives also become important. Of course, other social relationships beyond the family home (for example, at school or in a place of work) may complement (and reinforce), or contrast with (and undermine), family dispositions, values and practices. Our interviews with family members explore their accounts of the dispositions, values and practices that they developed during childhood, and the extent to which they feel that these persist into adulthood and influence their own (grand)parenting.

4

Starting points

We also distinguish between dispositions to believe and dispositions to act, recognising that shared values or perspectives may not necessarily distil into tangible practices. Clearly, in exploring the processes through which families transmit – or fail to transmit – civic virtues, we need to be mindful of the wider social and cultural context that frames, and might even restrict, family practices. Families, and individuals within families, have unequal access to those resources (economic, cultural, organisational and affective) and social networks that make participation in civil society more or less likely and possible. We also need to bear in mind the very gendered nature of family life. We also explore differences between families, both over time and across the social spectrum. In particular, we examine the salience of family ‘types’. There is a tendency within sociology to characterise families into two types. For instance, Ginsborg (2008: 160) makes a distinction between ‘closed’ and ‘open’ families: ‘those that are basically inward-looking and those that, at least potentially, look outwards towards civil society’. Bernstein (1971) also identifies two kinds of families – ‘positional’ and ‘person-oriented’ families – which are aligned with different factions of the middle class. Although our sample is too small to demonstrate any clear relationship between social class and civic engagement, these concepts are useful heuristic devices for exploring the significance of what goes on inside the home for externally focused orientations and practices. How does the family link individuals to civil society? Ginsborg (2005: 100) argues that dominant trends in contemporary Western societies ‘accentuate the privatisation of family life’ as separate from the public sphere. The family is characterised by introspection and self-preoccupation. He points to gated communities and the increasingly insular lives of families to suggest that the family is ‘hermetically sealed off’ from civil society through daily routines and practices. We suspect that this representation underplays the significant porosity between the family and civil society. For example, in the UK, the family has traditionally served as the principal conduit between the individual and the church. While secularisation may have weakened the intergenerational transmission of faith, the family is still the main progenitor of those faith-related practices that are so significant for particular kinds of civic participation. It is also the case that some contingencies and obligations of family life are likely to foster (rather than hinder) particular forms

5

Civil Society and the Family

of engagement with civil society. Parenthood and grandparenthood afford new opportunities and sensitivities that are significant for both civil and political participation (see Hampton and Muddiman, 2020; Muddiman, 2020). It is also possible that children and young people may bring heightened awareness of particular societal challenges into the domestic sphere. Debates around the dinner table – indeed, the very food that is put on the dinner table – reveal the many ways in which the family is not insulated from wider concerns. Is the domestic sphere a political space? If we take a long view of the family, we can see how its current shape has arisen because of a variety of social movements that have changed the expectations and possibilities of individuals within family roles – from the women’s movement to more recent campaigns by LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual and Queer Plus) activists for the right to have a family life. However, it might also be argued that just as civil society has shaped the family, so too has the family shaped civil society. From a feminist perspective, the family has always been a political space in the sense that it has often been underpinned by economic and cultural norms that have subjugated women. In Chapter 6, we explore the idea that values and practices shared in the domestic sphere (traditionally by women as homemakers) have not received sufficient analytical attention or have been depoliticised because of their gendered connotations. Moreover, we think that the family home may be becoming more political in another sense. As already noted, many of today’s big social issues are being brought into the domestic sphere. Strategies to deal with climate change and environmental degradation, for example, are seen as no longer the sole prerogative of the state, but as a family responsibility. In this book, we therefore hope to investigate the many ways in which the family has become a site, and possibly the principal site, for the emergence of lifestyle politics and forms of radical activism (Portwood-Stacer, 2013).

Starting points This book sits uncomfortably between two huge bodies of literature: one on civil society; and the other on the family. Rather than try to synthesise this literature, with the danger that we ‘raid’ key concepts from both without doing justice to either, we have instead decided to outline four starting points.

6

Starting points

We should not ascribe moral superiority to either the family or civil society One of the consequences of the opposition that places the family and civil society on either side of the public–private binary is the tendency to assume that some social practices are more righteous than others. As we have noted, civil society is often portrayed as the arena where publicly spirited citizens strive for the common good – a ‘utopian programme’ directed towards democratic engagement and social justice (Zimmer and Freise, 2008: 21). The family, on the other hand, is often seen as the domain of self-interested individuals who seek out benefits for ‘their own’ (for example, Lareau, 2000; Devine, 2004). Rather than ascribe virtue to either civil society or the family, we start from the position that the social practices associated with both domains may carry both negative and positive implications for democratic engagement and social justice. Similarly, just as we should not see civil society as more ‘virtuous’ than the family, neither should we assume any particular political dimension to either the family or civil society. As noted earlier, there has been a tendency to assume that civil society belongs to the ‘Left’. However, we know that this is not the case. Not only does the Right draw on civil society organisations as a means of reducing the role of government in welfare provision (Levitas, 2012), but there is also an increasing number of Far-Right organisations in civil society (Caiani and Della Porta, 2018). Families are heterogeneous and incohesive When ‘the family’ (singular) is invoked in social science literature, it often conjures up images of the archetypical ‘nuclear’ family, headed up by a heterosexual couple and containing a small number of children with grandparents living nearby or far away, though generally not living with ‘the family’. However, we know that family structures are changing in all kinds of ways. In addition to the now well-documented rise of the single-parent household and the ‘reconstituted’ family, changes in social acceptability and legal entitlements are enabling the establishment of families headed by same-sex parents. Demographic changes are also changing the shape of families, with the increasing prevalence of ‘beanpole families’ (Hagestad, 2000) in which parents care for young children and for elderly relatives simultaneously, as well as ‘boomerang’ families, where children return to the family home in later life. It is not only

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Civil Society and the Family

that there are now many different ways of ‘being a family’, but that there is also considerable diversity within any one family. Even if ‘assortative mating’ leads to some kinds of ‘homogamy’, the shared characteristics are often only along one dimension – and are certainly unlikely to be shared with in-laws and their siblings. Certainly, as we shall see from our research, it is hard to find a family where there is consensus between its members over anything. We therefore take a broad definition of ‘family’ that reaches beyond biological ties to include perceptions of closeness and kinship, as identified by our study participants. What counts as engagement with civil society needs to be broadly rather than narrowly conceived Ekman and Amnå (2012: 284) complain that in Bowling alone, Robert Putnam’s (2001) famous analysis of the decline of US civil society, the term ‘civic engagement’ is used to cover ‘just about everything from reading newspapers, political participation, social networks and interpersonal trust to associational involvement’. Berger (2009) has argued that the concept has been stretched so far that it has potentially become useless. While we have some sympathy with this claim, we believe that it is just as problematic to define civic engagement too narrowly. As Ekman and Amnå (2012: 286) argue, activities such as taking an interest in politics, or recycling, have a latent political dimension that can lead to more manifest forms of civic and political engagement. This links to Schudson’s (1996, 1998) conceptualisation of the ‘monitorial citizen’, who takes a deliberate anticipative stand, keeps abreast of social and political developments, and is moved to act only when they think it necessary to do so. Ekman and Amnå write about latent participation in individual terms but it might also be possible to think about familial latency, where the values, practices and interactions of older family members influence the participation of younger generations. We therefore start with a very inclusive definition of civic and political engagement – one that can contain a range of elements. Engagement with civil society can: • • • • •

be local, national or global; address a single issue or many; work with public institutions or against them; be undertaken individually or collectively; involve online/virtual or face-to-face interactions;

8

Starting points

• be formal or informal (for example, providing help to a neighbour or collecting litter); and • entail one-off, sporadic or routinised practices. We should not assume that some forms of civic and political engagement are more ‘virtuous’ than others We argued earlier that practices within the domestic domain should not be seen as more or less publicly interested than practices in the public sphere of civil society. We do not begin from the premise that some kinds of civic engagement are more or less ‘virtuous’ than others. In relation to volunteering, for example, distinctions are often made between ‘altruistic’ and ‘instrumental’ volunteering (see, for instance, Dean, 2016). Some forms of volunteering might be seen to be more ‘self-interested’ than others. Hogerbrugge (2020), for example, points to the fact that elderly volunteers are more likely to devote their time to charities that benefit the elderly, and student volunteering is often seen as an exercise in CV building rather than ‘genuine’ altruism (Holdsworth and Brewis, 2014). Our starting point is that motivations should not be inferred. Is the engagement of a mother who helps out at a playgroup less valued because her child attends it? Should we discount the claims for greater representation from those who are most marginalised because they may benefit? Not only will this kind of evaluation lead to some spurious judgements, but it is also empirically impossible to ascertain the underpinning antecedents and motivations that drive civic and political engagement. Rather than judge intention, we focus on the meanings of practices and outcomes that participants ascribe to them.

The organisation of the book Our empirical chapters, then, each take on a particular aspect of civil society and assess the extent to which values and practices linked to participants’ sense of family have a bearing on these forms of engagement. Chapter 2 We begin by outlining how the ‘family’ is conceptualised in relation to civil society within the existing literature. We argue that these representations are not only contradictory, but also based on valueladen representations of both the family and civil society that are

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Civil Society and the Family

ideologically rather than empirically underpinned. There has been a tendency to uphold the virtues of the ‘public sphere’ against the self-interestedness of the ‘private sphere’. The chapter concludes by arguing for the importance of empirical rather than just theoretical research on the interface between the ‘public’ and the ‘private’. Chapter 3 This chapter considers the challenges of, and opportunities afforded by, undertaking research with families. Here, we outline how we tried to get ‘inside’ the family through a combination of cross-generational surveys with young people, their parents and grandparents, and extended interviews with parents and grandparents that incorporated a family tree mapping exercise. We then introduce our participants and draw on interview data to recount how parents and grandparents described and reflected on their participation. The chapter concludes with some caveats to contextualise the research and aid the interpretation of subsequent chapters. Chapter 4 In this chapter, we consider all of those factors that might complicate the straightforward sharing of values and practices between different family members. Although the family is widely regarded as a primary socialising agent, there are manifold other events, relationships and experiences that combine to shape an individual’s perspective of, and engagement with, civil society. Drawing on survey, interview and family tree data, we consider the range of influences that participants identified, highlighting some of the things that might frustrate the intergenerational sharing of values and practices. We also consider variation and difference within families, investigating how the bringing together of two previously unconnected families through marriage or partnership is negotiated in relation to social and political perspectives. Chapter 5 It is in the area of religious practice that the uncertainties of intergenerational transmission are most clearly demonstrated. All available evidence, including our own, indicates that religious affiliation is inherited from parents. However, that is only part of the story. If intergenerational transmission were straightforward, we would not be

10

Starting points

seeing the current extensive and rapid secularisation of society. This chapter focuses on the precariousness of religious transmission and seeks to explore: first, what family and lifecourse events appear to disrupt an inheritance of faith; and, second, what the implications are for young people’s civic engagement. In addition to examining the levels and processes of the intergenerational transmission of faith (or its absence), we examine how religious affiliation is reflected in particular kinds of associational membership, levels of volunteering and other kinds of social activism. Chapter 6 This chapter explores the central role that mothers and grandmothers play in sharing civic and pro-social values with younger generations. Our data suggest that positive intergenerational relationships with female family members are associated with meaningful or mutually beneficial civic participation. Accounts from mothers and grandmothers in our study indicate that they play important roles in maintaining family closeness over time and suggest that (in)formal voluntary work is often seen as an extension of the maternal caring role. This is suggestive of a matrilineal transmission of civic values, with mothers and grandmothers as the most significant agents, and offers strong support to the arguments long made by feminist scholars for better recognition of the role of women in civil society. Here, our data portray the domestic or personal domain as a political space. Chapter 7 This chapter explores the socially significant nature of family arguments. Existing research on family arguments is usually undertaken from a psychological perspective and presents family arguments as either an indicator of family dysfunction or an inevitable stage of the lifecourse. However, our data demonstrate that arguments in the home not only tell us something about the social context in which parents raise their children, but may also be important for wider civic engagement. The chapter describes the distribution and frequency of family arguments as reported by young people and their parents, as well as those issues that appear to generate the most conflict. We also explore the potentially transformative dimensions of family arguments, revealing a significant and positive relationship between families that argue and young people’s levels of civic participation. It is quite possible to view young people’s dissent as the means by which they

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Civil Society and the Family

find their ‘voice’ and a necessary precursor to future civic engagement and political activism. Chapter 8 This chapter explores the significance of food within the family in fostering skills and values linked to civil society. The relationship between families and food is one of the most socially significant, highly charged and politically contested issues in contemporary Britain. We demonstrate how shared family meals provide an important environment for civic and political socialisation. The chapter also considers the provision of food itself as symbolic of care both within and beyond the family home, before turning to moral and ethical values attributed to certain foods. Chapter 9 Moving beyond common conceptualisations of the one-directional sharing of values and practices from older to younger generations, this chapter explores the significance of younger generations in changing their parents’ and grandparents’ perspectives. Drawing on our interview data, we focus on the synergistic learning experiences described by parents and grandparents. We explore how conversations with younger generations can prompt reflection on deeply held values and attitudes, and can contribute to a shift in perspectives. Most notably, we detail how the rising prominence of environmental concerns has been brought to the attention of older family members, and how environmentalism is brought into the family home via knowledges and practices learnt by younger family members in the classroom. Chapter 10 This chapter closes the book by drawing together the insights that it offers into the relationship between the family and civil society, and underscoring the methodological and theoretical implications of our empirical work. We revisit the initial research questions outlined earlier and reflect on how we have contributed to knowledge on intergenerational relations, the domestic division of labour and the public–private binary in relation to civil society engagement. We also identify remaining gaps in our understanding of this area, and sketch out some future directions in this field.

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2

The paradoxical positioning of the family and civil society

Introduction Now that we have sketched out our starting points, we look to the existing literature on civil society and the family to highlight some of the tensions inherent in different theoretical perspective and approaches. The analytical and empirical deficit described in Chapter 1 can be partly explained in terms of a number of disciplinary demarcations. However, there are also real contradictions in the way in which both civil society and the family are conceived within much social science literature that make it difficult to move forward. For example, in some accounts, the family is seen as the cornerstone of civil society; in others, the family is positioned firmly outside – even antithetical to – civil society. This paradox arises from the ways in which civil society is variously defined through a series of binary oppositions – in relation to each of which the family sits uneasily. We believe that if we are to grasp the complex and mutually constitutive relationship between the family and civil society, we need to move beyond these somewhat simplistic binaries. Putting to one side our own definitions of the family and the operationalisation of ‘civic engagement’ that we laid out in Chapter 1, in this chapter, we begin by examining how the ‘family’ has traditionally been conceptualised in relation to civil society. We argue that these representations are not only contradictory, but also based on value-laden representations of both the family and civil society that are ideologically rather than empirically underpinned. In general, within much of the academic literature, there has been a tendency to uphold the virtues of the ‘public sphere’ against the self-interestedness of the ‘private sphere’. The chapter concludes by arguing for the importance of empirical rather than just theoretical research on the interface between the ‘public’ and the ‘private’.

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Civil Society and the Family

Conceptualisations of the family and civil society The positioning of the family within conceptualisations of civil society is both shifting and contradictory. In many accounts, the family is seen as an essential component, especially (but not exclusively) in US political sociology, which tends to privilege the non-governmental aspects of civil society. For example, Eberly (2000: 3) describes civil society as ‘consisting of families, neighborhoods, voluntary associations, and an endless variety of civic enterprises’. Indeed, Eberly and Streeter (2002: 3) claim that during the 20th century, these networks have been subject to systematic destruction from ‘statist ideologies’. Similarly, in his account of the decline of civility in the US, Carter (1999) contrasts the qualities of the family with the ‘legalism’ of the welfare state, which he believes has led to the ‘erosion’ of US society. Carter (1999: 230) upholds the virtues of families, which, he argues, are the first ‘civil societies’ marked out by respect and caring for others. Coming from a very different perspective, Cohen and Arato (1994: 724, n 81) state that ‘the family is a core institution in and of civil society’. Like Carter, they see it as the first association of ‘civil society’, which ‘if conceived of in egalitarian terms, could have provided an experience of horizontal solidarity, collective identity, and equal participation to the autonomous individuals comprising it’ (Cohen and Arato, 1994: 631, n 48). On this side of the Atlantic, somewhat exceptionally, the British sociologists Halsey and Young (1997: 785) also argue that the family needs to be recognised as the cornerstone of associative activity and mutualism. They argue that the family should be seen as: a small collective of a special kind, the emphasis is on co-operation rather than competition, and on long-term commitment rather than choice.… It teaches people the most precious ability of all, the ability to transcend selfinterest and regard the interests of others as in some way their own: the kind of altruism which is at the heart of the collective consciousness and which holds all societies together. However, in general, conceptualisations inspired more by European social and political thought – particularly that of Hegel and Habermas – have positioned the family as outside of civil society. In these accounts, the public dimension of civil society is privileged, rather than its nongovernmental attributes. Here, civil society is the space for political participation, debate and opinion formation within the public sphere.

14

The paradoxical positioning of the family and civil society

Although there is no consensus between theorists on the potential of civil society to effect significant social change, they all concur that the family – and particularly the modern nuclear family – is not part of civil society. Indeed, the family is often seen as the cradle of self-interest rather than selfless mutualism, and can even be portrayed as inimical to civil society engagement. There are a number of factors that appear to contribute to this paradoxical positioning of the family. One is the way in which conceptions of civil society are constructed around or between different sets of binary oppositions: the ‘public’ and ‘private’; the ‘state’ and the ‘market’; and where it is characterised by ‘associative’ rather than ‘coercive’ relations and practices that are ‘voluntary’, not ‘obligatory’. The family sits uneasily in relation to each of these oppositions. For instance, in relation to definitions based on the distinction been the ‘public’ and the ‘private’, civil society is nearly always associated with the ‘public’. The concept of the ‘public sphere’, particularly as expounded by Habermas (1989 [1962]), embodies a discursive space that is (ideally) open and accessible to all in which issues of public interest are raised in order to pursue the common good. Private interests are inimical to the pursuit of the public good and need to be bracketed out. Within this conception of civil society, the family can only be located within the private sphere. Far from contributing to the public sphere, the self-interest associated with families may even be seen as working against the development of a strong civil society. Pateman (1980: 24) critiques the way in which women and families are positioned within much social theory, which implies that ‘the family itself is a threat to civil life. Love and justice are antagonistic virtues; the demands of love and of family bonds are particularistic and so in direct conflict with justice which demands that private interest is subordinated to the public (universal) good’. Ginsborg also argues that active engagement with civil society will inevitably be at the expense of family life. He claims that ‘time made for civil society is time stolen from the family’ and argues that there are ‘deep structural tensions’ between the two (Ginsborg, 2013: 23). It follows that pursuing the public good will mean the diminution of the family. Indeed, as Donzelot (1979: 5) points out, utopian socialists believed that ‘its disappearance was programmed for a dawning socialism, and its partial breakup, its crises, were considered so many signs heralding the latter’s arrival’. However, this division between the public and the private has been severely critiqued, particularly by feminists (for example, Landes, 1988; Fraser, 1997), who point out its gendered assumptions. Far from

15

Civil Society and the Family

being ‘open’ and ‘accessible’ to all, the public sphere has historically been based on exclusions. As Phillips (2002: 72) points out: ‘civil society is often presented in terms that make it seem like a place where women are not’. Not only do these accounts often fail to recognise the significant contribution that women have made to the development of civil society, but the bracketing of ‘private’ interests into the domestic domain also denies the political dimensions of the gendered division of labour and unequal power relations within households and families. As feminists have long argued, it is important to recognise that the personal is political. The family also has an ambiguous relationship with definitions of civil society based on the distinction between ‘the state’ and the ‘market’. The conception of the family as self-interested and essentially ‘private’ emphasises its economic function. Indeed, traditional libertarian approaches see ‘the family as the protector of private property, of the bourgeois ethic of accumulation, as well as the guarantor of a barrier against the encroachments of the state’ (Donzelot, 1979: 5). Certainly, the family is often presented as a unit of consumption that is deeply embedded in the neoliberal ‘project’. Abbott and Wallace (1992: 16), for example, argue that the frequent emphasis within conservative political regimes on ‘family values’ and ‘pro-family policies’ is ‘essential for the maintenance of capitalism’. However, in contrast, others emphasise the increasing incorporation of the family into the state, as well as the normative mobilisation of particular family values in the political arena, for example, the widespread use of the loaded term ‘hard-working families’ across the political spectrum (Runswick-Cole et al, 2016). Donzelot’s (1979) historical account of the ‘policing’ of families shows how governments have increasingly intervened to mould families into specific functions. He identifies a succession of regulatory interventions – particularly around children – that have been put in place in order to ‘tame’ the family. He argues that the protection of children ‘allowed for the destruction of the family as an island of resistance’ (Donzelot, 1979: 93–4). Here, it could be argued that while the family was embedded in civil society in the past, it is no longer. As Cohen and Arato (1994: 533) point out in relation to its paradoxical position, the family is alternatively seen to be either subjected to the economic pressures of the market or subsumed within the bureaucratic pressures of the state. Part of the difficulty arises not only from the slippery conceptualisation of civil society, but also because of the changing nature of the family itself. As Howell (2006: 46) argues, in considering the location of the family in relation to civil

16

The paradoxical positioning of the family and civil society

society, it is important to consider ‘the cultural specificities of the scope and the social, economic and political significance of the family and household’. We return to the topic of familial shifts over time and the patterning of family values in Chapter 3. Just as the family is ambiguously positioned in relation to definitions of civil society based on public–private and state–market oppositions, it is also ambiguously positioned in relation to definitions that emphasise the associative (as opposed to coercive) dimension of civil society. As we have seen, those who argue that the family is located firmly in civil society highlight its associative qualities, emphasising its ‘horizontal ties’ and collective responsibility. However, others reject this representation of the family and instead focus on the way in which families are based on ‘vertical ties’ and unequal relations. Walzer (2002: 35, emphasis added), for example, argues that civil society should include ‘all social groups that are or can be understood as voluntary and non-coercive, thus excepting only the family, whose members are not volunteers’. Additionally, while feminist perspectives argue for the greater recognition of women in civil society, they do not generally include the family. Far from being a space for deliberative dialogue and collective agency, the family is seen as one of the principal sites of women’s subjugation. As Fraser (1989: 120, emphases added) argues with reference to male-headed nuclear families: Such families can be understood as normatively secured rather than communicatively achieved action contexts, that is as contexts where actions are (sometimes) mediated by consensus and shared values but where such consensus is suspect because it is prereflective or because it is achieved through dialogue vitiated by unfairness, coercion, or inequality. However, just as the family’s relationship with the state and the market has changed over time, so too have the internal dynamics and composition of the family. Barber (1998: 54), for instance, claims that particular kinds of contemporary families might legitimately be considered part of civil society, particularly those ‘which are open and egalitarian in the long term because they assure equality among the various roles within them … and which eventually produce autonomous adults’. Eto (2012: 113–14) also wants to argue for the inclusion of ‘diverse’ families: ‘A heterosexual couple with biological children is not the only form a family can take … same-sex couples with adopted children, and remarried couples with children from a former marriage’ are ‘closest to associations’ and may therefore be included.

17

Civil Society and the Family

This leads us to the rather odd situation where some families (democratically organised ones and those based on same-sex partnerships) are to be included within the ambit of civil society, whereas others (in particular, male-headed nuclear families) are not. This is a very simplistic assumption because it presumes that maleheaded nuclear families will inevitably have coercive practices – practices that will apparently be entirely absent in ‘alternative’ families. Furthermore, if we define civil society ‘membership’ only in terms of the absence of any form of coercive practice, it is clear that children will be excluded from civil society. Keane (2013: 171) shows how the ‘invention’ of childhood has historically meant that ‘defined by groups within civil society, children were positioned outside and underneath civil society’. In recent times, he argues, we are seeing the emergence of the ‘child citizen’ who is granted legal rights within the family. As Howell (2006) argues, the discussion of whether families should be considered part of civil society on the basis of their internal composition reveals the need to take on board the contextual specificities of social arrangements. The discussion also highlights the very normative nature of the concept of civil society itself – an issue to which we turn next.

The normative dimensions of civil society and the family The problem with trying to clarify the relationship between the family and civil society is that they are both highly loaded concepts prone to competing claims as to their value and purpose and for which there is frequent slippage between the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’. As Zimmer and Freise (2008: 21) outline, civil society is a highly normative concept directed towards a ‘utopian programme’ that seeks to increase democratic engagement and bring about greater social justice. Furthermore, while the study of civil society clearly has an empirical dimension, this is often infused with particular ideological and political preferences. As Barber (1998: 12) points out, civil society ‘tells us something about how we actually do behave even as it suggests an ideal of how we ought to behave’. The normative dimensions of civil society are evident in Table 2.1, which outlines how the implied positive attributes that are often associated with it are contrasted with the far less positive attributes of the family. However, the positive attributes associated with civil society may be more imagined than real. As Fraser (1997) and others have argued, private interests cannot just be bracketed out because the public sphere has been constituted by such interests. Moreover, neither can

18

The paradoxical positioning of the family and civil society Table 2.1: Representations of civil society and the family Civil society Public Collective Citizen Voluntary Common good Altruistic

The family Private Individualistic Consumer Coercive Familial gain Selfish

Source: Adapted from Power (2006)

inequalities; as Phillips (2002) points out, members of associations will bring with them their existing inequalities of resources, information and power. Indeed, Phillips (2002: 81) argues that the lack of regulation within civil society associations may make them ‘more coercive and less protective of individual inequalities and freedom than the much-despised institutions of the state’. Certainly, there have been a number of scandals about sexism, misogyny and sexual misconduct in traditional left-wing political associations and in major non-governmental organisations (NGOs) (Penny, 2013; Eikenberry and Mirabella, 2019). Moreover, there is no hard and fast dividing line between what counts as an issue of public concern and what is ‘only’ a private issue. For example, the decision as to whether a public protest is interpreted as an expression of ‘Nimbyism’ – and therefore in the interest of some private (selfish) agenda as opposed to one of public (selfless) activism – may reflect the extent to which we approve (or otherwise) of the cause, rather than any essential difference in the nature of the activity. Similarly, what counts as democratic engagement and greater social justice is not always clear-cut. Although these terms are commonly associated with movements on the Left, those on the Right can also make legitimate claims to be striving for greater representation and justice. The evaluative nature of judgements about the family and civil society is sharply illustrated in accounts of the tensions between ‘women’s groups’ and ‘pro-family’ groups. In her research on the way in which delegates from ‘women’s’ and ‘pro-family’ movements interacted with state delegates in the negotiations of the International Criminal Court, Glasius (2004) concedes that both of these movements inhabit ‘civil society’. However, there is clear partisanship in her representation of the two camps. On one side are the ‘social justice and women’s rights activists’ and on the other are the ‘conservatives,

19

Civil Society and the Family

anti-abortionists, and religious fundamentalists’. Moreover, she argues that knowing more about the pro-family movement ‘will be helpful to the transnational women’s rights activists who continually have to confront them’ (Glasius, 2004: 224). It is possible that both movements are concerned with issues of social justice and women’s rights but have very different starting points. In general, there is a tendency within much of the civil society literature to assume that the family is the property of the political Right and that civil society is the territory of the political Left. However, this kind of positioning is extremely problematic – and ignores the extent to which ‘pro-family’ activism can have its roots in more left-leaning causes. As we shall return to later, while ‘pro-family’ movements may generally be seen as holding conservative values, this is not necessarily the case. For example, Working Families is a UK-based charity that offers free legal advice to parents and carers on their rights at work. Charities and causes located across the political spectrum are beginning to reframe volunteering as a family activity (Jochum, 2015, 2019). Furthermore, some environmentally oriented causes campaigning to change domestic (and often family) practices, including food consumption, recycling and energy usage, seem to combine traditionally conservative messages around land preservation and responsible farming with practices such as vegetarianism or veganism and buying second-hand clothes, which are often portrayed as leftleaning traits or stereotypes. We return to the issue of environmentally focused civic engagement in Chapters 8 and 9. The difficult question of how the family should be understood in relation to civil society cannot be resolved through re-conceptualisation alone (or by case-by-case judgements of individual families) because the concepts of the family and civil society are generally too ideologically loaded for the issue to be resolved theoretically. Rather, the relationship needs to be addressed empirically. That will mean setting aside many of the assumptions that are commonly held about the private nature of the family and putting its relationship with civil society under the spotlight.

Bridging the ‘gap’ between the family and civil society While feminist critiques of conventional understandings of civil society have emphasised the significance of bringing women out of the confines of the domestic sphere and into the public sphere, they have generally been brought in without their family ‘baggage’. In this section, we explore the various ways in which we can bring the

20

The paradoxical positioning of the family and civil society

family back into our understandings of civil society; in particular, we examine the model developed by Mikiko Eto (2012). Eto attempts to overcome the public–private dichotomy, which largely compartmentalises women into the private sector, by drawing on and expanding Iris Young’s concept of civil society. Young (2000) rejects the simple ‘spatial’ division into ‘spheres’ by proposing three kinds of ‘associative activities’: private, civic and political. Private associations, which include families, social clubs and private gatherings, are concerned with ‘basic matters of life, death, need and pleasure’ (Young, 2000: 160). Civic associations include a broader range of voluntary associations and differ from private associations in that they are open to outsiders. Political associations are self-explanatory and obviously include political parties as well as a range of lobbying organisations. In addition to these three kinds of activities, Young argues for a distinction to be made between associations that are ‘selforganising’ and those that are ‘public’. Generally, the more ‘private’ the activity, the more it is likely to be self-organising; and the more civic and political the activity, the more likely it is to operate in ‘public’. Eto takes on board Young’s rejection of a simple spatial division but questions Young’s continuing location of the family as a private activity. Eto modifies the model (see Figure 2.1) so that it now includes a series of associative activities that link the family and state institutions.

Figure 2.1: Eto’s map of three layers of associative activities with the family and the state

Family

Civil society Private associations Civic associations Political associations State political institutions

Source: Eto, 2012: 115

21

Civil Society and the Family

Each of the five overlapping elements interacts with its neighbouring element. In this way, Eto seeks to provide: an expanded conception of civil society which is not isolated from everyday experience or from the influence of state political institutions and attempts to explain how the consciousness, expectations, and demands emerging from citizens’ everyday life are transformed into political associations, specifically social movements and citizens’ interest groups, and how their activities then interact with state political institutions. (Eto, 2012: 114) In conceptualising the ways in which the family, as part of citizens’ everyday life, connects to the public sphere, Eto argues that the family acts ‘as an important gateway to civil society activities’ (Eto, 2012: 114). In particular, she claims that ‘the family holds the potential to be an active player in creating associative activities through its role as a prospective base in civil society’ (Eto, 2012: 114). She goes on to argue that ‘the family provides individuals with the basis for developing their social awareness, and the family could therefore contribute to nurturing active citizens in civil society’ (Eto, 2012: 114). Without wishing to deny this crucial role (and we shall return to it later), we argue that Eto’s re-conceptualisation has a number of difficulties. First, although her model tries to soften the divide between the private and public spheres, she still locates the family at the margins of civil society. It is ‘independent from, but open to, civil society as the basis of prospective associative activities’ (Eto, 2012: 117). The grounds for largely excluding the family are again based on the condition of voluntary association: Many if not all marriages are the product of the free will of the individuals; children, however, have no free will in choosing which family they are born into. The family whose relationships lie in kinship ties, seeks to defend private concerns, often limited to family members, rather than public interests shared by communities or the wider society. (Eto, 2012: 113) As we have already argued, this sharp division between free will and coercion, and between private concerns and public interests, is not really sustainable. Despite Eto’s (2012: 113) assertion that there are ‘few families who regularly discuss serious social problems … at their

22

The paradoxical positioning of the family and civil society

dining tables’, she herself identifies instances where families play a role in social activism when their concerns coincide with public issues (Eto, 2012: 118–19). There is also some inconsistency and romanticism in Eto’s representation of the family. Despite its coercive properties, she claims that ‘the essence of family ties is love  … civil society associations are sustained by “solidarity”’ (Eto, 2012: 113). Whether these descriptions of both family ties and civil society are empirically accurate must be open to question. Finally, while Eto’s representation does map out the kind of ‘golden chain’ to which Ginsborg (2013) alludes, it is linear rather than circular. We need to be mindful not only of how changes in the family change civil society, but also of how changes in civil society have changed families. The complexity of the relationship may be such that it is impossible to represent diagrammatically. As Mason (1989: 102) argues in relation to the public and private domains, they ‘do not sit nearly at either end of a continuum, but are constantly intersecting and articulating with each other on a number of different levels’. However, despite these idealisations and minor inconsistencies, we think that Eto’s model marks an important step in the right direction. In particular, it shows that the family is intimately linked to a range of private and civic associations. However, we want to give the family an even more central position in civil society – one that recognises the family as not only the ‘gateway’ to prospective civil society activities, but also a site of civil society engagement itself.

23

3

The challenges of researching the ‘private sphere’ of the family

Introduction This chapter builds on the theoretical foundations laid in Chapter 2 to consider the challenges of, and opportunities afforded by, undertaking research with families. The home is normally regarded as an intensely private place, and it is rare for a non-family member to be given insights into family practices, allegiances and ruptures. We begin by considering these challenges and opportunities with reference to other scholars who have sought to understand the dynamics of private family life. This is followed by a description of our own mixed-methods approach, which combines a multigenerational questionnaire with numerous conversations with parents and grandparents, as well as a family tree mapping exercise. We discusses how we combined these methods to explore the extent to which the ‘relational, embedded and connected’ nature of everyday life (Mason, 2004) contributes to the inheritance or abandonment of particular forms of civic engagement. We then introduce our participants, both those who completed our intergenerational survey and the subset of 20  families who we interviewed. Although predominantly white, our families vary significantly in terms of their household make-up and socioeconomic circumstances. We reflect on the research process, drawing on interview data to discuss how parents and grandparents described and commented on their experiences. The chapter concludes with some caveats that should help readers to contextualise and interpret the empirical research presented in the following chapters.

How might the family home be linked to social change? Studies on social change, or world making, often focus on overarching systems and institutions rather than kinship bonds (Jamieson, 2016). However, some schools of thought, including phenomenology, symbolic interactionism and feminist Marxism, to name a few, shine a light on the potential for family and kinship relationships to play

25

Civil Society and the Family

their part in world making. Therefore, while home life and family activities have historically been regarded as private and distinct from ‘mainstream’ activities in contemporary society (such as paid employment and politics), following Allen and Crow (1989: 5), we argue that ‘the public world does not begin and end at the front door’. Indeed, notwithstanding the methodological and ethical challenges of penetrating family life, the home ‘deserves to be treated as a central part of contemporary society’ (Allen and Crow, 1989: 1). In fact, existing research suggests that close, or emotionally charged, personal relationships, such as those forged between immediate family members, are critical for the development of certain forms of agency or capacities to act: ‘Agency, the capacity for action, is anchored in the emotionally charged intimacy of embodied personal relationships, and … the direction and organisation of much social life is enmeshed with and draws energy and direction from such personal relationships’ (Jamieson, 2016: 337). Family relationships can build momentum for, or frustrate, social change. Much of this ‘biographical baggage’ – entailing gut feelings and capacities for collective action (Jamieson, 2016) – has been lost in contemporary analyses of civil society. Indeed, the ‘mundane character’ of home life conceals both the energy that goes into reproducing family life and the influence that these experiences have in shaping individual lives (Allen and Crow, 1989). The home is an important locus of ‘family life’ in contemporary society and absorbs significant time and emotional resources. It is therefore central to conceptualisations of civil society. Indeed, some argue that values, practices and dispositions fostered within the family home can spill over into behaviours outside of the home, for example, at work or in school.

The ‘black box’ of the family home There are a number of challenges facing researchers who wish to better understand family life and households. Family homes are more or less ‘curtained off from the public gaze’ (Allen and Crow, 1989: 1), and even though various digital technologies have made visible certain aspects of the family home (for example, a teenager might share a video of his or her bedroom online), these insights remain controlled and curated by individuals. It therefore remains difficult to get a ‘realistic’ or ‘authentic’ insight into family life. By definition, the family home is a private space for family members, and a few chosen guests. Writing in 1969, Frankenberg (1969) concluded that researchers can only understand the social processes of the home by questioning

26

The challenges of researching the ‘private sphere’ of the family

residents. Despite significant methodological developments since then – for example, the use of participant video diaries and scrapbooks – researchers remain ‘outsiders’, allowed ‘only temporary and partial access to the private lives which people lead in their homes’ (Allen and Crow, 1989: 1). Indeed, part of what makes a person feel ‘at home’ is the sense of privacy and freedom from the scrutiny of the outside world. Those friends and relatives invited into the private sphere of the home are privileged since this access is restricted, both in terms of which particular friends and relatives are entertained in the home and in terms of which parts of the home they are permitted to see. The exercise of such control over access to the home helps to maintain the essentially private nature of what is contained in it and of what activities take place there. (Allen and Crow, 1989: 4)

Displaying family practices British sociologist David Morgan pioneered the study of family practices, looking beyond normative ideas of what the family is to focusing on processes of family doing: displaying, enacting, articulating and embodying (see Morgan, 1996). To a greater or lesser extent, many of the decisions that a person makes about how to be or act will be influenced or guided by their close personal relationships, and familial relationships often, though not always, provide important foundational experiences in this regard. We must remember that family practices and relationships develop over a long period of time, and that domestic life is not stable, but in constant flux along multiple indices: ‘intimacy and estrangement; growing together and growing apart; affection and violence; affluence and poverty; experience and inexperience’ (Clark, 1987: 130–1). The small window of time spent with participants in their home, however valuable and generously given, cannot give us ‘first-hand’ or ‘deep’ insights into the development of relationships and their ebb and flow over time. In her work on ‘displaying families’, British sociologist Janet Finch (2007) argues that family members engage in certain talk and practice to signify and communicate their roles and identities as family members, both within the family and beyond it. These practices entail the integration of resources, skills and values (adapted from Shove et al, 2012), and the character and density of social bonds determine the extent to which practices get shared (Shove et al, 2012). Following Jamieson (2016), we take a broad approach to understanding meanings

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Civil Society and the Family

or values, which include emotions, feelings, ideas, imaginings, memories and aspirations. To make sense of family life, then, we need to consider the relational quality of individual routines and practices. Close family ties are maintained through relational work, that is, practices that make and sustain personal ties. These relational practices can also be reworked or adapted to make room for new ideas or priorities. In this sense, relational practices have the potential to ‘impact back on the wider cultural discourses and structural constraints that frame the opportunities of their doing’ (Jamieson, 2016: 337).

Patterning family values Much existing research exploring shared family values focuses on patterns of intergenerational similarity, for example, the propensity for children to share their parents’ political orientations, or the extent to which parents pass down their religiosity to their offspring. Correspondence between parent–child political orientations and religiosity, for example, has been modelled in various survey data (for example, Fox et al, 2019; Voas and Crockett, 2005). The argument underpinning these studies is that if there is parent–child similarity after controlling for other potential explanatory factors, then we can assume that there is something about the nature of that parent–child relationship that has resulted in a shared value. This means that research analysis may reveal a pattern that a respondent may not agree with, or even be aware of. For example, a father and son may both vote Labour and be members of a trade union but the former may explain this in terms of his working experiences as a young man while his son may credit his university education with the development of particular political values. Should we still describe such instances of parent–child similarity as evidence of intergenerational transmission? Alternatively, a mother may instil in her daughter the importance of standing by what she believes in, and to make up her own mind about social and political issues, potentially leading to different voting patterns and preferences. Again, looking at survey data alone, this might imply a lack of transmission, when, in fact, an underpinning intergenerational value has informed the voting choice of both mother and daughter, albeit in different ways. Indeed, patterns of parent–child fidelity tell us little about the processes of intergenerational transmission, or the sharing of values between different generations within a family. In our research, then, we designed a multi-methods study, beginning with a three-generational survey to identify family patterning and associations between certain practices and values, before moving on to

28

The challenges of researching the ‘private sphere’ of the family

interview a smaller selection of parents and grandparents about their family life and civic engagement.

Surveying the family Our first involvement with the families we studied was via the youngest generation; we began by undertaking a survey with 980 schoolchildren aged 13–14 from seven secondary schools across South and West Wales. Children completed paper-based surveys in their classroom (in either English or Welsh) and then took copies of similar surveys for their parents and grandparents to fill in and return to us. The survey covered a broad range of topics, including political affiliations, religious beliefs, eating habits, civic participation and views on issues like crime and immigration. It also explored young people’s relationships with their parents and grandparents, including how much time they spend together and the things that they are most likely to disagree on. We have written elsewhere about teenage participants’ extraneous survey responses and how these annotations and edits may indicate the emotive nature of surveying family relationships (Muddiman et al, 2019a). We included guardians, step-parents and carers in our definition of ‘parents’, giving participants flexibility but encouraging them to answer about the adult(s) they lived with all or most of the time. Following a question asking participants to indicate how many grandparents they had, we asked them to focus on the grandparent(s) they see most often, and posed some additional questions about their relationship with this ‘closest’ grandparent (or grandparents). The survey included a section on ‘activities to help other people and environment’, capturing responses to questions about various types of civic participation. The surveys sent to parents and grandparents included many of the same questions from our original survey, with some additional questions on participants’ childhood experiences and relationships with their parents and grandparents, and on their voting behaviours, as well as questions to determine their level of affluence or deprivation. Participants were encouraged to complete and return the paper-based survey using a freepost envelope, or to complete it online using a unique link to our survey. As an incentive, those who completed the survey were asked whether they would like to be entered into a prize draw for one of three family experiences (vouchers for a family meal out, shopping vouchers, or tickets for a theme park). We had 109 survey responses from parents and 50 responses from grandparents, with response rates of 11 per cent and 5 per cent, respectively.

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Civil Society and the Family

The key demographic characteristics of all our survey respondents are presented in Table 3.1. While the characteristics of children are fairly representative of children in Wales, there are clear response biases in the parent and grandparent responses. Crucially, these were predominantly from the mothers and maternal grandmothers of the children (see Table 3.2).

Table 3.1: Survey responses and key demographic information Characteristics N Male Female FSM Religious (current) Religious (brought up in) Speak Welsh Born in Wales

Children 980 52.6% 42.7% 13.9% 64.3% 36.7% 71.6%

Parents 109 21.1% 77.1% 8.3% 72.5% 77.1% 11.0% 56.9%

Grandparents 50 32.0% 68.0% 10.0% 84.0% 86.0% 8.0% 56.0%

Note: FSM = free school meals.

Table 3.2: Relationship of adult respondents to child respondents Relationship to child Mother Father

n 84 23

% 77.1 21.1

Maternal grandmother Maternal grandfather Paternal grandmother Paternal grandfather Great grandmother Non-biological grandfather

23 13 10 2 1 1

46.0 26.0 20.0 4.0 2.0 2.0

Interviews with family members At the end of each survey, we invited parents and grandparents to indicate whether or not they would be happy to take part in an interview. We interviewed all those who agreed and were available over a six-month period. When making contact with families to ask whether they were still happy to be interviewed, we had to tread

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The challenges of researching the ‘private sphere’ of the family

carefully when negotiating when and where to meet. We always began by establishing what was most convenient and comfortable for participants, often suggesting coming to their home or another local spot at a time that suited them. The majority of parent/grandparent interviews were undertaken in family homes, with just five participants choosing to meet in public places instead. Two mothers preferred to meet in coffee shops: one had an ill child at home; and the other had builders doing renovation works and so suggested that a cafe might be quieter. Three parents – two fathers and one mother – suggested meeting in our offices in Central Cardiff. All three worked nearby and suggested that this would be convenient for them. All of the interviews were carried out by the same researcher (Muddiman), using an interview guide designed to explore various life-stage issues alongside family relationships. Interviews with parents were supplemented with a family inheritance mapping exercise. Introducing our families Table 3.3 shows the families who participated in the second stage of our research project. We have 15  family triads (Families A to O) in which we have interviewed both parents and grandparents. This is supplemented by five family dyads (we interviewed just the grandparents of Families P and Q, and just the parents of Families R, S and T). Just over half of our youngest generation of participants are the eldest child (n = 11), with two ‘middle’ children, five ‘youngest’ children and one only child. Parents We interviewed 18 parents (14  mothers and four fathers) across South and West Wales over a six-month period during 2017–18 (see Table 3.4). Half of those interviewed were born in Wales (including two identifying as Welsh/Irish), with the remaining participants having moved to Wales from England. Parents’ ages ranged from 40 to 52  years old at the time of interview. The majority of parents were married, with three single parents and two re-partnered parents. Each interview was carried out one-to-one, with the exception of Daisy, who wanted her daughter Zina to be included in the process. Almost all of our participants identified as White British and most had a religious faith, though this was far more central in some of their accounts than others.

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Civil Society and the Family Table 3.3: Our families Grandparent Parent

Child

Child’s siblings

Family A

Carol

Natasha

Willow Sophie (younger)

Family B

Colleen

Ruth

Zain

Adam, Billy, Erin (all younger)

Family C

Gillian

Miranda

Caleb

Rachel, Zachary, Rebecca (all younger)

Family D

Gwen

Ffion

Rhys

Llinos, Sam, Jenny (all older – Llinos has own children; Sam is at university)

Family E

Ian (+Beryl)

Nina

Tasha

Suzy (younger)

Family F

Moira

Bridget

Cian

None

Family G

Muriel

Daisy

Zina

Leo (older)

Family H

Penny

Abby

Russ

Tanner (older)

Family I

Ray

Julia

Bella

Claire (older, at university)

Family J

Rita

John

Stuart

Jack (younger)

Family K

Roger (+Maria)

Eve

Theo

Rose (younger)

Family L

Shelly

Tara

Mia

Unknown

Family M Veronica

David

Alfie

Bethany (younger)

Family N

Victor

Nicole

Aled

Phoebe (older), Dewi (younger)

Family O

Winnie

Daniel

Natalie Toby (older)

Grandparents interviewed (but no interview data from parents): Family P

Annie

Wendy

Alice

Dylan (younger)

Family Q

Bonnie

Polly

Sophie Liza, Alex (younger)

Parents interviewed (but no interview data from grandparents): Family R

Charlotte Zoe

Lisa (younger)

Family S

Frankie

Lauren Connor and Joel, Melody (older)

Family T

Salem

Abyd

Rasheed and Sanjay (younger)

Key: Female

Older sibling(s)

Male

Younger sibling(s)

Unknown

Older and younger siblings

Note: There is some missing data for ‘Family L’ as this interview was incomplete.

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Table 3.4: Parent characteristics for study families Year of birth 1971 1974 1976 1967 1972 1972 1968 1977 1965 1969 1966 1979 1971

Place of birth Wales Wales England Wales Wales Wales Wales Wales Wales England England England England

N. Nicole

1978

Wales

O. Daniel R. Charlotte S. Frankie T. Salem

1966 1970 1978 1973

England England Wales England

Occupation type Education Education Faith based Education Education Third sector Education Health care Civil service Finance Secretarial – Civil service Finance/ education IT Education Education Health care

Marital status Single Married Married Married Married Single Married Single Married Married Married – Married

Voting preference Lib Dem Labour Conservative Labour Labour Labour Plaid Labour Conservative Conservative Other UKIP Labour

Religion Church in Wales Roman Catholic Nonconformist None Nonconformist Roman Catholic Church in Wales Nonconformist Church in Wales Church in Wales Nonconformist Church in Wales Nonconformist

HE grad Y Y Y N Y N Y N N N N N Y

Re-partnered

Labour

Roman Catholic

Y

Married Married Re-partnered Married

Labour Labour Labour Unsure

Nonconformist None Roman Catholic Muslim

Y Y N Y

Note: Ffion was also a grandparent to her son’s older sister’s two children. HE = higher education; Lib Dem = Liberal Democrat; UKIP = United Kingdom Independence Party.

The challenges of researching the ‘private sphere’ of the family

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Pseudonym A. Natasha B. Ruth C. Miranda D. Ffion E. Nina F. Bridget G. Daisy H. Abby I. Julia J. John K. Eve L. Tara M. David

Civil Society and the Family

Grandparents We also interviewed 20 grandparents (four male; 16 female). A total of 11 identified as Welsh, including three who identified as halfWelsh and half-Irish. Of the remaining nine, all identified as English, with four having moved to Wales for broadly economic reasons (for example, spouse’s job) and one moving to Wales specifically to be closer to family. The remaining four grandparents lived in England. These participants were all grandparents to teenage grandchildren and had a mean age of 74 (see Table 3.5). The oldest grandparent, Winnie, was born in 1931 and so was 86 at the time of interview. Penny, the youngest grandparent, was born in 1959 (aged 59 at the time of interview). We do not have birth year information for Beryl and Maria, who both entered the research process via their partners and did not complete questionnaires. We also include Ffion, Gwen’s daughter, who we interviewed as a parent but also had a young grandson with another on the way at the time of interview. Ffion was born in 1967 and so was aged 50 at the time of interview. Only three grandparents had not yet reached retirement age: Shelly, Penny and Ffion. Penny works part time in a health-care role, Ffion looks after her grandchildren and Shelly was not in paid employment, but spent a lot of time volunteering for an animal charity at the time of interview. The majority of interviews were carried out one-to-one, though two grandfathers chose to be interviewed with their partners: Ian and wife Beryl; and Roger and partner Maria (who is step-grandmother to his grandchildren and has grandchildren of her own). In addition, the interview with Shelly was conducted over two separate sessions due to her limited availability, first, in her daughter’s home with her daughter and baby grandson present, and then, second, in a coffee shop with one of her grandsons (all other interviews were conducted in grandparents’ own homes). Muriel’s daughter and granddaughter were present for her interview, helping her to remember and sharing their own perspectives. A total of 13 of those grandparents interviewed lived with their spouse/partner, five lived alone and two lived with other family members: Moira shares her home with her daughter (Bridget) and grandson Cian; and Muriel shares her home with her son (Hywel). Two of these grandparents had not yet reached retirement age: Shelly and Penny. Penny works part time in a healthcare role and Shelly was not in paid employment, but spent a lot of time volunteering for an animal charity at the time of interview. A summary of the characteristics of the family study participants is presented in Table 3.6.

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Table 3.5: Grandparent characteristics for study families Year of birth 1941 1943 – 1946 1948 – 1946 1934 1959 1937 1945 1937 – 1955 1942 1949 1931 1943 1941

Age in 2017 76 74 – 71 69 – 71 84 59 80 72 80 – 62 75 69 86 74 76

Nationality English Welsh/Irish English Welsh English Welsh Welsh/Irish Welsh Welsh Welsh English English English Welsh English Welsh English English Welsh

Retired Y Y N Y Y Y Y Y N Y Y Y Y N Y Y Y Y Y

Notes: a Paternal grandparent (interviewed in relation to their son’s children). b Interviewed as maternal grandparents but also have grandchildren via sons.

Occupation type Secretarial Secretarial Education Secretarial Managerial Scientist Health/social care Secretarial Health/social care Self-employed Health/social care Engineering Health/social care Charity Health/social care Skilled manual Health/social care Health/social care –

Marital status Married Married Married Widowed Married

Voting preference Conservative Labour Conservative Labour Conservative

Religion Nonconformist Roman Catholic Church in Wales None Roman Catholic

Widowed Widowed Re-partnered Widowed Married Re-partnered

Labour Labour – – Prefer not to say Conservative – Labour – Conservative Green Other –

Roman Catholic Church in Wales – Church in Wales Roman Catholic Nonconformist

Married Widowed Married Widowed Separated Married

Church in Wales – Roman Catholic Nonconformist Other Church in Wales

The challenges of researching the ‘private sphere’ of the family

35

Pseudonym A. Carol B. Colleenb C. Gillianb D. Gwen E. Ianb E. Beryl F. Moirab G. Murielb H. Penny I. Rayb J. Ritaa K. Roger K. Maria L. Shellyb M. Veronicaa N. Victorb O. Winniea P. Annieb Q. Bonnie

Civil Society and the Family Table 3.6: Summary of family study participants by key characteristics Nationality

The majority of parents identified as either Welsh or English (fairly even split between the two). Ruth and Bridget both Identified as halfWelsh and half-Irish, as did their mothers (Colleen and Moira). A total of 11 grandparents identified as Welsh, including three who identified as half-Welsh and half-Irish. Of the remaining nine, all identified as English, with four having moved to Wales for broadly economic reasons (for example spouse’s job) and one moving to Wales specifically to be closer to family. The remaining four grandparents lived in England.

Ethnicity

Salem (parent, Family T) is the only non-white participant, identifying as Asian. We were not able to interview Salem’s parents due to them living overseas.

Age range

Grandparents had a mean age of 74 at the time they were interviewed. The oldest grandparent, Winnie, was born in 1931 and so was 86 at the time of interview. Penny, the youngest grandparent, was born in 1959 (aged 59 at time of interview). The age range was 13 years for parents. Julia is the oldest parent (born in 1965), followed by Daniel, Eve and Ffion. Tara is the youngest (born in 1979, followed by Nicole and Frankie (born in 1978).

Relationship status

Among the parents there are three single mothers and two repartnered mothers. We did not interview any single fathers, nor any parents or grandparents in same-sex relationships. The majority of grandparents were married, with one identifying as ‘separated’ from her spouse, six as widowed and two as ‘re‑partnered’.

Education

Around half of the parents interviewed have degrees, while only two of the grandparents interviewed had gone to university.

Religious faith Around two thirds of the parents interviewed have a Christian faith of some denomination, with two non-religious and one Muslim parent. Political views Labour was most popular among parents (10), followed by Conservative (three), then Plaid, UKIP and the Liberal Democrats all with one parent each, and another ‘unsure’. Grandparents were equally divided between being Labour supporters and Conservative supporters, though a small number of grandparents preferred not to say who they would vote for.

Entering the family home The ‘home’ is almost always considered the locus of family life, as well as a space of privacy, freedom, security, creativity and expression (Allen and Crow, 1989). The creation and maintenance of an appropriate domestic environment has become increasingly significant as family members (in particular, mothers) spend time on the physical

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The challenges of researching the ‘private sphere’ of the family

appearance of the family home (Pahl and Wallace, 1988). Entering the family home offered rich opportunities to learn more about family life, through meeting pets and being shown family photos, heirlooms and drawings and paintings of family members displayed on the walls or stuck to the fridge. During interviews, participants often referred to photographs on the wall – “my youngest granddaughter, that blonde one there” (Carol, grandparent, Family A) – and sometimes paused to fetch a photo album or item triggered by a memory or thought that came up in our conversation. Some of the items on display also acted as a prompt during the interview, for example, photos of relatives in their rugby kit triggered a discussion about family involvement in sporting activities. Interviews in family homes generally took place in living rooms, around dining tables or on kitchen counters. Despite the private nature of the family home, all of those who agreed to be interviewed were incredibly welcoming and wanted to furnish the researcher with various refreshments, biscuits, drinks and snacks. Some even lit candles to create a relaxed environment, and the researcher was gifted with various items, including windfall apples and home-made jam. While many participants had busy schedules and squeezed in the interview between other commitments, those who were retired tended to have more time, and those living alone sometimes seemed reluctant to conclude the conversation.

Mapping the family By interviewing two generations of the same family, it became possible for us to trace stories and accounts of family practice, particularly those of previous generations, and to see how they are used to account for civic participation (or not) in the present. The idea to map out ‘family trees’ emerged during interviews with grandparents, when trying to make sense of how family members related to one another. From initial rough sketches that mapped out family relationships and the age and location of various family members, we began to consider a more systematic way to draw out the family. The idea of using family mapping was developed with two students undergoing a short research placement with us in preparation for interviews with parents. At the beginning of interviews with parents, the researcher was guided by the participant to sketch out a family tree, using genealogical conventions such as circles for female family members and squares for males, identified with first name initials (for example, ‘A’ for Adam). Lines indicate connections between married (or partnered) couples and between parents and their children. Separations were marked

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Civil Society and the Family

with a ‘//’ on the line linking two people, and a small initial ‘D’ was sometimes used for relatives who are deceased. The family tree was then annotated during the interview with different coloured lines to indicate shared values and practices. In addition to our core themes (including family closeness, religious beliefs, political views and affiliations, environmental attitudes, and participation in voluntary work), we also invited interviewees to comment on a wider range of issues. These supplementary themes included Brexit, gender relations, animal rights, trade unions and the National Health Service (NHS). When interviewing two generations of the same family, it was also paramount not to assume shared understandings or knowledge of certain issues between both family members. Figure  3.1 shows an example of a family tree map completed with David (Family M), which has been cleaned of any potentially identifiable participant information. On this map, the dark green lines relate to religious faith, while orange signifies politics, light green indicates the sharing of views and values linked to Brexit, and pink signifies values aligned to the environment. Where we present these maps in the text, we have changed the names of all participants and all initials to protect the identity of interviewees and their families. For Figure 3.1: Example of a family tree map

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The challenges of researching the ‘private sphere’ of the family

the sake of visual clarity, we have also removed much of the annotation in order to highlight particular themes, and we have drawn a red ring around those family members who participated in the research (child, parent and, in most cases, grandparent). When mapping out their family tree, participants were frequently apologetic about the complexity of their family structures. For example, David said of his wife Iona: “She’s got a big family; you haven’t got enough space on the paper for it all.” Participants were also apologetic when they couldn’t remember the names of some of their more distant relatives or members of their spouse’s family, and some shared concerns about whether their family is ‘normal’ or not: Eve: Interviewer:

‘Is that how it should look?’ ‘There is no right or wrong and it’s basically just a vehicle for us to talk about all of these things.’

Despite the prevalence of separations and re-partnering in contemporary British society, participants sometimes seemed uncomfortable telling us about relatives who had split up with a partner or who had remarried, almost as if it reflected badly upon them personally: Interviewer:

‘Right, is there anybody else on here that you would think of as part of your family circle?’ Frankie: ‘There’s Aunty Tamara’s son, who’s Ryan, and he has no children. And her partner’s name was Joe but they’re not together anymore. You’re going to need lots of little crosses everywhere.’ Interviewer: ‘It’s modern families, isn’t it?’ Frankie: ‘Yeah.’

Mapping family trees in situ at an interviewee’s house meant that the maps were often messy and full of corrections. If a mistake was made, it was not always practical to start again. Esther emphasised to participants that the map is just part of the process and that “it might not be super neat, super perfect” (interview with Ruth). Another reason that we cannot treat family tree maps as a totally accurate social ‘fact’ is that they are not calibrated to accommodate change over time. For example, Daisy described religion as a “massive” part of her life as a child because you “just go with it” but that after growing older, understanding changes and “you don’t know what to do with it”. We decided to use dotted lines in cases like these, where the ‘transmission’ or sharing of a belief or practice was ambivalent or uncertain:

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Civil Society and the Family

Daisy: Interviewer: Daisy: Interviewer:

‘It’s there but you don’t know what to do with it.’ ‘I will do a dotted line for that.’ ‘Yeah, strange.’ ‘I know it’s, with this drawing, it’s just for having the conversation, it’s not –’ Daisy: ‘Okay.’ Interviewer: ‘It doesn’t have to be –’ Daisy: ‘No. Yeah.’ Interviewer: ‘Because sometimes, when you’re talking about complicated things –’ Daisy: ‘I know –’ Similarly, the use of coloured lines cannot easily reflect different levels of competence or engagement with a particular practice. The following exchange from Natasha’s interview shows how the use of dotted lines was used to indicate her Welsh-language proficiency: Interviewer:

‘My next theme is language: do you have any Welsh language speakers?’ ‘Not fluent, no…. I’m not too bad, but I’m not Natasha: brilliant, not very confident.’ Interviewer: ‘So these are dotted?’ Natasha: ‘Mmmm.’ Interviewer: ‘It’s a bit approximate, this diagram; it’s just sort of a bit –’ Natasha: ‘I think it’s great.’ When considering how to incorporate family trees into our research encounters, we were informed by Tim Ingold’s (2007) work charting the history of the development of the family tree – beginning with the Roman desire to chart lineage, to religiously oriented ‘upsidedown’ or inverted family trees, to concerns of pedigree and the development of the genealogical model resembling a circuit board. Ingold raises concerns about the reduction of whole lives to a single spot on a page in these diagrams, reminding us that ‘life is not lived at points but along lines’ (2007: 116). We therefore position the family inheritance mapping exercise as a personal construction of the family and a vehicle to aid interview discussions, just as we acknowledge participant stories and narratives as accounts that are constructed during the interview encounter. Of course, talking about family matters can be emotive, and mapping the family with participants inevitably brought some

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The challenges of researching the ‘private sphere’ of the family

difficult topics to the fore. Although not immediately linked to the project at hand, interviewees’ accounts were infused with past and present difficulties, worries, regrets and painful memories. These ranged from health problems, difficult relationships, bereavements and money worries, to addiction issues, fertility problems, infidelities and estrangement. It was important to tread carefully with these accounts, not jumping to record them on the map with lines or circles, but giving participants the space they needed to share these parts of their family story, while reassuring them that they did not have to discuss any part of their family story if they did not want to. It soon became clear that almost every family is dealing with multiple complexities and issues, and this is something that Esther, as the interviewer, often reflected back to interviewees: “It’s not at all unusual in these interviews for there to be parts of the family that are just difficult and complicated. I think it’s more common than we realise, or that we talk about.” At the end of each interview, participants were asked to take a look at the family tree map and see whether they thought that there was anything missing, or if there was anything that they would like to add. Most participants seemed to enjoy looking at the map and some asked to take photos of it to share with other family members. When asked to reflect on the interview process, participants were overwhelmingly positive, only expressing concern about whether or not we would be able to make sense of the finished product: Interviewer: Eve:

‘How did you find that as a process?’ ‘It was cool, it’s quite thought-provoking actually and the things you come out with, and it’s like, “Oh, I haven’t thought about that.”’

Interviewer:

‘Okay, is there anything you would like to add, I’ve come to the end of my questions, how have you found this mapping things out…?’ ‘Well, it’s interesting because I came with a very open mind. I didn’t know what you were going to do or how you were going to play it, or what kind of…. I hadn’t really given it any consideration, so it’s quite thought-provoking in some ways, I might go away and start thinking about some of these things, they’ve never crossed my mind before…. I don’t know; it looks interesting. I don’t know whether it makes sense to you, but yeah.’

Julia:

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Civil Society and the Family

Interviewer: Charlotte: Interviewer: Daisy:

‘I’m at the end of my questions and I know I’ve kept you talking quite a long time now. How did you find that? Was it okay?’ ‘Yes, it was interesting, it’s fascinating, I love that diagram … let’s hope you can understand it.’ ‘That’s the end of my questions, unless you’ve got anything to add? How did you find that?’ ‘That’s alright, I’ve really enjoyed this to be honest and my mum said she had a great time, by the way … it’s quite nice to be able to talk about, to have permission to talk about, some of this stuff in a way.’

These family inheritance maps, co-constructed with participants, enabled us to look across different types of civic engagement through time and between generations, and to explore how these practices are implicated in family bonds and shared identity formation. In Chapter 4, we will explore the uncertain nature of the intergenerational transmission of civic values and practices, illustrating ruptures and distance, as well as continuity and closeness. Together, the range of research methods that we employ allows us to further our understanding of how family values and practices might foster or stifle engagement with civil society. They also enable us to explore the extent to which the ‘relational, embedded and connected’ nature of everyday life (Mason, 2004) contributes to the inheritance or abandonment of particular forms of civic engagement. Of course, we must be mindful that in addressing participants as family members, we may be activating or channelling particular narratives, that is, those enabled by our focus on familial ties. Addressing an adult as a parent or grandparent, for example, could lead to participants recalling or constructing particular events, values and memories through the lens of their role as a parent or grandparent. This raises the possibility that participants could over-identify the familial influence on their values and practices (privileging it above, for example, educational experiences or peer groups), leading to an exaggerated representation of intergenerational similarities. We expand on these issues in Chapter 4.

Contextualising our study Here, we contextualise the study in order to highlight the main limitations of the research design. First, it is important to remind

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The challenges of researching the ‘private sphere’ of the family

readers that the study centres on children aged 13 to 14 years old. This age group was chosen as it represents a key transition in early adolescence as young people are beginning to gain independence, both in their views and behaviours, from their families. However, we felt it important to focus on this age group while there would still be a strong connection with family. Nevertheless, adolescence is a very complex and fast-changing period of the lifecourse; therefore, it is very likely that we would find different results had we selected older or younger children. This leads on to the very temporal nature of the study. The research was undertaken at a very significant time in terms of UK politics. Importantly, it followed a substantial period of economic austerity, particularly in terms of public services. It also occurred during the period following the 2016 EU referendum in the UK, which resulted in a close decision of 52 per cent to 48 per cent to leave the EU. At the time of the study, the UK government was still negotiating how it should withdraw from the EU. One of the most important features of the EU referendum result was the difference in voting preferences by age and generation: older people were far more likely to vote to leave and younger people were far more likely to vote to remain. As indicated in Chapter 1, stories of intergenerational tensions were quite common in the media at the time. While the socio-political context of the study is probably quite unique, it is also important to note that there were other significant trends in society that would have implications for this study. The two most important trends to note are the increasing secularisation of British society and the decreasing levels of civic engagement (Fox et al, forthcoming). These highlight that the study can only capture the relationship between family and civil society as ‘a moment in time’. The study design and the selection of study participants was not meant to be representative of the population at the time, but even if it had been, there would still be questions as to how generalisable the results could be given the significant changes in society at the time. It is also important to mention that there is a strong relationship between civic engagement and the lifecourse (Power, 2020). This means that when we compare social and political attitudes and levels of civic engagement between the three generations of a family in this study, we should be mindful of lifecourse differences and generational effects that could contribute to different patterns between our children, parents and grandparents. We have not collected qualitative data with the youngest generation, so we cannot interrogate their motivations, tensions and experiences

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Civil Society and the Family

of undertaking civic or political activities (whether prompted by their parents or otherwise). However, we can explore how the current parents of young teenagers employ accounts of their own childhoods and their own parents’ practices in how they are approaching parenthood themselves. This allows us to explore the extent to which various ‘civic virtues’ are present in their performance of family and their rehearsals of the values and behaviours that they hope to imbue their children with, subject and expose their children to, or protect their children from. As we saw earlier, there is some bias due to the self-selection of parents and grandparents to join the family study. It is very likely that we interviewed particularly civically active family members, so we need to be mindful of this when drawing conclusions. We selected schools for the study to include diverse communities in that they served urban (three), rural (two), valley (two), Welsh-speaking (one) and coastal areas (one). The schools were also selected to achieve variation in size, religious affiliation, the presence of sixth form provision, academic profile and the percentage of pupils eligible for free school meals (FSM), which is the conventional proxy for socioeconomic disadvantage. In relation to FSM eligibility, 14.2 per cent of our sample reported that they are eligible, with a further 1.6 per cent selecting ‘prefer not to say’ and 6.9 per cent indicating that they did not know. This means that the level of socio-economic disadvantage of our respondents is not too dissimilar from the national level, where 17.8 per cent are eligible for FSM. While our methods for surveying families via a range of different schools was successful in capturing families from a range of different socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds, the small proportion who agreed to participate in interviews with us tended to be more homogeneously from white working- and middle-class backgrounds, and were much more likely to be religious than the general population. Our approach was to interview all of those families in which at least one member was happy to participate further in the study. We identified a range of different orientations to civil society among interviewees, but as a group, they all shared (to a greater or lesser extent) a predisposition towards civic involvement, compared to both our wider sample of those surveyed and, we expect, to the wider population of parents and grandparents in Wales. While some families situated their civic practices in relation to their political or religious ideologies, for example, talking about ‘faith in action’ or linking their volunteering to socialist values, others did not explicitly frame their civic practice in religious or politically motivated terms.

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The challenges of researching the ‘private sphere’ of the family

An additional complexity to consider relates to the intergenerational shifts in social class (operationalised through occupation and/or homeownership, for example), in which grandparents were more likely to have held working-class occupations, while their children (the parents in this study) were more likely to have ‘professional’ jobs. This may be due to the changing occupational structure in the UK, in which so-called blue-collar jobs have been disappearing, rather than being a straightforward sign of social mobility. We also see a shift away from traditional gender roles, with mothers more likely than those in their parents’ generation to be in paid employment (rather than in a full-time caring/household role). In summary, the conceptual and methodological points raised in this chapter help to clarify our approach to the study and to identify the main limitations of the study design. However, there are other, more conceptual, points about studying families and intergenerational relationships that warrant further discussion. This is the focus of Chapter 4.

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4

The uncertain business of raising citizens

Introduction The family is widely regarded as a socialising agent, and parents, in particular, are seen to play a pivotal role in providing their children with a framework for interpreting and navigating the social world. This period of primary socialisation then interacts with (or makes way for) secondary influences, such as peer groups and educational and occupational experiences (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977). A shifting and kaleidoscopic mixture of instances, relationships and experiences therefore frame an individual’s understandings of various aspects of civil society, as well as the values and practices that they adopt. Therefore, identifying or distilling the precise influence of parents, or indeed other relatives, on the sets of values and practices that an individual develops over time is far from straightforward. This chapter draws on survey, interview and family tree data to consider the range of influences on participant identities, values and practices. Following on from the points raised in Chapter 3, here, we draw out all of the things that might trouble or obfuscate the intergenerational sharing of values and practices. Given well-publicised intergenerational rifts in political perspectives and the wide disparity in the circumstances and life chances of older and younger generations today, it is vitally important not to overstate the power of intergenerational influences and similarities (Brannen, 2014). Individuals may choose to adopt, ignore or rebel against their parents’ values and practices; for some, the influence of friendships and experiences outside of the family home may prove to be stronger influences on their orientations to civil society. The process of raising citizens is a precarious one.

Non-familial influences on civic engagement We explore the uncertain business of raising citizens with reference to participant accounts of their civic values and practices in relation

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Civil Society and the Family

to their upbringing and family life. We investigate how the bringing together of two previously unconnected families through marriage or partnership is negotiated in relation to social and political perspectives, and we examine the role that in-laws and other relatives may play in shaping orientations to civil society. The chapter also discusses the possible consequences of the increasing geographical mobility and dispersal of some families for their opportunities to share and adapt civic values within the family network. This chapter is necessarily broad in laying out all of the potential barriers to and complexities of intergenerational transmission, including the difficulty of differentiating between family influence, cohort effects, educational effects and wider societal changes. We felt it important to be holistic in our approach to accounting for the various and multivalent socialisation processes, and this acknowledgement leads to a number of challenging questions. There is an expansive range of different influences on an individual’s orientations to and participation in various civic activities that intersect and interact with one another in complex and dynamic ways over time. The following dimensions are often cited as significant influences on an individual’s social development: • demographic variables, including class, gender, ethnicity and religion; • primary socialisation within the family home, including, but not limited to, the influence of parents and grandparents; • formal educational experiences; • occupation and workplace; • becoming a parent and the division of domestic labour; and • membership of institutions and associations (for example, voluntary, faith-based and political). Miles-Touya and Rossi (2016) present a typology of three types of transmission: horizontal (peer to peer), vertical (intergenerational) and opaque (prompted by significant personal or macro events). They conceptualised vertical transmission as flowing downwards through the family tree (we will return to this idea of ‘one-directional’ transmission in Chapter 9). Vertical transmission is juxtaposed with horizontal transmission: the sharing of values between cohorts or peer groups of a similar age, for example, while at school. This includes the influence of role models like celebrities or professional sportspeople. Miles-Touya and Rossi also speak about ‘opaque’ transmission, that is, significant events or experiences that influence a person’s values

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The uncertain business of raising citizens

or practices. These could be interpersonal (for example, an accident, crisis or unexpected windfall) or socio-economic or political (for example, a recession, the outcome of an election or referendum, or the prominence of a social movement like the #metoo campaign). Much research has been dedicated to understanding the articulation between education and civic engagement, and, in particular, to defining how the level of engagement relates to social class/ socio-economic status (for example, Egerton, 2002; Budd, 2016; Muddiman, 2018; Evans et al, 2020). Educational experiences can be classified as a type of horizontal transmission as cohorts of the same age undergo the same processes together as a group: the education that you receive at school is likely to be different to that of your parents’ or grandparents’ generations. The wider circumstances within which schools, colleges and universities operate will also be temporally (and geographically) specific, and certain major events, for example, the election of a new government, a war or an economic crisis – all examples of opaque events – will also have a bearing on how children are educated. Importantly, primary socialisation within the family home may inform children’s school experiences and shape their onward educational trajectories. This vertical element – consisting of dispositions and practices passed from parents to children – has not been so thoroughly explored.

The family home and civic values The family home has received less attention as a potential site for civic engagement and activism compared to more institutional spaces. This is perhaps because family practices cannot easily be classified in terms of their private benefit or public good. For example, does parents’ involvement of their children in political processes (for example, taking them to the polling station or on demonstrations) signal a civic virtue, or is it bound up with a self-interested desire for their children to develop certain skills and experiences that will benefit them in later life (much like encouraging their participation in a particular sport, learning a musical instrument or joining an acting club)? Moreover, are parents hoping to pass on their political orientation to their children, or the value of participation itself? Families make sacrifices for one another but generosity within the family (rather than beyond it) may be viewed as self-interested. Likewise, a family member who devotes much of their spare time to a voluntary or political cause outside of the family home may be viewed, in their absence, as selfish or uncaring. We posit that self-interest and altruism are not dichotomous, and that

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the values, motivations and practices of individuals are likely to be multifaceted and tangled up in a range of social processes around identity, belongingness and cultural norms. Recognising the multiple and complex ways in which ‘family’ is practised, and the shifting networks of individuals that constitute family ties, our research is concerned with investigating how family practices and interactions might foster civic engagement, both within and beyond the family network. We draw on Ekman and Amnå’s typology, viewing value formation and orientation as a foundation for a range of different practices (which are facilitated or restricted by various factors such as skill set, experience, confidence and perceived agency). In other words, values (and the significance that they have to an individual) may, or may not, lead to certain sets of practices (or avoidances), which, in themselves, form part of an individual’s self-expression or identity work. For example, investment in party-political processes may lead a person to canvas for a particular candidate. A rejection of mainstream politics, on the other hand, may lead an individual to engage with activism and other informal forms of political engagement. When considering the intergenerational transmission of values and practices linked to civil society, there are a number of factors to consider.

Intended versus actual transmission Another factor to consider is the potential gap between what a parent or grandparent would like to share with younger generations, and how this maps on to their own practices, as well as on to the experiences of children and grandchildren. The gap between intended and actual transmission appears to be particularly wide in relation to religion (an issue we look at in more depth in Chapter 5). For example, a grandmother who is a devout Christian and feels it important to pass on this belief to her grandchildren can ensure that the whole family attends church together. While we can agree that she has shared the practice of attending worship services, her grandchildren’s participation may be time-bounded. When her children or grandchildren develop a greater sense of autonomy, they may choose to stop going to church. It is also possible that they are motivated to attend church services in order to please their grandmother, rather than because it is an expression of their own faith or belief. This means that a survey question about whether a teenager attends church, and which family members they attend with, may suggest a shared orientation to religion but may also indicate some degree of familial encouragement or coercion, and so cannot be straightforwardly labelled as ‘transmission’.

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From a different perspective, a parent or grandparent may express that they wish to pass on a particular ideal or perspective to their children but struggle to identify a practice or topic of conversation that might act as a mechanism for sharing this value. Especially when it comes to values and practices allied with civic engagement, the participants in our study sometimes found it difficult to make tangible the general sense of ‘being kind and doing good things for other people’ that they wanted to convey. Further, a grandparent wanting to imbue their grandchild with values of self-determination and confidence, for example, may act in a way that leads their grandchild to determine that this grandparent does not think much of them; the intended transmission of self-belief may misfire or be misinterpreted according to the frame of reference that the grandchild is operating with. Some research indicates that mothers and fathers may be differently predisposed to pass on certain values or practices. Quintelier et al (2014) and Fox et al (2019), for example, find that perspectives on Europe were more strongly influenced by interaction with mothers than fathers. This could be due to gendered (rather than specifically parental) characteristics, such as men or women being more interested in politics. It could also reflect differences in mother–child and father–child relationships (Korupp et al, 2002; Flouri and Buchanan, 2004; Jaspers et al, 2008; Jennings et al, 2009; Quintelier et al, 2014; Quintelier, 2015). For example, Jennings and Langton (1969) found that children are more likely to be influenced by the values of the parent to whom they feel closest. Traditionally, mothers and fathers have occupied different household roles, with mothers more likely to be central to family politics and having closer emotional ties to their children, arguably resulting in a greater likelihood of transmission (Zuckerman et al, 2007; Coffé and Voorpostel, 2010). Interestingly, Dinas’ (2013) research shows how the children of politically motivated parents tend to absorb their politically engaged characteristics but that this could lead them to develop their own divergent political perspectives as they continue to learn and apply a critical lens to current affairs.

What gets passed down? Political science research on social learning indicates that the likelihood of a particular characteristic being transmitted from parent to child is influenced by two factors: the strength and consistency of cue-giving; and the nature of the trait. This suggests that those values or dispositions that parents feel strongly or passionately about are more likely to be

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shared successfully with children because there will be more consistent and clear cue-giving (Jennings and Niemi, 1968; Tedin, 1974; Dinas, 2013; Meeusen, 2014; Quintelier et al, 2014). There is also typically greater parent–child similarity in traits that are particularly value-laden or affectively oriented (such as ideological or moral beliefs), compared to those that are more utilitarian in nature (Hess and Torney, 1965; Jennings et al, 2009; Rico and Jennings, 2012; Dinas, 2013). For example, the greatest congruence among the parents and children studied by Jennings et al (2009) was for partisan political beliefs, which tend to hinge on citizens’ moral and ideological values. Indeed, the successful transmission of other attitudes or beliefs depended on how strong a moral or affective component they had. This research suggests that moral or affective beliefs tend to be stable, unchanging and frequently expressed, meaning that parents will provide their children with numerous consistent cues (Jennings et al, 2009). The belief that voting is a civic duty, for example, reflects deeply held and relatively unchanging values about civic responsibility. Someone who holds this view is likely to both express this through familial conversations and to demonstrate it through their practices, reinforcing the idea that voting is a civic responsibility. However, we find that levels of intergenerational transmission between parents and their children vary enormously depending on the civic activity, topic or issue. Table  4.1 presents a summary of just some of the variations between parents and their children that we find from our survey data. While increasing secularisation is often seen as an important trend in the UK, we find that levels of intergenerational transmission of religious ‘belonging’ are actually quite high. For example, 78.1 per cent of children who had Christian parents also said that they were Christian. Table 4.1 also shows that the transmission of social or civic action between parents and children is relatively high: 41.9 per cent of active parents have active children. Conversely, political engagement, often deemed to be a relatively stable feature across the generations, has a lower level of commonality between parents and children. We also see very divergent levels of agreement on a range of contemporary issues. Views about same-sex couples adopting children appeared to be widely shared but views about immigrants from war zones are very different between parents and their children. Intergenerational transmission of civic engagement might also be disrupted by shifting appetite and capacity for involvement across the lifecourse. Other studies (see Taylor, 2020) have shown that engagement initially peaks towards the end of adolescence, falls

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The uncertain business of raising citizens Table 4.1: Levels of transmission between parents and their children on a range of topics, issues or activities relating to civil society Percentage of parents whose children share the same views or levels of involvement 78.1

Topic, issue or activity Christianity Islam

75.0

Non-religious

70.6

Left-wing politics

39.5

Right-wing politics

21.1

Proactive political engagement

26.5

Frequently involved in any form of social/civic action

41.9

Strongly agree that same sex couples be allowed to adopt children

65.0

Completely unacceptable to use animals for medical research

57.1

Strongly agree that the new ‘opt-out’ system for organ donation in Wales is a good idea

23.1

Strongly agree that Wales should welcome more refugees fleeing from war zones

13.3

dramatically as young adults enter the labour market and begin their careers, rises again as they begin to have children and form new nuclear families, and then rises significantly around retirement age. Therefore, when we compare levels of civic engagement across generations, we have to be mindful of these wider lifecourse fluctuations. Alongside this, we also need to be aware of a general decline in civic engagement over time, which suggests that younger generations are likely to be less engaged than their parents and grandparents were at the same age. The result of these structural two processes is a mixed picture of civic engagement across the three generations in our families. Figure 4.1 illustrates this with levels of political engagement for the children, parents and young people. However, we do see new forms of political engagement among young people that we might not have expected given the levels of political engagement of their parents and young people. In particular, Figure 4.1 shows a greater propensity for political ‘campaigning’ among young people, including attending public demonstrations and political rallies.

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Civil Society and the Family Figure 4.1: Forms of political engagement Young people

% 60

Parents

Grandparents

50 49

40

40

30 20

25 20

10 0

28

14 6

6

Worn or Signed displayed a petition a campaign (including badge, sticker online) or wristband

5

5

1

10

13

16

3

Contacted Taken part Boycotted a politician in a certain or the public products media demonstration

4

2

10

Attended a political meeting or rally

Teaching younger generations to be different Parents and grandparents might also want their children or grandchildren to be different or to have different experiences than they themselves have had. This was most evident in mothers’ and grandmothers’ aspirations for their children to progress educationally: ‘I didn’t go to university, so I’m pleased my daughter’s in uni and I hope the second one will go as well.’ (Julia, mother, Family I) ‘You should be able to educate, and you should be able to open it [up] that they can become better than you. Everybody should be getting stronger and stronger every time. So, me, I’m doing what I can but I’ve instilled in the children, “If you can do better, do better. Don’t settle, always move forwards”, and if I could, I would.’ (Frankie, mother, Family S) It is therefore difficult to judge whether a child expresses a particular viewpoint because of their parents, in spite of their parents or not in reference to their parents at all. We need to understand the significance of parental influence in individuals’ accounts of their own perspectives and orientations, and, particularly for younger children, how this relates

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to the role of the parent as a disciplinarian and their constructions of the ‘good’ son or daughter. Given the unequal power dynamics in the parent–child relationship, it might not always be possible to ascertain whether a child expresses a particular value or behaviour of their own ‘free will’ or whether they are driven by parental (or teacher) expectations, by a fear of non-compliance with tacit expectations or by the desire to make others proud of, or pleased with, them. In addition, an activity that might be viewed as ‘civic’ through an adult lens might not hold the same significance for a child, who may enjoy aspects of their participation without framing it as a social or political good. Does this matter? Is the behavioural implementation of habit (with the hope of deeper identification further down the line) an important avenue for intergenerational sharing? Perhaps in instances such as these, it is pertinent to explore how family members reflect on these childhood experiences and how they locate them in relation to the subsequent development of particular values and perspectives. The visible influence of parents on an individual’s own parenting could be in the form of: a straightforward template, adopting the same values and practices; a (partial) adaptation or rebooting of parental practices in a way that an individual feels better fits with contemporary times; or a rejection of their own parents’ approach to child-rearing, in which they consciously decide not to adopt some or all of the values and practices displayed by their mother and/or father. Should this final orientation to parenting still be considered in terms of intergenerational transmission? It is certainly influenced by intergenerational experiences and relationships, but should this be considered to be more intergenerationally significant than more tacit or unreflected-upon adoptions of parental values and habits?

Personal growth and shifting perspectives over time We must also be alive to the dynamic and responsive nature of value formation and change over time: how might we interpret a family dynamic in which a parent has dramatically changed their political ideology either during their children’s childhood or later on once they have left the family home? Should we conceptualise ‘transmission’ as time-bounded and limited to an offspring’s childhood? How can we accommodate significant life events, for example, a death or serious illness, a promotion, a political shock, or a natural disaster, when examining patterns of shared values and behaviours? In addition to significant life events, or wider societal or political events, gradual social changes play out less dramatically and more incrementally. For

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example, shifting attitudes following legislative changes (such as the legal recognition of gay marriage or the outcomes of landmark reports on transgender issues or climate change) may lag behind policy and legislative implementation, particularly among older generations who are assimilating new perspectives into world views that have developed over the course of a whole lifetime. For example, Julia (mother, Family I) describes her father Ray as having “some very old-fashioned views”, particularly in relation to issues like same-sex marriage, and says that “I’ve probably got similar views but … in a more modern setting or context”, adding that she sometimes reminds him that “it’s the 21st century dad”. Julia felt that she probably shared “similar views on a lot of things” with friends and colleagues, rather than with her father.

Dynamic family relationships In addition to the propensity for individuals to change their minds or reorient their perspectives over time, and for them to be influenced by particular life events, external influences and social and cultural norms, it is also undoubtedly the case that the relationships between family members themselves will change over time. Given the shifting care responsibilities and levels of autonomy embedded in child–parent relationships, familial relationships are particularly dynamic when compared to peer-to-peer relationships. If children initially adopt the views, beliefs and practices of their parents, at what point might they start to question these views and beliefs, or supplant them with others, perhaps as a result of secondary socialisation beyond the family home? We will further explore issues around normativity, heterogeneity and autonomy in Chapter 7 on family arguments. Many of the participants in our study describe a wilderness period in which they are somewhat estranged from the ideas and routines of their parents, where they test out different identities and activities, and experiment with who they are beyond being the child of their parents, before reaching a middle ground in which they critically engage with the ideals of their parents and adapt them to suit their own circumstances and subjectivities. Daisy described being a rebellious teenager and recalls that her parents “totally washed their hands” of her. She explained that it was not until she was in her mid-20s that she began to be able to see things from their point of view. Miranda described a similar period of rebellion, and noted how her own teenage children were “transitioning and working out what they think, what they believe”. Daniel said that there were “about a zillion things”

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that he disagreed with his parents about when he was growing up, and that the numerous disagreements with his parents helped Daniel to empathise with his own daughter, Natalie: “I remember feeling like, ‘What on earth am I doing looking at this family of people who just don’t understand me?’” More recently, Daniel has come to feel very close to his mother and reflects that, now that he has realised that they’re not so different after all, “if I had a problem now, my mum would be one of the first people I’d pick up the phone to”: ‘Since I’ve got older … actually almost any issue, if I talk to my mum about it, we might appear to come from different positions but, actually, when we dig into what we mean, we’re not far off from each other.’ (Daniel, Family O) ‘As I’ve gotten older, well, people grow up and their relationships are different, and you’re no longer playing and knocking for your cousins and going out. Things change then, don’t they? You start to work, so you build a different network of support, don’t you? It’s very much family as you’re young, and neighbours and friends, but then as you start work, your network changes and becomes different, doesn’t it? Your relationships are more independent.’ (Bridget, mother, Family F) It may only be when an individual becomes a parent themselves that they start bringing in their own childhood experiences and the values of their own parents as a reference point in their decisions about how they are going to be a parent themselves. Does this mean that particular values and practices have lain dormant, only to be activated by the event of parenthood, or that these values and practices have been consciously considered and questioned prior to parenthood, and deliberate decisions made about how to employ them prior to the point of need? Relatedly, many of the grandparents in our study were keen to emphasise that they would never force their own views on younger family members. Instead, they tended to talk about leading by example or indirect influence through general conversations: ‘Speaking personally, I feel really uncomfortable about, sort of, direct, um, pushing children one way or another … where the child really doesn’t have a chance to say “Well, I’m not sure about this” … so, actually, I think about my

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own parents, I think they were quite good in that way, they didn’t push anything down my throat, and I’ve been the same.’ (Annie, grandmother, Family P) ‘We’re not dogmatic about things, but perhaps by example. I don’t know. Yeah, if you chat, things come out in conversation.’ (Ian, grandfather, Family E)

Family ties across space and time The expanding and diversifying shape and characteristics of ‘family’ in contemporary Western cultures, coupled with new patterns of geographical mobility, further adds to the complexity of understanding familial and intergenerational influences. Divorces, single parenthood, assisted conception, re-partnering and reconstituted families are part of many narratives of family and kin. The internationalisation of some families contrasts sharply with the bounded mobility of other families, where multiple generations live within close proximity to one another, perhaps under the same roof. Penny, for example, describes seeing members of her extended family almost every day: ‘When we were young … my auntie lived, say, at number four and my granny lived in number six and then we just lived round on the corner … our cousins were like our siblings because we’d sleep in that house or we’d sleep [here], and we went back and forth all day, and if my granny was making food, we’d have tea there, or we’d go and have tea in my auntie’s, and so it was like one job lot of families together.’ (Penny, grandmother, Family H) Conversely, one of Veronica’s sons lives abroad with his wife and two children, so she does not get to see them ‘terribly often’ but keeps in touch via Skype and email. Interestingly, Veronica feels that even though she sees less of her grandchildren living overseas, the time that she does spend with them is “quality time”: “Actually, we probably have had more quality time while they’ve been in Asia than we did when they were up the road. They might pop down for a meal but they were always busy, they were always busy … you wouldn’t have had what I call ‘quality’ conversations” (Veronica, grandmother, Family M). This has implications for the intergenerational sharing of various traits, yet it is difficult to capture levels of relational and geographical complexity in family networks in a survey format, where

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The uncertain business of raising citizens

a standard ‘set’ of relatives based on the current configuration of family relationships is often employed.

Family melting pots Another issue not often addressed in existing studies is that ‘the family’ does not constitute a homogeneous bloc of shared values, practices and identities. Parents will often not see eye-to-eye on many issues and may provide their children with contrasting and even conflicting advice or guidance on various social or political issues, perhaps as a result of their own different upbringings and personal histories. We note that families do not necessarily share the same political views, religious faith or orientation to volunteering or politics. One of the important contributions we feel that this book makes is to undermine the myth of the socially or culturally uniform family. Our family inheritance maps highlight both similarities and differences within families (both horizontally among siblings and vertically between generations), as well as between families brought together by marriage or partnership. For example, John and his wife held different political perspectives. In Figure 4.2, we can see John’s family tree map, with John depicted in a square box with his initial ‘J’. As in all of the family trees included in this volume, female family members are represented by circles and male family members by squares (denoted in the text by capitalised initials in round and square brackets, respectively). Members of the family who participated in the research are outlined in red; here, this includes John’s [J] mother Rita (R) and John’s older son Stuart Figure 4.2: John’s family tree map highlighting political party allegiances

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Civil Society and the Family

[S]. Here, we have highlighted left-leaning political support (for the Labour Party) in red and right-leaning support (for the Conservative Party) in blue. John’s square has been shaded blue to indicate his support of the Conservative Party, shared with his parents Kelvin [K] and Rita, also shaded in blue, and his younger son Jack [J], with a blue line of transmission. John tentatively suggested that his wife and her parents are “more Labour” but despite demonstrating a keen interest and detailed understanding of political issues during his interview, John said that his family did not often discuss politics: “I’m Conservative … my wife’s more Labour. And, I assume, her parents are more Labour, I reckon … the boys, I’m not sure. I think, I don’t think [my oldest] really cares too much. [My youngest,] I’m not sure if he’s more Labour or I don’t know.” This lack of discussion was also indicated in John’s response to a question about how he and other family members had voted in the EU referendum the previous year: “I think they voted Brexit, my parents, I’m not sure…. As for my wife, I don’t know. Obviously, we talked about it, but whether she voted or not, I don’t know which way” (John, father, Family J). John’s suggestion that his older son Stuart was more aligned to the political values of his wife’s family is indicated in Figure 4.2 by a dotted red line around Stuart on the family tree. The lack of shared political orientations in John’s family had implications for how John and his wife discuss politics around their children: “We wouldn’t force them to think you must think this way or this is my argument, that’s their argument.” John said that he and his wife encouraged their sons to make up their own minds. Figure 4.3 shows Julia’s family tree map, with research participants Julia (J), her father Ray [R] and her daughter Bella (B) all outlined in red. Julia described her own affiliation to the right-leaning Conservative Party, and when prompted to consider which family members share this affiliation, she identified her sister-in-law Yvonne (Y) and her children (indicated with blue shading and downward lines of transmission), adding that her parents had not been particularly politically engaged, but could broadly be considered as having right-leaning views (shown here with dotted blue lines). Julia described her husband Vernon’s [V] parents as being “strong Labour supporters” (shaded in red) but explained that she had influenced her husband’s views to a degree, in that he was now a ‘floating voter’ (hence the blue dotted lines around Vernon). She also thought that her children were most likely to share her conservative values, compared to those of their paternal grandparents, aunts and uncles: “My husband kind of moves across the parties a bit more…. I know

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The uncertain business of raising citizens Figure 4.3: Julia’s family tree map highlighting political party allegiances

my daughters are probably going to follow me … they’re kind of thinking people who vote labour are probably not working” (Julia, mother, Family I). Our data make clear that even at the single generational level, siblings do not always share political, religious or pro-social orientations. For instance, Nicole (N) (mother, Family N [see Figure 4.4]) came from a working-class background in which her father Victor [V] was a tradesman. Nicole strongly identified as a Labour supporter (indicated with red shading) and explained that one of her brothers, Owain [O], had stood as a Labour councillor in his home town. However, Nicole’s other siblings had different political outlooks. Nicole described one of her brothers, Paul [P], as a “strategic voter” and a “flake”, and said that her sister Sarah (S) was not at all interested in politics and “shuts herself off from it”. Therefore, while Nicole and one of her brothers, Owain, were politically active and shared the same left-leaning values, her other siblings, Paul and Sarah, did not share their level of interest or engagement. Interestingly, Nicole also described how her father Victor, who had been a strong Labour supporter and shop floor representative during his working life, had switched to voting Conservative in recent years due to his dissatisfaction with his local Labour candidate and their position on issues that he felt strongly about (Victor is the only person in Nicole’s family tree map shaded in blue to indicate his Conservative voting preferences). Both Nicole and Victor referred to this political divergence in their interviews, explaining that it made for some lively debates around the family dinner table.

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Civil Society and the Family Figure 4.4: Nicole’s family tree map highlighting political party allegiances

These examples raise important questions about whether or not siblings have responded differently to the same parental stimuli, whether they have responded to different cues from their mother and father, or whether one sibling is more or less susceptible to their parents’ own beliefs and attitudes than the others. Conversely, do diverse viewpoints among siblings suggest that the views and preferences of parents have not figured greatly in their offspring’s personal development, or have been complemented, undermined or rewritten by subsequent adult experiences in education, employment or with peers? Our qualitative data also indicate that while many romantic partnerships are anchored in certain shared beliefs and values, this does not necessarily mean that the families on each side of this union have similar political, religious or civic views. Therefore, in addition to vertical distinctions (the fact that different generations bring with them different sets of experiences, social norms and values, often resulting in different orientations to certain issues), the expansion of a person’s family network prompted by new partnerships and marriages can lead to horizontal differences, for example, between an individual’s own parents and their parents-in-law. This is borne out in our qualitative data, where partners with different religious backgrounds and beliefs negotiate how to bring up their children (and stepchildren), and the ramifications of this for family cohesiveness and a sense of continuity and sameness. Significant familial differences, for example, a brother or uncle converting to a different religion, can lead to family estrangement and a sense of

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trauma within families. It is not necessarily the case, then, that a research participant can confidently give a cohesive and consistent account of their family’s ‘shared values’. For example, Frankie’s first partner came from a Roman Catholic background; therefore, with the help of her mother-in-law, Frankie learnt about Catholicism and took her two daughters to church regularly. This continued after Frankie’s relationship broke down. Later on, Frankie met Mo, who comes from a Muslim background but was not actively practising. Frankie was encouraged by members of Mo’s family to raise her two sons according to Islamic principles but decided that “it was very important to me that they were all brought up as Catholic” and for all of her children to share “the same faith”. This negotiation between Frankie, Mo and his family demonstrates the complexity invoked by bringing together individuals from different faith backgrounds. Figure  4.5 depicts the family map constructed with Ruth (R) (mother, Family B). Ruth is outlined in red, along with her mother Colleen (C) and her oldest son Zachary [Z]. Ruth and her mother Colleen both had strong allegiances to Labour, as did Ruth’s siblings and grandparents; this is clearly visible in the red lines connecting the three generations. Ruth talked about how her family background had influenced her politics, explaining “we’re all Labour and socialists in our views”, linking this to her father’s identity as a dock worker. She described talking openly with her parents as part of practising and reinforcing shared identity: ‘My dad was like a dock worker, and so, and we lived on a council estate, and so we’re all Labour … and socialists in our views … the dock workers, they weren’t the same as the coal workers, but it’s not far off, there were some strikes and different things, and so I suppose I got, I grew up thinking that Maggie Thatcher was terrible and so … that’s been engrained in me really [chuckling]…. If I’m with my mum and dad and we’re on our own … my dad will say “Have you seen what’s happening?” And we’ll have a whole da-de-da talk about it, where I can talk quite freely because we’ve all got the same opinion.’ (Ruth, mother, Family B) Ruth went on to explain that while she felt able to speak openly with her parents and her husband, she tried to avoid political discussions in the house that she shares with her in-laws because they hold lots of views that she struggles with. The blue shading in the top right

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Civil Society and the Family Figure 4.5: Ruth’s family tree map highlighting political party allegiances

of Ruth’s family tree map shows the right-wing allegiances of her parents-in-law Susan (S) and Larry [L], emanating from Larry’s parents and shared by his six siblings. Ruth said that she was unsure about the rest of her husband’s family since they did not really discuss politics, with the exception of her husband’s sister’s partner Andy [A], who was more on her “wavelength”. Ruth also felt that her husband Mark [M] leaned towards her way of thinking (depicted as dotted red lines) and that her older children had a nascent leftist political awareness. For Ruth, maintaining a harmonious home life entailed avoiding certain topics and holding her tongue when her husband’s parents were talking politics. She also avoided political talk outside the family home, so while she would campaign for social issues that she felt strongly about, she would not campaign about political issues. This may be because Ruth makes such a strong link between political ideology and personal identity – something unchangeable and linked to who a person is.

Majority and minority perspectives Another element to consider is the extent to which familial values align with wider cultural or societal values. For example, someone growing up in the South Wales valleys, where there has historically been strong support for Labour and trade unions, might absorb their parents’ left-leaning values relatively ‘naturally’ as personal familial experience melds with wider experiences at school or in the community. However, growing up in the same community but in a right-leaning family might lead an individual to examine both their parents’ and their own political values more explicitly as they encounter a disparity between their household experiences and the values expressed by friends, teachers and other community members.

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Indeed, our survey data suggest that while participants are, in general, left-leaning, and that rates of shared intergenerational Labour support are high, levels of political activism and engagement are lower in these families when compared to the minority of right-leaning participants, for whom patterns of intergenerational sharing are more likely to be coupled with higher levels of political engagement or even activism. This may be less to do with the characteristics of left or right values, and more to do with the positioning of majority and minority political standpoints in any given community or region. We can see this in Table 4.1, which shows, for example, higher levels of left-wing political affiliations between parents and their children (39.5 per cent) than right-wing political affiliations (21.1 per cent). We will further explore the dynamics of majority and minority perspectives in relation to the shifting social norms around spirituality and religious faith in Chapter 5. We might also want to distinguish between social norms and family norms. For example, in the following exchange, David is asked whether his mum’s level of civic engagement when he was growing up was considered unusual: Interviewer:

‘I wonder, when your mum was younger, it would be quite unusual to get involved with things like the PTA [parent–teacher association] as a woman?’ David: ‘I don’t know. It might have been, I’m not sure. She was a Secretary of the Parish Church Council, going back years. I remember when she got her first typewriter so she could type up the minutes of the Parish Church Council and all that. I suppose I’ve always known them to be doing other stuff.’ Interviewer: ‘So it’s quite normal for you?’ David: ‘Yeah.’ This suggests that what was ‘normal’ in David’s family does not necessarily map on to wider social norms, and that children, in particular, may not be aware of this wider context in their interpretation of what is normal. We will touch upon the idea of family norms again when discussing environmental activism in Chapter 8.

Within or beyond the family home We have argued elsewhere that the family is not only a gateway for civic participation; it can also be a site of engagement in of itself

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(Power et al, 2018). Our data provide various examples of how family conversations and practices act as a springboard for engagement in civil society, but what might constitute civic engagement within the family home? It might be that practices of household consumption (recycling, reusing, saving water) constitute civically minded activities, prompted by a sense of responsibility towards humankind and the environment. It could also be the case that family discussions about social or political issues help to shape and develop future engagement/ involvement. This temporal element lends itself to the idea of ‘sowing the seeds’ of onward participation – of course, as children are not able to take part in many of the activities that we associate with civic virtues (for example, voting or voluntary work in most organisations), it is perhaps sensible to anticipate that the influence of parents’ civic activities and values may not be immediately visible. This connects to ideas about the links between latent and manifest civic engagement (Ekman and Amnå, 2012), and the premise of ‘familial latency’ that we introduced in Chapter 1. In this sense, the family home might be conceptualised as a sandbox for the development of, and experimentation with, various practices aligned to civil society, such as debating complex issues, developing empathy and considering the needs of others, and sharing out chores and responsibilities. Here, one axis of difference might be between families in which difference and debate are celebrated, and those in which consensus and harmony are prioritised. So-called ‘harmonious’ families may provide individuals with a strong sense of belonging but may not equip them with the skills of debate that align with Foley and Edwards’ (1998) pillar of representation. Learning to recognise and respond to someone with a different viewpoint and to engage in a conversation that lays out the various advantages and drawbacks of each position is likely to be harder for an individual who comes from a family with a singularly ideological approach to politics, religion or social issues. We will return to these ideas in Chapter 7 when considering the civic relevance of family arguments, drawing on Julia Flammang’s (2009) ideas about the development of civility in the family home. Our qualitative data suggest that for some, sharing the perspectives of a trusted relative can act as shorthand or an alternative to engagement. For example, being close to your mother and trusting her judgement when it comes to political issues may mean that you feel it less necessary to keep abreast of political developments yourself. This is visible in Abby’s (Family H) account of not feeling very engaged with politics, but sharing the views of her mother and grandmother because she loves them and trusts their judgement:

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Abby:

Interviewer: Abby:

‘If I was to vote for anyone, it would be the Labour Party. I have done in the past, but then again, I’m not deep into politics and I think, like, my gran, all my family vote Labour, my mother votes Labour, so that’s had, like, a big influence on who I vote for as well.’ ‘Does that help you to make your mind up, knowing that they vote that way?’ ‘Yes…. A lot of my opinions are influenced by what my gran and my mother think because I trust them, I get on with them, I love them, and so maybe their opinion matters to me, and so I’d be more likely to go with their opinion rather than someone else’s.’

This sense of political trust is illustrated well in Figure 4.6, where we can see a strong red line of connection running down from Abby’s grandmother to her mother Penny (P), down to Abby (A) and to her 14-year-old son Russ [R]. When constructing her family tree map, Abby decided not to include her ex-partner’s family since she felt that they had not been sufficiently involved in her life or in the upbringing of her two boys. This may heighten the strength of connection and shared values that she has with her mother and grandmother since they had both helped her to parent Russ and Tanner [T]. Abby’s account suggests that in some families, family members may curate each other’s political values and practices. This was evidently not only a process occurring ‘down’ the generations; often, older female Figure 4.6: Abby’s family tree map highlighting political party allegiances

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members of the family (mothers and grandmothers) would talk about asking a son or daughter who was ‘more up to date’ or had a ‘more indepth understanding’ of various social, environmental or political issues (sometimes, but not exclusively, thanks to a university-level education in this area). These instances were sometimes framed as ‘informationseeking exercises’, in which a participant could ask questions or run ideas past someone who they felt was more informed, or as ‘synergistic learning experiences’ (Jessel et al, 2004), in which all members of the conversation could learn from one another. Family conversations about politics could also take the form of a direct abdication, for example, ‘Tell me how I should vote.’ It is unclear whether such familial exchanges constitute civic engagement. For the curator or holder of political knowledge, it represents a chance to share this information and to potentially influence another person’s political activity; however, receiving the recommendation of another person might act as a substitute for someone taking the time to engage with politics more deeply themselves. We will explore this upward transmission further in Chapter  9. There is also a gendered element to the accounts of these practices in our data, with female family members often positioning themselves as unequipped (or less equipped than their male counterparts) to make decisions regarding politics – perhaps due to a lack of interest or capacity (which may be linked to the fact that many mothers and grandmothers do the lion’s share of domestic labour). We discuss female family members’ orientations to civic and political issues in Chapter 5. Our data also indicate that while for some families, political and/ or spiritual talk within the family is linked to practices that extend out into the community, for others, these conversations are distinctive because they could only happen within the privacy of the family home, and are not linked to civic practices. Our data suggest that this second orientation may be common among families with closely aligned viewpoints, where discussions about shared political or religious values might be more to do with signifying and strengthening a sense of shared family identity than action and engagement. It would seem that shared orientations to various political and social issues within a family can either intensify or dampen impulses towards civic action. Whether family discussion prompts or undermines civic engagement is likely to be modified by the prior experiences and levels of agency, confidence and trust that frame particular family members’ perspectives. These frames are undoubtedly influenced by class, ethnicity and gender in complex and intersecting ways.

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Influences beyond the family home It is important not to overstate the strength of intergenerational transmission and to consider the many various ways in which the intergenerational sharing of values and practices does not happen. As Table 4.1 demonstrated, shared traits between the generations are, in the main, actually not all that common. As we have discussed throughout this chapter, a number of factors might undermine or recalibrate shared values developed within the family home. While parental socialisation may be particularly effective in transmitting certain values or practices to children when they are young and so have fewer guiding experiences to draw on, as we grow older, through adolescence into early adulthood and beyond, there are a number of ‘secondary’ influences that will interact with those early experiences. Grandparents, then, may have a wider set of experiences (for example, education, employment, marriage/partnership, childrearing, retirement and so on) with which to weave accounts of their own identities, values and practices in relation to the other significant people in their lives. Grandparents are also likely to have experienced the greatest degree of societal change during their lifetimes, compared to their children and grandchildren. We therefore incorporated questions about the extent to which participants felt that things had changed during their lifetime, what was similar, what was different and whether they thought that their parents would have had similar views and beliefs at a similar age. We also asked about other significant influences in participants’ lives, including (but not limited to) their educational and occupational experiences, friendships with peers and colleagues, and the impact of becoming a (grand)parent. These two lines of enquiry raise some additional issues that bear consideration moving forward.

Secondary socialisation Around half of the parents and grandparents interviewed emphasised the importance of educational or workplace experiences in shaping their values and beliefs. Annie (grandmother, Family P), for example, spoke enthusiastically about her school experiences and her time at university, where she met her husband. She described being pushed to achieve and enjoying the independence of moving away from home and experiencing city life. Annie remained in contact with a group of school friends and arranged to meet with them every six months or so. She argued that these experiences and friendships had been central

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to the development of her own world views. Other grandmothers also recalled enjoying school but were not given the opportunity to progress. Colleen remembers enjoying school and being delighted to pass the exam to get into grammar school but not getting much encouragement from home because she was expected to earn money to support the family as soon as she was able to: ‘My mother didn’t encourage me at all … the first thing she said when I came home and said I’d passed, I was the only girl who passed from this school, “Oh no, I have to buy you a uniform now, what you go and do that for?” That was the attitude. My father was quietly pleased…. I went to that school but they made me leave early to get a job. My father was ill and I know they were struggling…. I wanted to stay on and I wanted to train to be a schoolteacher. They’d had a job lined up for me without telling me, just as a clerk where my brothers and sisters worked. I’ve never forgotten that. I always say “Do what you want to do.”’ (Colleen, grandmother, Family B) Colleen had returned to education as an adult during her 50s. Her account makes visible both the personal sacrifices made in order to keep the family afloat, and the lower value ascribed to education, especially for girls in working-class areas, who were expected to go out and get a job or find a husband as quickly as possible. Conversely, Victor gave a florid account of his time as an apprentice in which he endured various humiliating initiation processes in order to be accepted into the all-male group. Victor seemed to look back fondly on this period of time and described it as “character building” and as something that had gone on to have a significant bearing on who he became as an adult. He recognised that some of the pranks that he experienced and then played on other junior boys would not be considered appropriate in today’s workplace. Colleen’s and Victor’s accounts both conjure up gendered experiences that seem out of kilter with the shift towards egalitarian ideals in contemporary mainstream society. Interestingly, Victor’s daughter Nicole described being brought up as “blinkered” and having “a bit of a reality check” in early adulthood as she began working in the public sector and became aware of the deprivation on her doorstep. This experience had led Nicole to make the decision that her children would not be ‘sheltered’ from social issues. She also suggested that younger generations were able

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to become more worldly or aware of issues beyond their immediate locality, through work and education, as well as through travel, the proliferation of easily accessible information via the Internet and the creation of 24-hour news cycles. These examples draw our attention to the fact that the oldest generations in our study will have experienced a range of cultural and social changes during their lifetimes that might be difficult for younger generations to comprehend.

Societal change and shifting norms The sharing of values among family members, especially across the generations, is undoubtedly mediated by wider social changes over time. Certain ideas or practices would not have been known, or available, to previous generations, and ability to engage with certain civic practices is dependent not only on the availability of information or resources, but also on dominant social norms. It was common for parents and grandparents in our study to contrast their own upbringing with that of subsequent generations. Comparisons were made along three main areas: freedoms, discipline and discussion. First, many participants reminisced about roaming around unfettered by parental control. In these simpler times, children were allowed to stay out, explore and play together in the fresh air: ‘There wasn’t much to do when we were young … we had a different life … we live in this beautiful place, so we had mountains … beaches, we’d all go out, gangs of us, and you’d … go out in the morning, come home when you’re hungry … you played hopscotch, skipping … you were out, you weren’t sitting playing with your phone or your laptop … and you had fresh air all the time.’ (Penny, grandmother, Family H) Penny went on to describe how the local area had become busier and more congested with traffic, making it more difficult for her children to play outside. Parents and grandparents also recalled a stronger sense of discipline in their own childhoods. Bridget contrasts the ‘do as I do’ approach that she experienced as a child with her own parenting practices, in which she encourages her son Cian to develop his own viewpoints and reasoning. Carol remembers her mother as “a real proper school ma’am”, and said that her daughter Natasha had been shocked to hear stories about Carol’s mother and had said “Your mother was horrible to you.” Carol responded by

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saying: “She wasn’t, she was fine, for years ago, 50 … 60 years ago.” Carol’s daughter Natasha also contrasts her childhood experiences with her own parenting: ‘I think the way I am with my girls now, is quite different to  … the way my parents were with me at 15. It was different, my parents were out a lot because they were quite, Friday afternoon and Saturday was in the pub, that was it…. Whereas for Willow … not that she doesn’t see me go out and enjoy myself … but it’s different…. I think I spend more time with my children than my parents, at their age now, than my parents did with me at this age.’ (Natasha, mother, Family A) Some grandparents were also likely to register a decline in discipline over the years. Victor (grandfather, Family N), for example, hoped to instil discipline in his grandchildren when they visited him, in lieu of the more lenient approach of their parents. Carol had attended boarding school after the Second World War and describes a very exacting routine in which you had to eat the meals provided or else you would go hungry. Similarly, Penny said that she “always feared being naughty” when she was younger, and lamented that young people have lost a sense of respect for their elders. We return to ideas about discipline in Chapter 7. Grandparents also commented on the changing nature of work in terms of the types of jobs available. Those grandmothers who had worked tended to have done so in the areas of education, childcare, secretarial or sewing in a factory. Carol (grandmother, Family A) spoke of “dreadful” sexual harassment being commonplace during her time as a secretary in the 1950s, and was pleased that her granddaughters were growing up in environments where they were treated more fairly: Carol:

Interviewer:

‘Things were starting to change a bit in sort of like 1960 but … it has always stuck with me the way that they used to treat us, really, really badly, really badly. These wandering hands used to get me, oh they used to annoy me – there used to be steam coming out of my ears, but what can you do?’ ‘Things have changed since then, but do you think that it is better now for your kids and your grandkids?’

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Carol:

‘Much better, much better and the girls are treated the same as boys. Willow has got a friend, he’s not a boyfriend, he is a friend who happens to be a boy, different attitude altogether…. I am lucky with all of them, six girls, they are all very strong, they are all quite strong, they can all stand up for themselves you know?’

Frankie (mother, Family  S) also emphasised the importance of educating her girls about how things have changed, and teaching them about their rights and responsibilities: ‘If I can instil anything, especially in my girls, having your own voice. I do a lot of history with them, do a lot of “This is what happened. We didn’t have the vote years ago.” And I purposely put documentaries and things on because I know they’re sitting here. It’s like yeah, mummy time…. I think that’s really important, to show them that things have changed but we’re still fighting.’ (Frankie, mother, Family S) It also seemed the case that members of different generations tended to have a very different idea of what gender equality means, so while aligned to the general orienting principle of equality, participants held different ideas of what categories of gender mean. We explore the shifting roles and gendered expectations of female family members in Chapter 6. Using Miles-Touya and Rossi’s (2016) triad of horizontal, vertical and opaque influences helps us to map out the complexities of the sharing of values and practices as a multidirectional and dynamic process of renegotiation and reinterpretation over time. Vertical transmission intertwines with horizontal and opaque influences, for example, formal schooling, social media and political upsets, including the election of Donald Trump in the US. As we shall see, nontransmission or rupture can put pressure on family relationships. We return to issues of social change and new developments in Chapter 9, where we consider the potential for younger generations to influence the values and practices of their parents and grandparents, drawing on constructions of gender and sexual equality, the rising popularity of social media, mounting environmental concerns, and the impact of wider social changes.

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Conclusion In summary, this chapter has outlined the complexities that can make it difficult to understand how family ties might influence engagement with civil society. Importantly, we must be aware of how values and levels of closeness might change over time, and of the different sets of shared experiences that different generations draw on. We must also consider how formal educational experiences and peer group relationships interact with primary socialisation within the family home, as well as the influence of occupational or associational identities. Values, dispositions and routines will also be disrupted by significant lifecourse events, including marriage, (grand)parenthood and retirement, in addition to bereavement, relocation, redundancy or periods of ill health. In particular, the combining of two sets of family values following marriage or partnership is far from straightforward. These negotiations, in turn, will be inflected by demographic factors such as race, class and ethnicity, and will also be coloured by the degree to which the family remains local to one area, or whether family members are located in different parts of the country or even overseas. Set against a backdrop of continuous social change and shifting cultural norms within society, these factors combine and intertwine, resulting in dizzying levels of complexity, and pose a significant challenge for researchers. Moving forward, we must keep these complexities and ambiguities in mind to ensure that we provide a nuanced analysis of the relationship between civil society and the family. However, despite the many and varied ways in which our attitudes towards and engagement with civil society can be affected, we are still struck by the sustained and continued importance of the family in shaping these relationships.

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5

Keeping the faith? Secularisation, the family and civic engagement

Introduction This chapter explores the apparently increasingly precarious connections between religion, the family and civil society. We have devoted this chapter to exploring these connections for a number of interrelated reasons: first, religious affiliation is closely associated with civic engagement; second, religious affiliation has traditionally been passed down within families; and, third, the increasing secularisation of society appears to be weakening the capacity of families to pass on their religious beliefs and practices, which is likely to have important implications for civil society. In this chapter, we draw on survey data from our youngest participants and their parents, as well as on the qualitative accounts of parents and grandparents (with reference to parents’ family tree maps), to explore how these developments are being played out within our participating families. We address four key questions in turn: • To what extent is it clear that religion acts as a conduit between families and civil society? • What is it about religious affiliation that fosters civic engagement? • How successful – or otherwise – have families been in ‘passing down’ their faith to younger generations? • What are the implications of increasing secularisation for their civic engagement? While the process of secularisation has been clearly evident across all ‘Western’ societies (Bruce, 2011; Crockett and Voas, 2006; Voas and Chaves, 2016), it appears to have been particularly marked in Wales. Traditionally, religion has been far more significant in Wales than in other parts of Britain. Indeed, over a hundred years ago, Wales experienced what is now referred to as the ‘Welsh Revival’: a dramatic Nonconformist religious movement that spread across the country in a matter of months during 1904–05 (see Williams,

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1952). Although the Revival was relatively short-lived, its influence on Welsh life was significant through the first half of the 20th century. In addition to keeping ‘the churches of Wales filled for many years to come’ (Orr, 1973), it had strong implications for civil society through putting ‘the chapel back in the van of reformist movements’ (Williams, 1952: 258). However, during the second half of the 20th century, religious affiliation declined rapidly, leading to what Chambers and Thompson (2005: 29) describe as the ‘progressive collapse of the public hegemonic status of Christianity in Welsh society’. The latest data of the Understanding Society survey (Wave 8, 2016–17) indicate that 51  per cent of Welsh over-16s do not belong to a religion, compared to 44 per cent in England, 47 per cent in Scotland and 20 per cent in Northern Ireland. These figures suggest that Wales has gone from being the most religious country in the UK to the least religious.

Religion and civil society There is widespread consensus that religion occupies an important place in what civil society is – and what it could be. Miller (2011), for example, argues that religion provides a public forum for articulating and debating competing visions about what is good, right and compassionate. Religious institutions can also indirectly stimulate civic engagement through providing an infrastructure around which people can collectively mobilise. Indeed, Carter (1999) claims that religion is essential for the rebuilding of civility, which underpins civil society, and that if public trust is to be restored, we need a religious revival (Miller, 2011). Whether or not these normative perspectives on religion are valid, there is strong empirical evidence that religious affiliation is closely associated with civic and political engagement. Numerous studies have shown, for example, that levels of religiosity are strong determinants of levels of volunteering (for example, Ruiter and De Graaf, 2006; Lim and MacGregor, 2012), charitable donations (for example, Bekkers and Wiepking, 2011), associational membership (for example, Lam, 2002) and political participation (for example, Djupe and Grant, 2001). These patterns are also clearly evident in our own data. We know that religion is closely associated with civic engagement, as defined by levels of associational membership, volunteering, charitable donations and other kinds of social activism. For example, in our survey of parents, those who were currently religious were significantly more likely to indicate that they donate money and goods, fund-raise,

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help improve their local area, give their time to a charity or cause, and support people who are not friends or relatives (see Table 5.1). Furthermore, 44 per cent of religious parents said that they strongly agreed that doing activities to help others was important to them, compared to just 29 per cent of non-religious parents. As noted in Chapter 4, the majority of parents indicating that they belong to a religion identify themselves as Christian, with fewer identifying as Muslim and only a tiny minority identifying as Sikh or other religious affiliation. Within those identifying as Christian, a wide number of denominations are represented. This makes it difficult to undertake detailed analyses but our results do suggest that there may be important differences between religious faiths and denominations. For example, 60 per cent of non-religious parents have never given time to a charity or cause, compared to 33.3 per cent of Muslims and just 13.5 per cent of Christians. If we focus on our young participants, where there is a greater representation of different faith groups, we can see some slight variation by religion. However, in general, the greatest contrast is to be found between those who say that they have ‘no’ religion and those who say that they belong to a faith. For example, there is a strong relationship between religious affiliation and social participation (see Table 5.1). With the exception of our young Muslims, young people with a religious affiliation are far more likely to be members of not only one club or association, but several. It is also possible to identify a significant minority (22.2 per cent) of young people who might be called ‘super-joiners’ – members of three or more clubs, either at or out of school – who are disproportionately affiliated to a religion. All our students with a religious affiliation have higher levels of volunteering than those who profess to have no religion (see Table 5.2). Table 5.1: Civic engagement and religion among parents ‘Occasionally’, ‘sometimes’ or ‘often’ (%) Not religious Religious

Over the last 12 months have you:

n

Donated money

84.20

91.10

106

Donated goods (for example, clothes, food)

89.50

97.50

107

Fund-raised or sponsored an event

68.40

75.30

104

Helped improve the local area

42.10

63.20

103

Campaigned for something you believe in

42.10

53.30

102

Given time to a charity or cause

55.60

80.50

103

Supported people who are not friends or relatives

73.70

87.20

106

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Civil Society and the Family Table 5.2: Religious affiliation and social participation among young people

Christian (n = 409) Muslim (n = 174) Other religion (n = 37) No religion (n = 299)

Number of different types of non-school-based organisations involved in over last 12 monthsa One Two or more None (%) organisation (%) organisations (%) 24.2 46.7 29.1 40.8 39.1 20.1 18.9 45.9 35.1 32.1 51.8 16.1

Note: a This category includes: youth organisations; environmental or conservation organisations; organisations for animal welfare; humanitarian aid/human rights organisations; cultural/musical dancing/theatre organisations; sports clubs/gyms or outdoor activities clubs; religious groups or church organisations; and political organisations/UK Youth Parliament.

In relation to formal volunteering, 64 per cent of Christians have volunteered in the last 12 months, 63.9 per cent of those of ‘other religion’ and 61.4 per cent of Muslims – all far higher proportions than for those of ‘no religion’, of whom only 49.2  per cent have volunteered. There is also a strongly significant relationship between giving and having any religious affiliation: 95.7 per cent of Muslims, 92.3  per cent of Christians and 88.9  per cent of those of ‘other religion’ donated money or items, compared to 81 per cent of those of ‘no religion’. The relationship between religion and political engagement among our young people is less clear. Christian young people were slightly more likely to report some form of political engagement than non‑religious young people, though this was lower among Muslim and other religious young people (see Table 5.3). Table 5.3: Religious affiliation and political engagement among young people

Christian (n = 409) Muslim (n = 174) Other religion (n = 37) No religion (n = 299)

Moderate No Proactive Any political political political political engagement engagement engagement engagement (%)a (%) (%)b (%)c 61.6 26.2 12.2 38.4 68.4 19.5 12.1 31.6 73.0 18.9  8.1 27.0 66.6 20.4 13.0 33.4

Notes: a Our category of moderate political engagement includes: wearing or displaying a campaign badge or sticker; signing petitions (online or offline); and boycotting products. b Our category of proactive political engagement consists of the following: taking part in public demonstrations; attending public meetings or rallies; and contacting politicians or the media. c This category combines both ‘moderate’ and ‘proactive’ engagement activities.

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After controlling for gender (girls were more likely to report being politically engaged), any differences by religion appeared to disappear. However, it is important to note that the survey data indicate that nonreligious parents were far more likely to be politically engaged than religious parents, particularly in terms of proactive engagement. We can see this in terms of different attitudes about social justice among religious and non-religious parents: Christian parents were less likely to agree with the statement that there is one law for the rich and one for the poor (44 per cent of Christian parents, compared to 77 per cent of non-religious parents). Christian parents were also less likely to agree that politicians do not care what people like them think (45 per cent of Christian parents, compared to 69 per cent of non-religious parents). We also know that proactive political engagement appears to be strongly transmitted between generations: 64 per cent of young people who are politically engaged have parents who are also politically engaged; similarly, 46 per cent of inactive young people had inactive parents. These figures contrast markedly from the just 26 per cent of inactive young people who had politically engaged parents and the 29 per cent of proactive young people who had inactive parents. These results – indicating a strong transmission of political engagement – imply a less central role for religion in enhancing political engagement. We can therefore infer that the sharing of religion between generations is likely to be tied to the sharing of most forms of civic engagement but is less important when it comes to the sharing of political engagement: if religious parents are unlikely to be politically engaged, then neither will be their religious children. This might explain why the association between religion and political engagement is not as strong as it is for other features of civil society. However, the relationship between young people’s civic engagement (for example, donating money/goods, fund-raising and volunteering) and religion is striking. Table  5.4 shows that only 29  per cent of non‑religious young people are frequently involved in some form of civic engagement. This is much higher for Christian young people (39 per cent), Muslim young people (48 per cent) and other religious young people (54  per cent), including Sikh, Hindu and Jewish young people. Overall, religious young people are nearly 50 per cent more likely to have been involved in some form of civic engagement than nonreligious young people (42.4 per cent and 29.4 per cent, respectively). This is the opposite to what we find for the young people’s parents based on their current religion: only 26 per cent of religious parents have been involved in some form of civic or social action in the last

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Civil Society and the Family Table 5.4: Religious affiliation and civic engagement among young people

Christian (n = 409) Muslim (n = 174) Other religion (n = 37) No religion (n = 299)

No, occasionally or sometimes (%) 60.9 52.3 45.9 70.6

Often (%) 39.1 47.7 54.1 29.4

Note: Civic engagement defined as: donated money; donated goods; fund-raised for or sponsored an event; helped improve the local area; campaigned for something believed in; given time to help a charity or cause; and supported other people who are not friends or relatives.

12 months, compared to 46 per cent of non-religious parents. This difference is almost entirely removed if we compare parents based on whether they were brought up as religious during their childhood. This suggests that there could be an important interrelationship between childhood, religion and particular forms of civic engagement, such as volunteering. Interestingly, Furneaux’s (2019) research in Australia indicates that childhood religious attendance seems to be an important factor in giving behaviour in later life, even among those who no longer attend a place of worship, suggesting an important role for family socialisation. We return to the issues around believing and belonging later in this chapter. The close association between religion and civic engagement is not only evident in quantitative analysis of the survey data; it is also clearly visible in the inheritance maps. For example, Figure 5.1 shows Nicole’s family tree map (Family N). As outlined in Chapter 3, square boxes indicate male family members and circles indicate females. Research participants are highlighted with a red outline – in this case, Nicole (N), her father Victor [V] and her son Aled [A]. Yellow markings symbolise religious faith – in this case, Roman Catholicism – and purple markings indicate which family members are involved with volunteering. We can see that there is a large degree of overlap between these two traits. Conversely, Abby (A) (see Figure 5.2) had found her faith outside of the family and there was less crossover between faith and volunteering. While her grandmother had shared religious sensibilities with Abby’s mother Penny (P) (shown in yellow), Abby had found her own way to faith (and a different denomination to that of her mother and grandmother) via connections outside of her family (indicated with copper-coloured lines). Again, purple indicates involvement with volunteering and shows that while Abby and her mother have not shared each other’s orientation to faith, they do share the practice of volunteering.

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Secularisation, the family and civic engagement Figure 5.1: Nicole’s family tree map highlighting religious faith and volunteering

Figure 5.2: Abby’s family tree map highlighting religious faith and volunteering

As noted in Chapter  2, all but one of our religious interviewees identified with a variant of Christianity, with just one Muslim interviewee. Therefore, the qualitative data in this chapter is largely focused on the role of Christianity in parents’ and grandparents’ accounts of their civic engagement. We note that this relationship may well be different among different faith groups and, indeed, within religious communities. So, while it is clear that religious affiliation is closely connected to various forms of civic engagement, it is unclear what underpins

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this connection. What is it about having a religious affiliation that contributes to higher levels of civic engagement? In attempting to disentangle the connection, we want to highlight the distinction that is often made in debates about the state of religion in contemporary society between ‘belonging’ and ‘believing’ (Davie, 1990, 1994). These two aspects of religiosity not only provide a useful way of categorising the multifaceted nature of religion, but also provide a useful way of considering how secularisation might affect civic engagement – something to which we return later in the chapter. Belonging: the organisational aspects of religious affiliation Religious organisations are complex – and often quite bureaucratic. ‘Belonging’ to one of these organisations provides a structure of obligation that makes further kinds of civic engagement almost inevitable. David describes how church members organise themselves to get things done: ‘Yes, through the church, I do a fair bit within the church, I guess. So, we’ve got various rotas and duties that I do … in the week and at the weekend … things like, there’s a lady who needs [to be] pushed in a wheelchair, and I’m on a rota to take her up to church every six weeks, I’m on the welcome team that welcomes people to the door and things like that.’ (David, parent, Family M) Daisy describes how she got “sucked in” to teaching in the Sunday school: ‘I was doing my PGCE [Postgraduate Certificate of Education] at the time  … and then this woman in the village, again, it’s just being sucked in, and since then I’ve learnt to say “no”, but the woman in the village said “Would you come and give a hand?” and then it went on for about four years wasn’t it?… Then we started up this new club for the teenagers, so that was a Friday night, and it was just full on, but I used to do art activities with them.’ (Daisy, mother, Family G) A significant amount of these activities are for the benefit of other church members: “I used to do all the fetes and I used to be the Union of Catholic Mother’s chairman in our church, and lots of

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things we did with the church” (Carol, grandmother, Family A); and “Obviously, we do stuff in church, kids clubs and things like that and all that kind of church activities” (Daniel, father, Family O). To some extent, it might be argued that this kind of activity is more about internal maintenance than about wider civic engagement. However, some religious organisations also do a significant amount of ‘outreach’ work. For example, Ian and Beryl used to accompany young people with disabilities on trips to Lourdes: ‘We did do the HCPT – which you’re not allowed to say now – Handicapped Children’s Pilgrimage Trust to Lourdes, every Easter.… We belonged to a group where we’d take sixth-formers to Lourdes, and then these sixthformers, girls and boys, would go to other groups, and those other groups would look after the handicapped [sic] children full time in Lourdes for a week.’ (Ian and Beryl, grandparents, Family E) Churches can also be important providers of support for those living in poverty and refugees. Mother and daughter Gillian and Miranda are both heavily involved in their church’s ‘outreach’ work: ‘So, we started loads of different things, we had a ministry too for people who have less, so we started that, called Storm House ministry, where we give them furniture and that sort of thing, and various things really.’ (Gillian, grandmother, Family C) ‘So, our church now is … very involved in supporting the local community, the refugee community…. They were out on the streets yesterday at church. They would be out doing street cafe or whatever, making drinks for people, chatting to people, offering to pray for people. So, it’s kind of, we’re not a church that stays in the building all the time.… So, we have this project that provides furniture and practical stuff for people who require it.’ (Miranda, mother, Family C) Of course, this is not to suggest that those who are not affiliated to churches do not engage in this kind of support. However, it appears that the infrastructure and networks of churches facilitate engagement. As Miranda points out:

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‘I’m probably too self-involved and too lazy otherwise by nature. I probably would think it’s a great idea but might not get round to it, and I suppose that’s why church is a great kind of, when it is mobilised, it’s a great encourager of people. So, something that you perhaps may not have the courage to do on your own, actually, if you do it with others, you can spur each other on I think.’ (Miranda, mother, Family C) In addition to the bureaucratic dimension of organised religions, most religious groups have buildings that provide a focus for community activity, for example, church halls are often used by youth organisations, such as Scouts and Guides. Indeed, in some localities, the church buildings may be the only community space, which inevitably places the church itself at the heart of the community: ‘So, my best friend, Leanne, her mum spent a lot of time in the church, and she ran the church youth club. So, I went with Leanne and it was a big thing that … so, we all went there and that’s how we met … that’s the place to meet and we all went together…. It was the thing to do back then … on a Sunday, we’d go to church together. And then we started at Sunday school and then we went to the youth club and things. And church was, back then, church was, there wasn’t any shops open on a Sunday, that’s where you went.’ (Frankie, mother, Family S) Believing: the values dimension of faith While religious affiliation usually entails membership of organisations, there is also a values dimension that contributes to a spiritual, rather than a social, commitment to engaging in civil society. For some of our participants, their faith gave them an imperative to reach out and volunteer. In the following, we quote Daniel at length because he provides a clear example of how his values drive not only organisational commitments, but also personal choices about food: ‘We don’t just bring about the Kingdom of God by preaching the gospel standing in Fleet Street or whatever, but … when we try and do things that bring those about. Let me give you an example. I became, at one point, quite interested in things like Fairtrade, which is still very

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important to me…. Now, we run the tea club and have done for 11-and-a-half years on a completely ethical principle. We now buy Fairtrade tea and coffee, and buy our milk from a Welsh, we kind of went: “Welsh farmers are finding it hard to make a living, so let’s buy our milk from Welsh organic farmers, let’s buy things as locally as we can, and as sustainably as we can.” We try to make ourselves the ultimate ethical tea club in the office. I think, for me, that is absolutely motivated by my faith, it has to, it’s motivated by my belief in the Kingdom of God in the way that Jesus spoke about it. I believe that sort of thing is part of it coming about…. Before these things were fashionable, we would only eat free range eggs, and if we couldn’t find free range eggs, we wouldn’t have eggs. We would grow our own vegetables because my dad firmly believed that if you grew your vegetables, in a way, that was a way to connect with God’s creation in a sustainable way.’ (Daniel, father, Family O) What is clear from Daniel’s account is not only the way in which his religion pervades his everyday life (and we return to this in Chapter 8), but also the importance of his father in influencing his ethical framework, which brings us on to the issue of how faith gets passed on – or not – between the generations.

Passing down the faith If there is undeniable evidence that religious affiliation is closely associated with civic engagement – whether that is through belonging to religious organisations or believing in the value of reaching out to those in need or campaigning for greater equality – there is also undeniable evidence that the family is closely associated with religious affiliation. Many accounts of the relationship between religion and the family focus on the significance of religion in supporting or weakening the family (for example, Dollahite et al, 2018). For our purposes, though, we are more interested in how the family supports (or weakens) religious affiliation. It is quite clear that the family is the principal agency in religious socialisation. If we look at the survey data from our young respondents, the relationship between a young person’s religious affiliation and that of their parents is incontrovertible. Table 5.5 reveals the strength of religious (and non-religious) inheritance. Over 80 per cent of Christian

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Civil Society and the Family Table 5.5: Religious affiliation of young people relative to their parents and grandparents

Christian Muslim Other religion No religion

Yes (%) 82.3 97.7 59.5 41.0

Parents Don’t know No (%) (%)  5.4 12.3  1.2  1.2 16.2 24.3 31.7 27.3

n 411 173  37 293

Yes (%) 68.6 93.7 54.1 23.1

Grandparents Don’t now No (%) (%)  8.1 23.3  4.0  2.3 21.6 24.3 36.7 40.1

n 407 174  37 294

young people have parents who are also Christian. In line with other research (Scourfield et al, 2012), the intergenerational continuity of faith is stronger for Muslims – the overwhelming majority of whom (97.7 per cent) also have Muslim parents. The numbers of some of the minority religious affiliations in our cohort (Hindu, Sikh, Jewish and Buddhist) are too small to analyse but similar patterns are clear – with the exception of Buddhism, which appears to be an ‘opt-in’ affiliation. These intergenerational patterns of religious affiliation between parents and their children correspond with the patterns between young people and their grandparents. Fidelity across all three generations is particularly strong for Muslim families. However, it is also quite striking how many young people are not aware of the religious affiliation of their grandparents. This is particularly high for Christian and non-religious young people. This could reflect the importance of religious practice on the intergenerational transmission of religion. Our interviews with parents and grandparents also reveal the strength of religious inheritance, which can be passed down across many generations. Indeed, Daniel traces his religious roots back to his great-grandmother and the Welsh Revival: ‘So, I’m a Christian. My mum is Christian … and my dad is a Christian. My mum’s parents were certainly Christians and my Aunty Beattie definitely…. A very important figure in my dad’s family was his maternal grandmother…. Even though I was brought up in England, my dad was from the Welsh Valleys, and there is a matriarch in their family called Nan Cwm.… She was a real matriarch and she was a product of the Welsh Revival … she influenced my dad very strongly in his life…. I’ve spoken to some of his cousins, and all of them were influenced, particularly in her Christian faith, she influenced them…. I know she’s influential in

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my family because every member of my dad’s extended family I’ve ever spoken to, she was the matriarchal figure of respect and almost fear and everything. You didn’t want to upset her.’ (Daniel, father, Family O) However, while one’s religious affiliation is most often inherited from one’s parents, the increasing secularisation of society has made the transmission process increasingly uncertain. If we look at the overall religious profile of our survey respondents (see Table 5.6), we can see that there is a decline in religious affiliation between grandparents and parents, and between parents and their children. In relation to Christianity, over 69.2 per cent of our grandparents define themselves as Christian, compared to 65.3 per cent of our parents and only 42.6 per cent of our young people. Conversely, 29.9 per cent of our young people say that they have ‘no religion’, compared to 19.4 per cent of our parents and 13.5 per cent of our grandparent respondents. The only faith that appears to have ‘grown’, in relative terms, is Islam. This chimes with research indicating that the intergenerational transmission of Islam is much higher than it is for any other religion, and that there is a higher proportion of Muslims among the younger generations (Scourfield et al, 2012). Gilliat-Ray (2010) also suggests that the rapid rise of Islamic adherence in the UK is attributable to migration. It might be argued that the differences in religious affiliation between these generations are related to changes through the lifecourse, with people generally becoming more religious as they get older (Davie and Vincent, 1998). However, there is other overwhelming evidence that societies are becoming generally more secular. Grandparents in our study tended to register this sense of religious decline, For example, Carol comments on how things have changed over time: Table 5.6: Religious affiliation of grandparents, parents and children

Christian Muslim Hindu Sikh Jewish Buddhist Other No religion

Young person (n = 976) (%) 42.6 17.9  0.8  0.7  0.4  0.1  1.7 29.9

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Parent (n = 113) (%) 65.3  5.1  0.0  1.0  0.0  0.0  9.2 19.4

Grandparent (n = 59) (%) 69.2  0.0  0.0  0.0  0.0  0.0 17.3 13.5

Civil Society and the Family

‘We just felt part of the community and we wanted to do it [volunteer] and help. We had a lot of friends and all our age with children, and now they’re all grown up and hardly go to the church now, not many children now. Some of the friends do but not like it used to be.’ (Carol, grandmother, Family A) Voas (2015) points out that while religious affiliation in Great Britain has declined from one cohort to the next, going back to the beginning of the 20th century, in general, there is remarkable stability over the adult lifecourse for all generations. This suggests that it is the decline between generations that is more important than the decline over an individual’s lifetime. For example, 87 per cent of our parents who were religious as a child said that they were still religious (based on 109 parents). This suggests that there is much greater stability in being religious over the lifetime than there is between generations. We also see the importance of grandparents for the transmission of religion to young people: 84 per cent of religious young people who had religious parents also had religious grandparents; similarly, 77 per cent of non-religious young people who had non-religious parents also had non-religious grandparents. In contrast, just 23 per cent of non-religious young people said that their grandparents were religious. However, importantly, 27 per cent of religious young people who did not have religious parents said they had religious grandparents, suggesting that there may be a role for grandparents in influencing their grandchildren’s religiosity. Therefore, while much grandparental influence may simply result from the upbringing that they gave their own children, for around a quarter of religious young people, grandparents may be having a direct, unmediated effect on their grandchildren. In seeking to understand the relationship between religiosity, the family and civic engagement, we must also consider another perspective: some have argued that it is not that we are becoming less religious, but that our relationship with religion has changed. While we may be going to church less often, it is perhaps the case that other, more spiritual, dimensions of religiosity have endured. We explore this changing relationship in the next section, and then discuss its implications for civil society.

The changing nature of religiosity and civic engagement Although many of our families discuss religion and its significance for their own lives, as well as the lives of their children and grandchildren,

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there are clear differences in the extent to which religion is embedded in their daily lives and in how it provides a conduit to civil society. As already mentioned, within the secularisation debates, a potentially useful distinction between ‘believing’ and ‘belonging’ is sometimes made to provide a means of capturing some of these differences. Within discussions about the state of religion in contemporary Western society, it is often claimed that disengagement from organised religion has not meant the diminution of religious belief, but a reconfiguration. Davie (1990, 1994) argues that ‘believing’ no longer means that one has to ‘belong’. Indeed, she goes so far as to suggest that with declining church membership, ‘the sacred does not disappear – indeed in many ways it is becoming more rather than less prevalent in contemporary society’ (Davie, 1994: 43). There is some research which claims that young people are actually more religious than their parents (Ramji, 2008), though other research would seem to indicate that this is not the case (Voas and Crockett, 2005). However, it is not our intention to examine these claims – and we do not have the data to interrogate this issue in any event. Rather, our intention is to consider what the various implications are for civil society if this is the case. The move away from organised religion is clear from our interviews with parents and grandparents. Almost all of those who discussed the religious dimension of their own family upbringing made it clear that when they were young, going to church was compulsory: “When I was small, my father and my mother used to force me to go every Sunday and they used to put the fear of God into me because the Methodist preacher was really, like, ‘You will burn in hell’” (Muriel, grandmother, Family G). Several were aware that their parents did not believe, but felt that church attendance was important in order to conform to expectations: ‘I was forced to go to chapel as a child. My father, not really religious in a sense, but always went to church on a Sunday morning. I think now I’m older, it was just to please his parents and just to be upstanding in the community. Do you know?… He wasn’t that religious at all; he just used to go there.’ (Daisy, mother, Family G) ‘He [grandad] was Irish, so my gran became a Catholic when she met him, but I think it was kind of pushed on them when they were kids, so he grew up and he didn’t believe in God, but they again were all made to go to church.’ (Abby, mother, Family H)

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Perhaps not surprisingly, many of those who were ‘forced’ to go to church when they were young did not discover any belief later in life: “I’m not a religious person anymore, but it was part of life. I was born just as the war ended and everybody went to Sunday school, everybody. But I’m not religious” (Gwen, grandmother, Family D). There is, then, a clear disjuncture between religious observance and faith for these grandparents and parents. Perhaps because of the awareness of the potential problems of enforced church attendance for sustaining faith commitments, several of our ‘believing’ parents were keen to let their children make up their own minds about faith. It was not so much that parents did not want their children to inherit their faith, but rather that they were worried that coercion would be counterproductive. As Hopkins et al (2011: 319) found, young people respond to the ‘imposition’ of religion in a number of ways: some may respond with compliance; for others, it is an area of challenge and conflict. While some, such as grandparents Ian and Beryl, recall “dragging” their children to church “when they couldn’t argue”, others, especially the younger parents, spoke of the challenges of trying to raise children in the faith without enforcing it: ‘I’ve tried to encourage them to go to church but they’re teenage boys…. I don’t want to push it on them. I want them to find God because God is real and God chose to find them. I don’t want to pressure them and for them to say “I don’t believe in God and I hate God.” So, I think they can see the change in me, and so they realise “Okay then, there must be a God, maybe there is a God”, but they haven’t, like, found God for themselves.’ (Abby, mother, Family H) ‘I wouldn’t want to dictate that faith gets passed on from one to the other. We’ve always, we took our kids to church when they were younger. When they got to a certain age, they chose to go to church, if they didn’t choose to go to church, then that would be fine, but I suppose I’d always like them to think about their faith at some point in the future.’ (David, father, Family M) It is possible, then, that some aspects of secularisation (as measured through church attendance) can be explained by an unwillingness – or inability – of parents to enforce religious observance, rather than any decline in faith. In the next section, we explore how these various social practices of ‘believing’ and ‘belonging’ relate to civic engagement.

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Believing and belonging It is quite clear that religion acts as a conduit between the family and civil society when the family – grandparents, parents and their children – believe and belong. As we have already seen, Daniel’s family provides an example of the strong parental transmission of faith and the permeation of family life, belief and church membership into civil society. In Daniel’s family tree map (see Figure 5.3), this is visible in the density of the yellow lines and shading, indicating shared religious faith on both Daniel’s [D] side of the family and on his wife’s (M) side. The yellow arrows drawn down from Winifred (W), Daniel’s mother, to his children Natasha (N) and Theo [T], emphasise her important role in nurturing her grandchildren’s faith. Grandmother Gillian and her daughter Miranda also illustrate the strength of believing and belonging for civic engagement: ‘We came to Wales to be part of the church … in many ways, we didn’t want to come because we had some good friends up there and all the rest of it. So, just through a series of stuff happening, we just felt that God was wanting us really to come, so we said “Yes, we’ll come”, and so from day one, the church has always been really important because we knew we were part of the team.’ (Gillian, grandmother, Family C)

Figure 5.3: Daniel’s family tree map highlighting religious faith and volunteering

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‘I loved this church. I totally wanted to be a part of it, it’s amazing. It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen. I can see it’s just changing lives … our small group would go out and do soup runs on the street and they had a project which basically works alongside social services to provide furniture and clothing for vulnerably housed people…. I was involved in an offshoot of that, which was a toddler group for … displaced people or refugees. So, this was my first experience really of a church that put what they read, I think, biblically, into action.’ (Miranda, mother, Family C) Patterns of religious faith are less diffuse in Miranda’s family tree map (see Figure 5.4), compared to Daniel’s family. Instead, shared faith bonds are concentrated among Miranda’s household, her brother [S] and his wife (M), and their parents Gillian (G) and Vernon [V]. These connections are mirrored in Miranda’s mapping of voluntary engagement in her family – seen here in purple – suggesting that faith-based and voluntary practices are intertwined. Figure 5.4: Miranda’s family tree map highlighting religious faith and volunteering

Believing without belonging We actually have relatively few families who can be clearly identified as believing without belonging. Grandmother Carol makes a distinction between being “Christian” and “moral” and having “churchgoing beliefs” (for Carol’s daughter Natasha’s family tree map, see Figure 5.6):

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‘Gruffyd’s family were Baptist but we have never, ever gone to church…. I think the children have obviously, occasionally, but they don’t have any strong beliefs. They are very Christian, very moral children, very moral, but they are not strong Christian, well not churchgoing beliefs – there is a difference, isn’t there? Moral and Christian as a person, and actually going to church is another thing.’ Nina (Family E) also makes this distinction between belief and church attendance, though seems unsure about her children’s beliefs: “So, religious-wise, I don’t know whether they’re believers or not, but they’re not regular churchgoers.” Grandparent Penny (Family H) also make a distinction between being religious and going to church: “I think once you’re religious, it’s in you forever, but you don’t have to go to church.” The difficulty of finding ‘believers without belonging’ among our families may reflect a number of issues: it may be a sampling issue; it may be a methodological issue of trying to pin down something quite nebulous (Voas and Crockett, 2005); it may be that ‘believing without belonging’ is less prevalent than many think; or it may also be that it is, as Davie (1990: 462) herself acknowledges, a transitional phase towards secularity. Annie’s account of her move away from believing and belonging, to believing without belonging, and then to not really believing at all might support this: ‘I actually got confirmed into the Church of England when I was a teenager … but I lost that belief, oh, I don’t know, by about 17 or 18 and didn’t belong to any religion, and then in my 40s … where I grew up, there was a Friends Meeting House  … we used to have meetings  … about important things, world peace and things like that, which I very much believe in, and so I’d always had a good feeling about the Quakers. I liked the silent meeting … but I guess I’m not really a believer, so I’ve kind of dropped out of that as well. But I do support very much their values.’ (Annie, grandparent, Family P) In terms of the implications for civil society, our limited data would indicate that ‘believing without belonging’ does not act as a strong trigger for civic engagement, certainly as measured through volunteering (for Abby’s family tree map of religious faith and volunteering, see Figure 5.2).

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Belonging without believing What is particularly noteworthy from our interviews is the number of families where there is a sense of belonging without believing rather than of believing without belonging. Of course, what counts as ‘belonging’ can be highly variable. At the minimum level, belonging can simply be a kind of cultural marker. Day’s (2009) ethnographic research with young people indicates that the reason why many identify as Church of England when completing the census despite not attending church was as much about ethnicity and identity as belief. This is also likely to be the case for many of our own young respondents when completing the survey. A gap between belonging and believing is very evident in our interview data. For example, several of our parents chose to send their children to faith schools in order to give them access to particular kinds of values and activities, even when they did not ‘practise’ the faith themselves. Frankie (Family S), for example, is not religious, but wanted her children to inherit their father’s Catholic faith, even though they separated when the children were small. She sent the children to a Catholic school, where they went through most of the religious rites of passage (baptism and Holy Communion) but have not extended their religious practice beyond this. Frankie does go to church with them at Christmas because it is ‘quite symbolic’. Bridget is also an example of someone who does not ‘practise’ the faith anymore, but still has a strong sense of ‘belonging’ and has chosen to send her son to a faith school: ‘Yes, I’m Roman Catholic. I wouldn’t say, well, I’m not practising, so I don’t go to church every week…. Cian goes to a Catholic school, I just feel that it’s important to, kind of, I don’t know, with any religion, there’s a great set of values I feel. So, through the education, there’s a great set of values and I don’t think it does anybody any harm, you know?’ (Bridget, mother, Family F) Despite no longer practising her faith, Bridget’s strong sense of belonging to the Roman Catholic Church is evident in her family tree map (see Figure 5.5), where yellow shading connects her (B) to her son Cian [C], to her brother Fergal [F], to her parents and to their parents. Similarly, Natasha ‘belongs’ to a religion in the sense that she does go to church – not because she believes in God, but because she believes in the capacity of the church within the community:

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Secularisation, the family and civic engagement Figure 5.5: Bridget’s family tree map highlighting religious faith

‘I believe in the community of the church and the support that you can get from being in that community, but I don’t necessarily believe in that being of God and that.… I don’t believe in worshipping a God, or that they have these great powers, trusting God and all that, but I do really believe in the community and the support and how you, if you can get a good vicar, how they can influence you and support you and other people within that church community.’ (Natasha, mother, Family A) In Natasha’s family tree map (see Figure 5.6), the religiosity of her parents and grandparents is highlighted in yellow, and the dotted yellow lines around Natasha (N) imply her position of belonging without necessarily believing. While believing without belonging does not appear to have a strong connection with civic engagement, belonging without believing does appear to be connected. It may be that it is the organisational aspects of religion that provide an important conduit between the family and civil society rather than belief on its own.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have sought to explore the ‘trinity’ of family, religion and civil society. Our data confirm the findings of much other

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Civil Society and the Family Figure 5.6: Natasha’s family tree map highlighting religious faith

research that there is a close connection between all three. Our young people with a religious affiliation were more likely to be engaged in a range of ‘civic’ activities, including associational membership, volunteering, donating money and being politically active, than their non-religious counterparts. Our data also indicate that families remain important in handing down the ‘faith’ from one generation to the next. For Bridget, who has a strong Catholic family inheritance, there is an intimate connection between family, faith and civil society: ‘In terms of your education, your religion, it all kind of fits into why you might volunteer and why you think that the community is important because there’s something about your family base. You know, it all interlinks, without one, you wouldn’t have the other, but I suppose, like we said earlier, the core bit is the family, until you get to a kind of point where you’re developing your own beliefs and your own take on things because of other experiences, [which] might start to change your fundamental things.’ (Bridget, mother, Family F) However, even from the small number of parents and grandparents in our research, it is also clear that the transmission of religion is difficult. Grandparents and parents remember their own enforced attendance at

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church when they were children, even with parents who were ‘nonbelievers’. For some, this meant that they rejected the religion. Others, who kept or reactivated their faith when they were older, were mindful that they did not want to alienate their own children from religion by imposing their beliefs on them. In general, religious observance was encouraged rather than enforced. The declining levels of religion in contemporary society may be seen by many as contributing to an overall decline in trust and civicmindedness. However, before we assume that the secularisation of society, and the declining capacity of families to pass on their religious affiliation, will inevitably weaken civil society, it is worth probing more deeply into what it is about religious affiliation that leads to civic engagement. In order to explore the multifaceted and changing nature of people’s relationship with religion, and its implications for civil society, we have found the distinction between ‘believing’ and ‘belonging’ useful. In general, our data suggest that those of our families that evince both ‘belonging and believing’ are the most civically and politically engaged. We found a few families that could be described as ‘believing without belonging’ but they do not manifest as much civic engagement. Perhaps more significant for civil society in the context of secularisation are those families that can be characterised as ‘belonging without believing’. Although they may have ‘lost’ their faith, they still believe in the capacity of the church to either act as a community support or educate their children. To repeat the words of Bridget: “there’s a great set of values and I don’t think it does anybody any harm”. The levels of civic engagement of these families are not as high of those who both believed and belonged, but they are higher than for those who believed but did not belong. This may suggest that it is the organisational aspects of religious belonging that are more important than belief on its own. As we discussed at the beginning of this chapter, Carter (1999) has argued that we need a religious revival if we are to rebuild civil society. He looks back at a golden age when families all went to church together on a Sunday and subscribed to a common set of religious values. He may have been impressed by Wales in the first half of the 20th century. However, as the reminiscences of some of our interviewees reveals, this religiosity was as much about conforming to social norms as it was about ‘gospel’ values. Religious observance was effectively obligatory rather than freely undertaken. If one of the hallmarks of civil society is that participation is voluntary, it is ironic that one of its most important building blocks – religious participation

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– should generally have been based on coercion. Despite Carter’s conviction, it is difficult to see a return to those days. Families, even very religious families, are clearly reluctant to compel their children to attend church and certainly acknowledge that faith cannot be enforced. Nevertheless, even if parents find it difficult to transmit their faith, engagement with the organisational aspects of the church appears to be positively associated with civic and political engagement. Therefore, while religious belief may be less significant for civil society than it once was, religious institutions remain an important conduit between the family and civil society. There are also further implications of this. Survey data comparing religiosity and levels of civic engagement among ‘millennials’ with ‘baby boomers’ in the UK indicate that religious decline over time contributes to intergenerational inequalities in social capital, with the younger generation having fewer of the skills and experiences associated with religious attendance, when compared to the older generation (Fox et  al, forthcoming). However, this analysis also indicates that the relationship between religiosity and civic engagement is changing over time, suggesting that so-called ‘religious capital’ is more effective and powerful among the smaller number of religious citizens in the millennial cohort, when compared to their elders. It may be the case, then, that as the central positioning of religiosity in society diminishes, those who continue to practise their faith gain more (relative to previous generations) in terms of skills and experiences.

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6

Mothers, grandmothers and civic engagement

Introduction Drawing on the feminist debates outlined in Chapter 2, here, we use our young participants’ survey data about family relationships and the accounts of their parents and grandparents to explore the distinct character of female family roles and relationships, and how they inform and are informed by civic values. While a significant body of political science scholarship foregrounds the role of fathers in passing down particular political traits and values to their children, our research indicates that female family members are engaged in various civically minded activities, and that it is mothers and grandmothers who play a central role in sharing civic and pro-social values with younger generations. The role of women in the home has been well researched, as is their tendency to carry out the majority of childcare and eldercare. Researchers have also identified gendered patterns of civic engagement. Our focus here is on women as mothers, sisters, daughters, aunts, cousins, nieces and grandmothers. Our survey data indicate that among the 13–14 year olds in our study, girls are more likely than boys to be civically engaged. Our analysis also shows that young people’s relationships with their mothers and (predominantly female) grandparents are important in predicting whether or not they are likely to be civically active themselves. Exploring female familial roles helps us to highlight the particular ways in which feminine roles and relationships are constructed in relation to civic values, and how practices of mothering, in particular, share some of the characteristics of other civic values. This is not to say that male family members are not influential, but rather that there is something about the character of female family relationships and how they link with civic engagement that warrants closer attention. The chapter concludes by considering the ways in which family relationships are linked to civic participation, lending support to the notion that one cannot bracket private interests out when discussing the public sphere (Fraser, 1997).

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Being there: the continued legacy of female homemakers Female family members have historically spent less time in paid employment than men, and more time with their children or grandchildren. Home has historically been considered a ‘women’s place’, and women are traditionally regarded as ‘the focal point of family relationships’ (Allen and Crow, 1989: 2). Research in the 1980s indicated that women retained the primary responsibility for the ‘smooth running’ of the home, even when the male breadwinner ideology no longer applied (Allen and Crow, 1989: 7). More recent research indicates that parenthood has a particularly significant impact on mothers’ ‘time budgets’ (Craig and Mullan, 2010; Gauthier and Furstenberg, 2002; Quaranta and Dotti Sani, 2018). In their international study on the transition into parenthood, Gauthier and Furstenberg (2002) found that parenthood is associated with an extra 2.7 hours of housework per day for mothers and a smaller increase of 0.7 hours per day for fathers. We also know much about the ‘second shift’ that women do in the home despite moving more and more into full-time employment outside of the home (Hochschild, 1989). Indeed, despite legislative developments and cultural shifts towards equal partnerships, parenthood continues to affect men and women differently. Women, of course, exit the labour market during maternity, and their role and/or working patterns may shift if and when they return to work. However, when men become fathers, they are more likely to increase their hours at work and do not spend as much time on housework or with their children, compared to mothers (Anxo et al, 2011; Gibb et al, 2014). This is pertinent to our study as parents’ own ability to engage with civil society is shaped by the household division of labour (Verba et al, 1997; Burns et al, 1997; Quaranta, 2016). Parenthood seems to be far more disruptive and time intensive for mothers, when compared to fathers. We have remarked elsewhere upon the transition to parenthood and how it limits some forms of civic engagement while providing new opportunities for other types of involvement (Muddiman, 2020). Although there are indications that traditional domestic roles are shifting, the gendered nature of the home is still significant in the accounts of the family members in our study. The distinction between male and female family roles is more distinct among those interviewed as grandparents. While some of the younger grandmothers in our study spoke about having their own occupational careers, many had ‘worked around’ their husbands when their children were growing up, taking on various temporary or part-time roles that fitted in with their childcare responsibilities. A number had relocated to Wales for

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their spouse’s job, indicating that among the oldest generation that we studied, the traditional ‘male-headed’ household model (where women’s paid work is secondary to the male breadwinner role) was considered the ‘norm’. As we saw in Chapter 3, some grandmothers remembered their education being curtailed because their own parents could not afford for them to continue with their studies and did not see the value in higher-level qualifications for women destined to be homemakers. A small minority of these women returned to studying in later life, gaining degrees and other qualifications in line with their interests and making up for the missed opportunities in their youth. It might be the case, then, that women engaged in part-time, transient roles are less emotionally invested in their paid work, and more enthusiastic about volunteering or prioritising the care of their grandchildren once they became grandmothers. These gendered differences are less distinct among the parents in our study; many implicitly challenged the ‘male breadwinner’ model. Eight of the 14 mothers interviewed worked full time, with five working part time and two not currently working outside of the home. Among the four fathers interviewed, two worked full time and one part time, and one was temporarily out of work. Natasha, Bridget and Abby are all single mothers, and relied on their own mothers for support with childcare. Contact with their ex-partners was variable over time and all three shared the view that their children’s fathers could not be wholly relied upon. Nicole and Frankie had both remarried and orchestrated the involvement of their ex-partners (as their children’s fathers) in addition to their current partners (as step-fathers). For Nicole, this meant that there were two positive male role models in her children’s lives; however, Frankie was less enthusiastic about her girls spending time with their father. According to our survey, 59 per cent of young people (with a living grandparent) said that they saw their maternal grandmother the most. This compares with just 18 per cent who said that they saw their paternal grandfather the most (see Table 6.1). We can also see that slightly more young people reported seeing their paternal grandmother ‘the most’ compared to those who saw their maternal grandfather ‘the most’. This suggests that gendered roles within the extended family can be just as important as maternal/paternal bloodlines. Therefore, in general, despite the more even spread of employment among the parents in our study, it was clear that mothers (and grandmothers) generally felt more involved in the day-to-day business of parenting and socialising their children than their male counterparts. However, unlike Ginsborg (2008), rather than straightforwardly

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Civil Society and the Family Table 6.1: Being there for grandchildren: which grandparent(s) young people said they saw the most often n 509 258 286 153  47

Maternal grandmother Maternal grandfather Paternal grandmother Paternal grandfather A non-biological grandparent

% 59.0 29.9 33.2 17.7  5.5

Note: Some young people reported more than one grandparent, so these percentages do not add up to 100 per cent.

arguing that these parental responsibilities limit mothers’ opportunities to engage with civil society, in this chapter, we argue that female family relations play an important role in fostering attention to civic issues and nurturing civic practices.

Practising care within and beyond the family home Our interviews with mothers and grandmothers suggest that patterns of family closeness often follow matrilineal lines, being more available in both a literal and emotional sense. This was true both for single mothers and those with a partner or spouse. For example, Abby is a single parent to her two teenage sons and has a particularly strong bond with her mother and grandmother. In fact, Abby’s mother Penny looked after her boys for a period of time when Abby was unwell, and Penny considers herself a ‘second parent’. Figure 6.1 illustrates this matrilineal bond, with the cerise markings linking Abby (A) to her mother Penny (P) and her grandmother indicating who Abby feels closest to within her family. Similarly, in Bonnie’s family, the women have always stuck together and Bonnie spends a significant amount of time with her daughter, providing reciprocal care and support: Bonnie:

Interviewer: Bonnie:

‘Trevor and the boys always … went to work with their dad. Polly was always with me, and I was always with mum, so it was always the three of us. And now, we notice it’s us two with her children.’ ‘So, it’s the women of the family –’ ‘Yeah, stick together.’

It was common for families to spend more time with maternal grandparents, and maternal grandmothers tended to be more involved

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Mothers, grandmothers and civic engagement Figure 6.1: Abby’s family tree map highlighting family closeness

with caring for their grandchildren. Charlotte’s mother, for example, comes to stay during the school holidays to help with caring for Charlotte’s two daughters. As Charlotte reflects: “We see my parents a lot more, and my mum especially.” Later on in the interview, when asked whether she thinks that her daughters’ grandparents have had an influence on them, Charlotte replies: “I think so yes, particularly my parents, I would say, and certainly my mum.” Grandmothers are more likely to leave or limit their paid employment in order to look after grandchildren. Indeed, Rita (John’s mother) had offered to retire to look after her grandsons and was particularly involved in their lives. Penny looked after ‘the little ones’ as much as she could, and Zina’s grandmother Muriel is popular among Zina’s friends. Victor described his wife’s commitment to their grandchildren with both fondness and frustration, comparing the high level of involvement that she has instigated with their grandchildren with the more distanced approach of his own mother: ‘Like my mother, I think when I first got married, I think she babysat three times with my kids. My responsibility, “They’re yours, they’re not mine” [she said], which I took on-board fully I suppose. Yeah, that’s fair enough. “We step in in emergencies”, things like that, but […] I mean to go out, no, about three times [a week] I think.’ (Victor, grandfather, Family N) The availability of grandmothers and the emotional closeness shared between mothers and grandmothers came through in our participants’

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perceptions of similarity and shared values. For example, Gwen said that her daughter Ffion is similar to her “in what she does with her children, and her morals and her beliefs”, and that the same things that have “rubbed off” on her daughter have rubbed off on her grandchildren too. More generally, female participants tended to feel that they had a particularly significant role in family life. Julia described herself as “the biggest influence in our family”, in part, because her husband was unwell and so she took on the majority of family responsibilities: “I’m probably influencing nearly everything because that’s the way it has to be, certainly for the time being.” She adds: “Girls probably always turn to their mum anyway for problems and things, don’t they?” Mothers and grandmothers were also more likely than their male counterparts to describe shared interests with other female family members. These interests included a love of: cooking or baking (Rita, Moira, Bridget, Carol, Natasha, Colleen, Frankie and Bonnie); sewing, knitting and crochet (Charlotte and Carol); and music, theatre and performing arts (Charlotte, Ruth, Daisy and Zina). Daisy and her daughter Zina opted to be interviewed together, and both described a very close relationship, especially compared to Daisy’s son (Zina’s brother) Leo, who is “a bit of a dude” and more likely to do “his own thing”. Maternal care lines also extended up the family tree, with mothers taking responsibility for caring for older family members. For example, Nina checks in on her grandmother regularly and brings her daughters with her, emphasising to them that time spent with older family members is especially precious. Frankie and her mother share responsibility for looking after Frankie’s grandmother: ‘If anything needs doing with my nan, so a hospital appointment will come in, I’ll go up there, say I go up on a Monday, and I go, “Oh, there’s a hospital appointment.” I’d ring my mum, say, “Right, there’s a hospital appointment. I’ve rung them, this is the date. I can take her or you can”, and we’ll sort it out between us … so when my mum’s away, I take over my mum’s role, and I take nan shopping, I do her cleaning, do her washing, organise any appointments.’ (Frankie, mother, Family S) In Frankie’s family tree (see Figure 6.2), family closeness, illustrated in cerise, again follows a matrilineal line, with female family members acting as conduits. In addition to the sense of responsibility implicit in many of our female participants’ accounts, the preceding quote from

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Mothers, grandmothers and civic engagement Figure 6.2: Frankie’s family tree map highlighting family closeness

Frankie hints at the organisational skills and practices that women employ to sustain care networks within the family – this is something that we will return to presently. There were also many stories of women stepping in to take on caring roles when needed, for example, sisters helping out widowed mothers and aunts taking nieces and nephews to school. Caring, within the family, then, is often framed as a feminine role, undertaken by mothers, grandmothers, aunts, cousins and daughters. The relationships between young people and their parents and grandparents are obviously very complex. However, there are a number of patterns that emerge from our survey data, particularly relating to the gender of the young people, their parents and their grandparents. First, Tables 6.2 to 6.4 clearly demonstrate that, on the whole, young people are more likely to say that they have something in common with, admire and learn a lot from their mothers, compared to their fathers or grandparents. Second, we see that young females are more likely to say that they have something in common with, admire and learn a lot from their mothers, compared to their fathers. Third, we also see that young females are more likely than young males to say that they have something in common with, admire and learn a lot from their grandparents. Indeed, young females are more likely to say that they admire their maternal grandmothers than their fathers (see Table 6.3).

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Civil Society and the Family Table 6.2: Young people who have something in common with parents and grandparents

Mother (n = 902) Father (n = 811) Maternal grandmother (n = 497) Maternal grandfather (n = 252) Paternal grandmother (n = 277) Paternal grandfather (n = 47)

All young people (%) 76.1 77.2 60.7 62.2 60.7 69.1

Young females (%) 79.8 72.1 64.4 66.4 64.7 69.4

Young males (%) 73.2 81.1 57.8 59.0 57.7 69.0

Table 6.3: Young people who admire parents and grandparents

Mother (n = 902) Father (n = 811) Maternal grandmother (n = 497) Maternal grandfather (n = 252) Paternal grandmother (n = 277) Paternal grandfather (n = 47)

All young people (%) 91.0 87.3 89.9 88.8 87.7 90.7

Young females (%) 93.1 85.8 91.4 90.7 90.8 94.1

Young males (%) 89.4 88.4 88.8 87.3 85.4 88.9

Table 6.4: Young people who learn a lot from parents and grandparents

Mother (n = 902) Father (n = 811) Maternal grandmother (n = 497) Maternal grandfather (n = 252) Paternal grandmother (n = 277) Paternal grandfather (n = 47)

All young people (%) 92.9 87.8 84.3 86.1 80.7 86.7

Young females (%) 94.1 85.7 87.9 84.6 90.0 71.4

Young males (%) 92.0 89.4 83.4 84.8 77.7 85.0

However, more detailed analysis of these relationships suggests that there may also be some important interdependencies between gender and generations. For example, young males are more likely than young females to report having closer relationships with their fathers. Yet, young females are more likely than young males to report having closer relationships with their grandfathers and paternal grandparents. Interestingly, while more young females say that they learn a lot from their grandmothers (maternal more than paternal), they are slightly more likely to say that they have something in common with their grandfathers (paternal more than maternal). This indicates the

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complexities of family relationships, for example, it could be that the more young people learn from their grandparents, the more likely they are to realise that they do not have much in common with them. We see a very similar relationship between grandparents and their grandchildren from the grandparents’ perspectives (see Table  6.5). Although grandparents are slightly more likely to say that they have something in common with their grandsons than their granddaughters, they are far more likely to say that they admire and learn a lot from their granddaughters. However, even from this perspective, these are complex relationships: grandmothers are more likely to say that they have something in common with their granddaughters than their grandsons, yet grandfathers are twice as likely to say that they learn a lot from their granddaughters as they do from their grandsons. Table 6.5: Grandparents’ relationships with their grandsons and granddaughters

In common with Admire Learn a lot from

Grandson (%) 66.7 84.0 66.7

Granddaughter (%) 65.2 96.0 82.6

Family communality and porous boundaries For some women in our study, caring responsibilities extended beyond the immediate family. For example, Moira was very involved with supporting her son’s ex-wife’s daughter Ciara, who had recently given birth to a little boy at the age of 17. Moira described how she had maintained a strong bond with Ciara even though they had only a very tenuous indirect family link. Ciara had come to stay once a week at Moira and Bridget’s house regularly since her own childhood, and when Ciara’s boy was born, Moira offered to look after him overnight too. Moira framed her involvement in terms of the closeness that she felt towards Ciara, though also as ‘stepping in’ because Ciara’s mother was not very supportive. This example demonstrates that practices of care are not limited to the ‘nuclear’ family, and that even when relatives cease to be ‘related’ due to separations or excommunications, some (often female) family members maintain a sense of closeness and continue to care for one another. We will see this again later on in the chapter when exploring how Frankie’s ex-mother-in-law helps Frankie to nurture her daughters’ religious faith by taking them to church. This sense of family inclusivity also extended to friends and neighbours for some of those we interviewed. Natasha remembers

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that her parents’ house “was always full” when she was growing up: “We’ve always had visitors, always people getting up on a Saturday morning and having people on the living room floor, sleeping, people round, mum and dad were very sociable. So, yeah, definitely got that, we’re all like that” (Natasha, Family A). Penny described how her mother “took us everywhere” and would invite “half the kids in the street” to join them for picnics and walks on the beach. This resonates with Penny’s own account of befriending people she meets through work and checking in on those who are lonely or do not have family members nearby to support them. Gillian recalls trying to introduce her children to “lots of different sorts of people” and to invite them into the family home: ‘We were a middle-class home in many ways and so tried to get below that a little bit, so they had that, yes. I mean, my son said to us the other day, he said, “What I really loved about our growing up was that we always had people round, the house was always filled with people” and he said, “I really remember that.”’ (Gillian, Family C) While Gillian’s account of trying to “get below” is somewhat clumsy and potentially problematic, her son had gone on to become heavily involved in the church and various faith-based social movements. Indeed, while Putnam (2001) famously characterised modern family homes in the West as ‘closed’ or ‘private’ entities, many of the women in our study spoke enthusiastically about having an ‘open-door’ policy and inviting non-family members into their homes: ‘There’s always food in my house, everybody knows just come, there’s always something there. So, it’s very much like that, we’re family oriented…. Melody, yesterday, had all her friends over, and they all know come here and it’s absolutely fine, it’s a safe place, and that’s what a home should be. It should be safe and friendly and welcoming. It doesn’t matter who you are, my house is open to anyone if you treat my family with respect.’ (Frankie, mother, Family S) Again, gender seems to be important here: it is women who are likely to decide their open-door policy because the family home is their domain (oftentimes, they are also the ones spending more time in the home and are more likely to be preparing the food for family and non-family alike). There is some evidence that a sense of communality

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and the desire to welcome people into the family home may be linked to civic engagement. Indeed, many of our participants who were involved with voluntary or informal care work could remember having an ‘open-door policy’ when they were growing up. However, there may be limits to this sense of communality, and these data raise interesting questions about who is welcomed, how often and under what circumstances (on the role of affect, identification and empathy in philanthropic behaviour, see, for example, Weipking, 2019).

Caring at work, in the community and at home Maternal accounts of care also transcend the normative binary between public and private: many of the interviewed mothers and grandmothers were (or, at some point in the past, had been) engaged in paid work that entailed a caring element. This was particularly evident among those grandmothers who had undertaken paid work, with many having engaged in a variant of caring roles, for example, nursing (Winnie), working in residential children’s homes (Moira) and providing social care for children or the elderly (Annie, Rita and Maria). In this sense, their paid work shared some of the characteristics of their roles within the family home. Grandmothers’ formal or informal voluntary roles also tended to have a caring element, for example: organising Sunday schools or playgroups (Veronica and Rita); religious counselling (Gillian); looking after neighbours (Moira); or befriending the elderly (Penny). This congruence between roles within and beyond the family home was less apparent for these women’s husbands. Some of the mothers and grandmothers in our study described the greater preponderance of women to be civically engaged as a matter of priorities and mindset. Bridget, for example, argued that women are intrinsically more likely to get involved with nurturing causes, compared to men, who follow their own personal interests: ‘It’s women that are doing more volunteering despite being a mum, despite working. So, I think that there’s something more intrinsic in women to do that stuff than men. There’s got to be, it can’t just be me as an individual, you know, the data’s there really that’s saying, well, women tend to be the ‘doers’. Whether or not it’s the opportunities that are coming up because the stuff that men will volunteer for is like the football, you know, getting a football team together, so it’s something that intrinsically motivates them to volunteer.’ (Bridget, mother, Family F)

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In Bridget’s family tree map (see Figure 6.3), cerise indicates those family members that Bridget (B) said she feels closest to, and the deeper indigo colour shows who in the family is or has been engaged with volunteering, flowing from Bridget’s grandmother (A), to her mother Moira (M), to Bridget and down to her son Cian [C]. Bridget’s perspective implies that women take on caring roles more readily than men, and that voluntary or community work might even be seen as a natural extension of a mother’s caregiving role. Indeed, motherly accounts of care within the family often bore strong resemblance to accounts of care beyond the family home, and some voluntary activities were framed as family activities: ‘Yeah, whenever I get emails from the food bank to say that they’re doing collections at Tesco, Sainsbury, Waitrose, we’ve gone…. I’ve done it four or five times now, and I meet up with another mum and her son. The kids just hand out the leaflets … they hand out the list of the things that are needed, which can be UHT milk, sometimes people don’t have fridges and cookers and microwaves and things like that … sometimes you have to write the sell by date on everything, they’ll sometimes be doing that as well … you know, it’s sad that we have food banks obviously…. I Figure 6.3: Bridget’s family tree map highlighting family closeness and volunteering

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know, but I just felt like it was something I wanted us to do as a family.’ (Eve, mother, Family K) Figure 6.4 shows Eve’s family tree map; again, the cerise indicates who Eve (E) feels closest to – her mother (S), sisters (A) and (K), and husband [J] – and the deeper indigo colour identifies family members who are or have been engaged with volunteering – her parents (including her father Roger’s [R] partner Maria (M)), her sister (A) and her children Theo [T] and Rose (R). Eve explained that her husband would also like to be involved with the food bank but that his shift patterns made this difficult. It is not necessarily the case, then, that male family members are intrinsically less civically interested or inclined to get involved; rather, they may lack the resources (either the time, the skills or the social networks) that aid participation. Figure 6.4: Eve’s family tree map highlighting family closeness and volunteering

Women mobilising within and beyond the family home In Chapter  3, we explored the relationship between values and practices, arguing that for a value to develop into a practice, both skills (developed through personal experiences or learning from others) and certain resources (materials, time and social networks) are needed. Our analysis suggests that female family members are better equipped to participate in certain forms of civic engagement, due to the significant crossover between caring and organisational roles within the home and beyond it in civil society. Put another way, through the maternal feminine caring role, mothers (and grandmothers) develop

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the networks and skills that are necessary for translating particular civic values into practices. While family responsibilities are often seen to restrict women’s engagement in civil society, we suggest that women’s role in caring for family members, instigating family events and mobilising the family to get together can also cross over into forms of civic engagement beyond the family home. This is seen most clearly in the provision and sharing of food. Indeed, as will be explored in Chapter 8, the provision of food to others beyond the family home can be seen as an extension of the feminine caring role. It was common for the women in our study to describe making cups of tea or doing the flower arrangements at their local church, as well as minding children in the crèche. These domestic skills are being put to work for wider civic or community benefit. They also enable mothers and grandmothers to demonstrate and reaffirm their maternal or feminine identity. In contrast, the types of civic engagement most frequently linked to the fathers and grandfathers in our study were much more likely to be grounded in particular interests or forms of expertise, for example: John’s involvement in his sons’ chess and swimming clubs; Victor employing his skills as a retired electrician to check the wiring at his local church and building on his love of reading to volunteer at a library; and Ian singing in his local community choir. These activities also tended to be more defined, with specific meeting times and places that were agreed in advance. This is quite different to some of the more ‘on demand’ caring duties that mothers and grandmothers were engaged with.

Revalorising and politicising care The accounts of women in our study suggest that, especially for grandparents, the feminine caring role is linked to the traditional division of labour. It may be the case that if the balance of household and childcare responsibilities between parents begins to more accurately reflect women’s participation in paid employment, then the characteristics and practices associated with motherhood may begin to be ascribed to fathers too. There was some evidence of change in relation to the allocation of parenting and household responsibilities between parents, most notably in the case of David and his wife Iona, who both chose to reduce their work to part-time hours so that they could share parenting responsibilities equally. This links to civil society in two important ways. First, David and his wife appear to be ‘role modelling’ gender equality in the family home and providing

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an environment in which their children might develop a holistic view of maternal and paternal roles. Second, in spreading the time commitments of parenthood and maintaining the household equally, the dramatic reduction of available time often associated with mothers is lessened, potentially leaving David’s wife with more time to pursue personal interests and social and civic activities.

Passing it on: social awareness moral dispositions In the previous section, we explored how motherhood is linked to certain forms of caring that extend beyond the family home. We now turn to the idea of temporal extension: exploring the influence that mothers (and grandmothers) have on the civic or moral values developed by their children (and grandchildren). The close maternal relationships described at the beginning of this chapter also suggest that mothers (and grandmothers) play a particularly important role in providing their offspring with ‘the basis for developing their social awareness’, and therefore nurturing citizenship (Eto, 2012: 114). Indeed, if we are to fully understand the role of the family in civil society, we need to think about the ways in which parents (and, it seems, particularly mothers) provide an environment in which their children develop certain moral dispositions that lend themselves to civic engagement. Therefore, while many existing critiques of the gendered division of domestic labour suggest that time spent in the family home takes women away from, or limits their engagement with, civil society, we argue that mothering is particularly significant in sowing the seeds of future civic engagement. This assertion is based on the premise that the closer you feel to a person, the more likely you are to join in with, emulate or internalise their practices. Of course, these close bonds do not have to emanate from the family, but they often do (for a discussion of these issues, see Widmer and Jallinoja, 2008). In turn, shared practices also reaffirm family connections, and give them a sense of significance. This chapter explores how these everyday experiences may coalesce into, among other things, ‘political associations, specific social movements and citizens interest groups’ (Eto, 2012: 114). Like US sociologist Flammang (2009), we argue that the mundane or everyday nature of domestic practices can conceal their civic and political potency. We return to the issue of feeding the family in Chapter 8. The importance of female familial closeness is borne out in our survey data. Not only are the teenage girls in our study more likely

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than the boys to be civically engaged, as well as to identify a dual benefit both to themselves and to others, but those young people who reported having close relationships with their mother and (predominantly female) grandparents were also significantly more likely to be involved in activities to help other people or the environment. In fact, having a close relationship with your mother (as measured in the survey) is the strongest predictor of civic participation: the more positive the mother–child relationship, the more likely it is that the young person is civically engaged (an improvement of one standard deviation in the mother–child relationship, as reported by the child, was associated with a 39 per cent increase in the likelihood of the child being engaged in a civic activity [see Muddiman et al, 2019b]). When focusing in on civic activities that were felt by the participant to benefit both themselves and other people (or the environment), we also found an association between young people’s engagement and their relationship with their closest grandparent: an improvement in this relationship of one standard deviation was associated with a 23 per cent increase in the likelihood of them being engaged with civic activities, after controlling for gender and their relationship with their mother. Indeed, there seems to be a cumulative benefit of having good (self-reported) relationships with your mother’s (predominantly female) grandparent: having a positive relationship with both family members seems to double the likelihood of young people being civically engaged and recognising a benefit both to themselves and to others (Muddiman et al, 2019b). The accounts of mothers and grandmothers help us to further understand the significance of female family relationships. For example, Ruth was asked how important she thought it was for her four children to absorb the value of helping other people: ‘Yeah, it is important, very important I’d say. Yeah, because that just makes them better citizens and a better part of the community…. I probably nag them too much but, yeah, I do expect them to be, to give their time up and go and do these things. Which maybe is a bit hard because they should have a bit of downtime as well … yeah, we do expect them to support people and help them when they can.’ (Ruth, mother, Family B) For Ruth, nurturing her children’s sense of civic duty is something that she does in partnership with her husband – they share the same values and want to imbue their children with the same sense of care and concern for people around them – but it is Ruth who has spent

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the most time with the children thus far as the primary caregiver during the early preschool years. Male participants also spoke about the significance of matrilineal bonds in fostering moral dispositions. For example, David described how his wife Iona was involved in voluntary activities before they met, and suggested that this came from her mother, who “worked in a special school” and “did a lot of voluntary stuff … so, yeah, she probably developed a value system … from her mum”. David went on to explain that he got involved with volunteering at Park Run via Iona and her involvement with a local running club. Mothers and grandmothers placed particular emphasis on spending time together as a means of sharing values: ‘We spend time together, lots of time together. We go walking the dog … we’ll go down the beach … marching behind one another, from the littlest to the biggest, we all go … and they all come, they’ll all call in the house at different times in the week.’ (Penny, grandmother, Family H) Similarly, Annie talks about leading by example rather than explicitly “lecturing or teaching” younger generations; therefore, while she has not “pushed anything”, she is reassured that her grandchildren have “absorbed” similar views to her. Bonnie said that she and her daughter Polly did “everything together” and “so she obviously picked up” on what Bonnie did; now, the grandchildren “are doing exactly the same”. These accounts galvanise the idea that time spent together within the family is important for the sharing of dispositions and values.

Stories of strong women Both male and female participants in our study drew on stories about strong women from their family history – to a much greater extent than they spoke about significant male figures. It is worth thinking about how and why these stories come into accounts of the family, and how they contribute to participants’ narration of family values. For example, as we saw in Chapter 4, Daniel described ‘Nan Cwm’, his father’s maternal grandmother, as a formidable woman who has an enduring influence on his family. Daniel explained that refraining from drinking alcohol had run in his family since Nan Cwm’s time as the Welsh Revival grew alongside the temperance movement; indeed, he and his mother Winnie are still teetotal. Similarly, even though he had never met her, Victor knew his maternal grandmother

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to be “a strong woman” and “a very active Labour Party activist”, who went on to influence his own mother’s political views. Muriel remembers her grandmother as “an original Victorian lady” with traditional religious values: “You couldn’t cut your nails on a Sunday; you couldn’t do anything.” Even from her bed, Muriel’s grandmother would bang on the floor with her stick if she heard an unfamiliar male voice downstairs. It was common for these female elders to be described as feisty and for their traditional or rigid values to be contrasted with a greater emphasis on tolerance and understanding among their descendants. These stories of strong women helped participants to construct stories of family life, of shared values and of change and continuity over time. They were a reference point or example against which other family members were positioned. In Muriel’s case, she contrasted the strictness of her grandmother with her own gentler grandparenting style. Victor and Daniel, on the other hand, both spoke with pride about their respective grandmothers’ strength of character, which was reflected in their stated desires to share the values of honesty, conviction and faith with their own children or grandchildren. We should note that our participants’ recollections of these matriarchs are grounded in a sociohistorical context where women had much less power in public life, perhaps making their powerful roles in the home even more remarkable or memorable. It might also be the case that women frustrated by a lack of influence in the public sphere were more likely to focus on their ability to determine the nature of family life. As we shall see in the next section, strong women in the family were also important in our participants’ accounts of political socialisation.

Female family bonds and shared civic virtues Women in our study also spoke about developing and nurturing particularly close bonds with other female family members, including sisters, cousins, aunts and female ‘in-laws’. This sense of closeness or ‘sisterhood’ also extends across to ‘non-blood’ relatives, that is, sisters, mothers and grandmothers ‘in-law’. For example, Nina described her sister-in-law Cheryl as one of her “best friends” and says that she has a “really nice bond” with her husband’s maternal grandmother Peggy, who phones “when she knows my husband isn’t going to be here” so that she can talk to Nina instead. Nina says that she shares lots of “common values” with Peggy, and confides that she would find losing Peggy, her husband’s grandmother, more difficult than she

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did the death of her own grandmother. Rita speaks to John’s wife, her daughter-in-law, most days, commenting: “It’s a bit scary because now she says things and it sounds like me.” Of course, that is not to say that all female family members are close – some women in our study were particularly close to an aunt or sister but had difficult or fractious relationships with other female relations. Others felt that they had not been able to forge strong bonds with certain family members because of large age gaps or geographical distances, for instance, Carol was raised abroad while her father was in the military and never met her paternal grandmother or any other relatives from her father’s side of the family.

Mothers and political socialisation It was relatively common for the women in our study to report being influenced by the political leanings of their own mothers. Abby, for example, said “I’m not deep into politics … sometimes it just goes over her head” but went on to describe how her mum and gran were a big influence on her decision to vote labour: ‘A lot of my opinions are influenced by what my gran and my mother think because I trust them, I get on with them, I love them, and so maybe their opinion matters to me, and so I’d be more likely to go with their opinion rather than someone else’s.’ (Abby, mother, Family H) Colleen remembers being impressed with her own mother secretly voting Labour in spite of her father being the Chairman of the Conservative Club: ‘He was strong Conservative although we were working class. My mother used to say “Don’t tell your father I’m voting Labour!” As young as I was, I was pleased that she had a mind of her own. In those days, they didn’t really, they did what their husbands told them. I must have inherited a bit of that social consciousness from my mother.’ (Colleen, grandmother, Family B) Moira described her mother as “strong Labour” and remembers her using the front room of the family home as a meeting place, leading meetings and counting votes at the polling station on election day. When asked how politically active her parents were, Moira said: “My

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mother more so than my father because he was always at work.” In quite a literal sense, then, Moira’s childhood home was a political space – resonating with bell hooks’ (1990) construction of the home as a community of resistance. While hooks was writing in relation to black women’s campaigns for race equality, there is some resonance here with female participants’ accounts of the home as a space of moral socialisation, used to nurture political selves attuned to the needs and struggles of those beyond kin. The commonly held distinction between the public (political) and private (domestic, apolitical) can also be undermined on the grounds that voting behaviour is influenced by domestic family considerations. Natasha can remember her mother Carol voting for Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s because “she was going to let people buy their council houses”, enabling Carol and Gryff to become homeowners. Frankie describes how her voting decisions are led by domestic or familial considerations, for example, which party is offering the best deal for childcare or university tuition fees: ‘We look what’s going to affect us and our family at that time … my voting years ago would have been completely different to what it is now … a few years ago, when we needed childcare, my outlook was  … “What’s going to be more beneficial for my childcare?” And now, it’s like, “What’s going to be more beneficial for us and universities and things?” So, at different times in your life, it changes.’ (Frankie, mother, Family S) Frankie also draws on ideas of home and family when discussing her decision to vote ‘remain’ in the EU referendum despite her own mother’s concerns about immigration levels: ‘If a place is unsafe, you’re going to get your family out because if it’s unsafe here, I’m getting my family out. So … who gave anybody the right to say “You can live here. You can’t”? Because if we go back … big bang theory, however the world was created, not one of us own this world, not one of us. And none of us have a right to say that we do. So, how are we saying who can come in and come out?’ (Frankie, mother, Family S) A minority of the women interviewed did discuss deferring to their husbands or partners during political conversations in the

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home. Charlotte, for example, explained that her husband is “more knowledgeable” on these issues and that she had a tendency to “stay out of it” because politics “doesn’t really interest” her and can make her feel “really depressed and upset”. Similarly, while Eve always exercises her right to vote, she says that she does not have political discussions within the family home due to her “lack of knowledge”. Interestingly, Winnie, the oldest grandparent in our study, said that she was only influenced politically by her father, and that her mother “never said anything about it” because in those days, “they left things to the men”. This has not stopped Winnie from taking a keen interest in political events herself, though, and talking with her grandchildren about politics.

Encouraging political participation The majority of mothers were enthusiastic about engaging their children in political discussions, and fathers did not talk about political socialisation as being solely their responsibility. Both Abby and Penny spoke separately about encouraging Abby’s older son Tanner to register and vote in the most recent round of elections: ‘I’m always on my soapbox because Tanner, he didn’t want to go  … and I was saying, “You must vote Tanner, it’s important” … he was saying “But I don’t see the point … I don’t know who I’m voting for.” I said, “Well, just vote for the poor people.”’ (Penny, grandmother, Family H) ‘Me and my mother were on his case…. I was like, “If everybody thought like that … and nobody voted, what sort of a country would we be living in?”… I mean, it’s not rocket science, is it?… We went together to vote, so, yes, I took him to vote.’ (Abby, mother, Family H) In Figure 6.5, the cerise markings indicate family closeness, with Ffion (F) being closest to her mother Gwen (G), her husband Alan [A] and her four children. The red lines show consistent support for Labour and leftist politics from her parents Gwen (G) and Ted [T], as well as from her children (with the exception of Lisa (L), who Ffion said was not particularly interested in politics). Ffion had tried to stimulate an interest in politics among her four children, and also describes how she and her oldest two children had tried to influence her husband Alan’s perspective on the EU referendum:

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Civil Society and the Family Figure 6.5: Ffion’s family tree map indicating family closeness and political engagement

‘I do … bring it up, especially when there’s a local election and all that…. I’m trying to educate them … because there’s a lot of suffering in the world…. Alan, obviously, they were talking about it in work…. I think the people he works with … were mostly for coming out of the EU. And then I think what with my input and Llinos and Sam as well, we sort of got him to, you know? I don’t know whether he would have voted the other way … but we sort of like put him into the picture more, of the facts about it.’ (Ffion, mother, Family D) The majority of parents that we spoke to had taken their children with them to the polling station, and Nicole and Daisy had both taken their children on demonstrations. Daisy remembers going on Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) marches when she was younger and had taken her daughter and a friend on a UNISON march: “I took them because I wanted them to get involved.”

Suffrage and gender equality Mothers frequently drew on the suffrage movement to emphasise the importance of voting to their children, and there was little evidence in

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our data that daughters were being socialised into ‘politically passive’ roles (Welch, 1977), though it will be interesting to see whether or not the suffrage movement will continue to resonate with younger generations with no lived experience of suffrage: ‘If I can instil anything, especially in my girls, [its] having your own voice. I do a lot of history with them, do a lot of “This is what happened. We didn’t have the vote years ago.” And I purposely put documentaries and things on … I think that’s really important, to show them that things have changed but we’re still fighting … and I’ve always instilled, hence the strong women through our family. We’ve stood on our own. And I’ve been brought up like that. We’ve had that right to vote. Even if I don’t agree with politics, I will never, ever waste my vote. And I’ve said that to them: “As soon as you’re able to vote, don’t you dare never vote. People have fought wars for you to get that.”’ (Frankie, mother, Family S) ‘I think my mum’s a bit more like me in that she’d, you know, rather not be bothered with it. But saying that, I think both me and her will always vote … there were women that fought for our right to vote and suffered for it, and then for me to go, “Well, I can’t be bothered” is not really respecting the struggle that they had to get the vote. I’m hoping I’m teaching that to my daughters as well.’ (Charlotte, mother, Family R) ‘I vote in most things because women fought to get the vote and we should use it.’ (Colleen, grandmother, Family B) Indeed, women’s rights and gender equality were high on some of our female participants’ list of values that they wanted to pass on to younger generations. Carol remembered her experiences of sexism as a young woman and has taught her sons to respect women. She celebrated the fact that her granddaughters are all “strong-minded”. Similarly, Frankie spoke about trying to instil a sense of independence in her daughters, teaching them that they do not need a man and that “you can support yourself ”, adding “That’s how my mum brought me up.”

Critical discussions Mothers and grandmothers in our study did not necessarily think that their children and grandchildren uncritically emulated their political

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perspectives, but suggested that dispositions were shared through everyday conversations and spending time together. As discussed in Chapter 3, the intergenerational sharing of political dispositions was often more complicated in politically heterogeneous families. Therefore, in addition to mothers and grandmothers playing a key role in helping younger family members to develop political perspectives, they also tried to steer, or temper, those perspectives that they felt emanated from other influences. Rita’s son John describes himself as a Conservative, like his mum, but says that his wife is probably more on the Labour side of things. Rita recalls having a discussion with her grandson Stuart, trying to gently dissuade him from his support of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn: ‘He said to me, “Nana, who’re you going to vote for in the election?” and I said, “I don’t know, I really don’t know, it’s just so hard this time … who would you vote for?” He said, “I think it would have to be Corbyn” [laughter]. I was like, “mm”, I said “Really, why?” He said, “Well, I think he’s more for young people.” I said, “I think you’re being swayed by what you’ve seen on television, and I think, really, if it was me, I’d be looking at more what he’s likely to do and what his beliefs are really.” So, he said, “Oh, why?” I said, “Well, when I was growing up … I would’ve thought he was more like these people who went on bomb marches and things like that”, and he said, “Really, why do you say that? Because he looks scruffy?” and I said, “No, not necessarily that … but it’s just I’d be worried about his values.”… He said, “Oh, you’re going to vote for Theresa May are you?” I said, “I’m not too sure about that … but she is a more stable person, you know? She’s got different values, maybe I will, maybe I won’t…. I’ll wait and see how it pans out.” So, coming up to polling day, we were talking again, and I said, “So, how’re you feeling about it now?” and he said, “Well, I don’t really know … I don’t know if I’d vote for anybody” [laughter]. I said, “That’s an easy way out … you can’t not vote”, but I think he’d changed his mind a little bit and looked into things.’ (Rita, grandmother, Family J) This quote underscores the importance of familial closeness as providing the foundation for this kind of political discussion – one in which a younger family member solicits the views of a grandparent and has the time and space to explore their own views. The fact that

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Rita spends so much time with her grandsons, supports their interests and is involved with their educational development creates space for this type of interaction. The conversation that Rita recalls having with her grandson Stuart also shows that political socialisation within the family home is not necessarily reliant on consensus; family members do not all have to think or feel the same in order to have discussions that help to nurture a political interest among children. Indeed, as will be seen in Chapter 6, family debates and arguments can play an important role in fostering dispositions aligned to civic engagement. As we saw in Chapter 4, it was also common for female family members to be instrumental in fostering or maintaining religious values. A general theme running through parent and grandparent accounts was that the women of the family are the custodians of faith, and that they often take the lead in sharing religious values and practices with younger generations.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have underscored the significance of women and of female family relationships – in terms of caring, maintaining family closeness, nurturing civic and political interest and engagement, and sharing religious values and practices. While feminist scholars have tended to focus on ‘female liberation from the patriarchal family’ (Ginsborg, 2013: 18, emphasis in original) this chapter has focused on how women, as integral familial figures, relate to civil society. Our study indicates that female family members are central to, rather than distanced from, civil society, and challenges the idea of Westernised ‘closed’ families. The mothers in our study emphasise openness and the importance of welcoming others into their home. The accounts of mothers and grandmothers in our study suggest that women might be under-represented when it comes to volunteering figures as they tend to be involved with informal neighbourly or caring roles that are embedded into their daily routines and perhaps not recorded. Conversely, fathers and grandfathers tended to speak about volunteering roles linked to hobbies and interests, and, in a few cases, offering practical DIY or building maintenance skills. Our analysis also supports the feminist critique of the idea of separate ‘private’ and ‘public’ spheres. Dominant conceptualisations of civil society tend to be ‘gender-loaded’ towards masculinity and focus on associations between individuals and the state, leading to the erroneous assumption that civil society is ‘a place where women are not’ (Phillips, 2002: 72). Women have traditionally been excluded from some types

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of associational civic engagement, meaning that the civic and political practices of women have been less visible, often taking place in informal community or domestic settings. This is evident in the accounts of mothers and grandmothers in our study, who were themselves unlikely to categorise their caring roles in terms of voluntary or civic engagement, tending to couch their activities in terms of ‘helping out’ or ‘lending a hand’ – a natural extension of the feminine caring role. The lower visibility of these caring activities may also lead to them being undervalued or overlooked as just what women do. Just as Silvia Federici (2012) famously argued for the better recognition of the importance of the role of mothers in raising members of a future workforce, we have made a similar argument in favour of the revalorisation of the multitude of caring roles that mothers and grandmothers take on, both within and beyond the family home. Indeed, while Federici (2012) classed motherhood as foundational preparation for the future workforce (having an indirectly economic character), we assert that this foundational ‘work’ is also preparing the next generation of citizens – and that the level of engagement, interest, apathy or activism will, to a great extent, be informed by the character of these bonds. The accounts of the mothers and grandmothers in our study support Carole Pateman’s (1980) assertion that domestic life is at the heart of civil society.

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7

Family arguments: finding one’s voice

Introduction This chapter explores the subject of family arguments – a subject that has been largely overlooked by sociologists. Where family arguments have been the subject of social-scientific enquiry, they are usually approached from a psychological perspective. Within contemporary society, conflict within families tends to be viewed either as an indication of family dysfunctionality or as an inevitable developmental phase of adolescence. However, we want to argue that family arguments are also sociologically and socially significant. We begin this chapter with a very brief overview of the sociology of family arguments and a discussion of some of the methodological and conceptual challenges of researching them. We then examine the ‘landscape’ of family arguments, using evidence from our survey of young people. In addition to charting who argues with whom, we focus on the principal subjects that our young people argue about with their parents, and on what these tell us about the gendered and ‘raced’ dimensions of family regulation. We then go on to look at the significance of arguments within the family for young people’s practices outside the family. Our data indicate that young people from families that argue are more likely to participate in a range of civic activities than those from families where the young people report that they never argue with their parents. We then draw on the interviews with their parents and grandparents to explore some of the processes that might explain this connection. Their accounts indicate that for some families, the absence of arguments does not indicate consensus; rather, for a variety of reasons, it indicates an unwillingness to engage in discussion that might risk conflict. However, other families appear to celebrate and even schedule these ‘risky’ discussions, and use them to foster independence and articulacy. We conclude this chapter by returning to the debates about the relationship between the family and civil society, as well as how what goes on inside the domestic sphere has significant implications for what

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happens outside in the public sphere. In particular, we discuss the nature of ‘civility’ and its connection with civil society.

The sociology of family arguments As already noted, there is relatively little sociological research on family arguments, and that which is available is now very dated and largely US-based. Writing 80 years ago, the US sociologist Kingsley Davis (1940: 523) sought to ‘solve’ the question of why contemporary Western civilisation manifests high levels of parent–youth conflict, remarking that: In other cultures, the outstanding fact is generally not the rebelliousness of youth, but its docility. There is practically no custom, no matter how tedious or painful, to which youth in primate tribes or archaic civilisations will not willingly submit. What, then, are the peculiar features of our society that give us one of the extremist examples of endemic filial friction in human history? Briefly summarised, his answer lay in identifying key ‘variables’ in contemporary society. These include the rapid pace of social change, which means that parent and child are constantly ‘out of step’ with each other, and the increasing complexity of social relations, in particular, the extent to which social status is now based on accomplishment rather than ascribed through age. More recently, there has been increasing interest in intergenerational relations, which has inevitably involved exploring intergenerational conflict. Sociologists in the field of family and ageing, for example, have developed understandings of within-family solidarity (Bengtson and Roberts, 1991; Katz et al, 2005) and intergenerational conflict (for example, Walker, 1990). In the US again, there have been attempts to develop typologies that move beyond focusing on either solidarity or conflict within family relations. For example, Lüscher and Pillemer (1998) and Connidis and McMullin (2002) have developed the idea of intergenerational ‘ambivalence’ to explain how it is that some conflict between parents and children cannot be reconciled. In the UK, the significance of relational ambivalence has also been developed by Brannen (2015) in her exploration of the intergenerational family tensions experienced by migrant sons and their fathers. While such broad theorisations provide useful lenses through which to understand the broader structural forces at work within families,

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they provide very little specificity on the nature and focus of conflict. They also tell us little about how within-family conflict may contribute to broader structural forces. We want to argue that classification of one kind of family relationship as ‘harmonious’ and another as ‘conflictual’ may pertain less to the fundamental nature of that relationship than to the relative visibility of discord within the family. This brings us to issues of civility, as well as how civility within the family might be connected to the public sphere. As US sociologist Flammang (2009: 1) observes: ‘the concept of civility remains implicit and underdeveloped in most writings about civil society’. In his exposition Civility: Manners, morals, and the etiquette of democracy, Stephen Carter (1999) argues that civility is the foundation of democracy. He claims that civility facilitates respectful dialogue, fosters moral action and acts as an antidote to the diminution of social relations through the marketisation of social life. He argues that the family is one of the three pillars (along with religion and schools) that should work to develop civility in the young. However, others have argued that this conception of civility is highly problematic. Weiner (1998: 252, emphasis added), for example, argues that Carter ignores power relations, both within families and with the state, arguing that ‘adult power and state coercion have long played a role in enforcing civility among children’. Walzer (1998: 142) also picks up the issue of enforced civility, noting that ‘most men and women have been trapped in one or other subordinate relationship where the “civility” they learned was deferential rather than independent and active’. If this is the case for men and women, it is even more the case for children in their relationship with their parents. In this chapter, we therefore explore the connections between civility, arguments in the home and the implications for civil society. Does the absence of arguments within the family constitute civility or a form of suppression? Additionally, what are the implications for young people’s civil and political participation?

The methodological and conceptual challenges of researching family arguments One of the reasons that family arguments may have received so little attention might be the methodological and conceptual challenges that they pose for researchers. As we saw in Chapter 3, there are difficulties in researching the domestic domain in general. These difficulties are exacerbated when considering what might be seen as the less positive

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and more hidden side of family life. It is also the case that, by their very nature, family arguments are generally unplanned, unpredictable and often fleeting. Therefore, they are not particularly amenable to observational approaches. Data about arguments nearly always come from participants after the event. This brings us to the conceptual challenges of what might count as an argument. There may be little agreement, even between the participants of the interaction, that a ‘lively’ encounter constitutes an ‘argument’. As we shall see when we look at our interviews with parents and grandparents, adults can be reluctant to describe a disagreement as an argument. One mother, for instance, differentiates an argument from “just loud shouting”. Another prefers the term ‘heated debate’ to ‘argument’. Therefore, it is likely that what a young person perceives as an argument, their parent may perceive as being a merely a ‘discussion’ or even a ‘conversation’. One side may have forgotten the encounter; the other may look back on it as a pivotal moment in the relationship with a family member. For example, grandparents are more likely to say that they have political discussions with their grandchildren than the other way around; it may be that the children do not remember these ‘political discussions’ or are less likely to define them as such. These divergent perspectives cannot be reconciled because an argument is, by definition, an area of disagreement and dissent. For the purposes of this analysis, we are simply taking the position that if someone defines an interaction as an argument, then it is an argument. Similarly, we make no judgement about the weight of different arguments. Young people argue with their parents about a wide range of subjects. Responses to the question ‘What are you most likely to argue about…?’ in our survey indicate that some family arguments appear to be about issues that may seem relatively trivial to an adult. For example, some sources of arguments mentioned by our young respondents include: “Boxing – who’s better: Mike Tyson or Anthony Joshua?”, “Hygiene” and “About who’s making coffee for my mum?” Other subjects that generate arguments might be seen to indicate deeper and potentially distressing sources of family disagreement, for example: “She treats my dad unfairly”, “Forcing me to be a farmer” and “His alcohol problems.” However, it would be dangerous to dismiss any argument as ‘trivial’. As with deciding whether an interaction counts as an argument or not, so too would it be dangerous to presume that a subject was trivial or serious in the eyes of the young person concerned. We therefore make no judgements about the ‘seriousness’ of any disagreement.

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The landscape of family arguments As Figure 7.1 shows, our young people are most likely to argue with their mothers, rather than their fathers or ‘closest’ grandparent. Indeed, nearly one third report that they never argue with their father, and the overwhelming majority never argue with their grandparents. Perhaps not surprisingly, the frequency of arguments is related to the frequency of contact. For example, one quarter (25.6 per cent) of children who see their grandparent on a daily basis argue with them ‘a lot’ or ‘sometimes’. The large majority of young people who see their closest grandparent weekly or monthly (83.1 per cent and 86.2 per cent) report that they ‘never’ argue with them. The frequency of arguments with mothers (as opposed to fathers) underscores the significance of women within the domestic sphere. These data confirm other research on family relations which indicates that, contrary to traditional belief, fathers are not the main disciplinarians in the home. For example, observational research by Hallers-Haalboom et al (2016) found that mothers are more engaged in regulating their children’s behaviour than fathers, who were generally found to be more ‘lax’. Those young people who reported that they argued with their parents were also asked to identify from a set list the two subjects that they argued about most often. As can be seen from Figures 7.2 Figure 7.1: How often do you argue with your mothera, fatherb or closest grandparentc? Mother

% 90

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Note: n = 905; n = 824; n = 819. a

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Civil Society and the Family Figure 7.2: The ‘top two’ things by frequency of mention that children are likely to argue about with their mother Female

Male 136 140

Household chores My phone

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and 7.3, their responses reveal the most significant sources of tension. The ‘top four’ causes of arguments are household chores, what young people do in their free time, their use of their mobile phones and issues relating to school and homework. Religion and politics are the subjects that are least likely to be the focus of arguments. The ‘other’ responses covered a wide range of issues. The majority were generalised responses, where young people simply said that they argued with their parents about ‘anything’ or ‘everything’, about ‘my behaviour’ or ‘opinions’. As one young person put it, the problem was “my ‘attitude’ apparently”. As we can also see from Figures 7.2 and 7.3, though, there are some interesting gender dimensions. Generally, young people argue with their mother rather than their father about household chores. In particular, boys are nearly twice as likely to argue about household chores with their mother as with their father (27.2  per cent and 16.1 per cent, respectively). This is likely to reflect the division of

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Family arguments: finding one’s voice Figure 7.3: The ‘top two’ things by frequency of mention that children are likely to argue about with their father Female

Male 89

Household chores

83 85

My phone

62 62

School/homework

93 56

What I do in my free time

75 47

Money

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What I wear

26 28

My friends

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TV

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Politics 6

Religion

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labour between parents. However, girls are more likely to argue about household chores with their parents than boys: for mothers, the difference is 32.5 per cent compared to 27.2 per cent; for fathers, the difference is 21.3 per cent compared to 16.1 per cent. Of course, we do not know whether girls argue more about household chores because they are asked to do them more often. There is also a strong gender dimension to arguments about clothing. Girls are almost twice as likely as boys to argue with their mothers (15.8 per cent and 9.3 per cent, respectively) or fathers (8.9 per cent and 5.0 per cent, respectively) about what they wear. For boys, homework and ‘What I do in my free time’ are much more likely to be the cause of arguments than for girls. Overall, young people argue more with their mother, and this is even more striking in single-parent households, in which 16.1 per

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cent of participants reported arguing with their mother, compared to 13.6 per cent of young people living in dual-parent households. The presence or absence of fathers in the family home does not seem to significantly affect the rate of arguments with them. The ‘landscape’ of family arguments provides an important lens through which to examine the processes by which ‘appropriate’ behaviours of young people are ‘policed’ and contested. However, as Kingsley Davis pointed out, they are also indicative of the ways in which the processes of intergenerational socialisation are disrupted by broader social change. For example, one of the most rapid aspects of social change has been the widespread adoption of mobile technologies and social media. It is therefore not surprising that young people’s use of their mobile phones, or the use of computer games, may lie behind many of the arguments with boys about how they spend their time. This was reflected in the interviews with parents: ‘My biggest challenge now, it is with my younger two children. I find it really difficult, the way that I think society has influenced them … they’re living in a totally different world to us, that’s the problem. I think they should have some lessons, you know, about what’s going on, I really do. I think it’s just living in a sort of X-Box and all that type of thing, you know what I mean? On their phones all the time, and gadgets, that’s what is their priority, Facebook and all that, and I don’t like it one bit.’ (Ffion, mother, Family D) This can also raise new ethical issues for parents, for example: ‘About streaming for example  … that Kodi box that everybody seems to have. It’s like an illegal device … and we were chatting with our son, who’s a musician, and he just makes a lot of music, and actually why it’s not okay to sample other people’s music … and he’s like “Well all of my band do it, how can it be that bad?”’ (Miranda, mother, Family C) Similarly, many of the arguments about household chores, particularly with girls, may be understood in terms of changes in the domestic division of labour. However, focusing on the reproductive tendencies of family arguments and internal family dynamics ignores the extent to which they might contribute to disruptive tendencies outside the family. We explore this in the next section.

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From family arguments to civic participation Even though only a minority of our young people say that they argue with their parents about political issues, this does not mean that there is no connection between arguing in general and civic and political engagement. In order to explore how arguments in the family might be connected with social activism outside the home, we compare the civic engagement activities of our young people who report that they argue ‘a lot’ with their parents with those of our young people who report that they ‘never’ argue with their parents. Membership of civil society and political organisations is a key indicator of civic engagement. Although the proportion of young people who are involved in these organisations is small (on average, only around 2  per cent of the cohort overall), there is a clear relationship between arguing at home and involvement. In Table 7.1, we compare the frequency with which our young people argue with their mothers to the extent of their involvement in civil society organisations, such as environmental organisations (for example, Greenpeace and the National Trust), animal welfare societies (for example, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals [RSPCA]), humanitarian and human rights organisations (for example, Amnesty International), and political organisations (for example, political parties or ‘youth parliaments’). Those who ‘never’ argued with their mother were significantly less likely to be involved in these kinds of organisation. If we compare those who argue either ‘a lot’ or ‘sometimes’ with those who ‘never’ argue, then the difference is even more stark (see Table 7.2). If we focus on how the proportion of ‘joiners’ is distributed, fewer than one in five (18.9 per cent) come from families that ‘never’ argued, compared to the four in five (81.1 per cent) who come from families that argue. Table 7.1: Associational membership and frequency of domestic arguments

Frequency of arguments with mother ‘A lot’ ‘Sometimes’ ‘Never’ Overall

Involvement in civil society organisations (for example, environmental, animal welfare, human rights and political organisations) No (%) Yes (%) 27.6 72.4 27.2 72.8 36.3 63.7 29.2 70.8

Note: n = 905.

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Frequency of arguments with mother ‘A lot’ or ‘sometimes’ ‘Never’

Involvement in civil society organisations No (%) Yes (%) 73.9 81.1 26.1 18.9

Note: n = 905.

We see a similar pattern in relation to political engagement. As we can see in Table 7.3, there is a linear positive relationship between frequency of arguments and level of political engagement. ‘Proactive’ political engagement entails having done one of the following: contacted a politician; taken part in a public demonstration; boycotted certain products; or attended a political meeting or rally. ‘Moderate’ political engagement entails the slightly less demanding activities of wearing a campaign badge/wristband or signing a petition. Table 7.3: Distribution of organisation participants by frequency of arguments

Frequency of arguments with mother ‘A lot’ ‘Sometimes’ ‘Never’ Overall

Levels of political engagement No Moderate Proactive engagement (%) engagement (%) engagement (%) 60.6 25.2 14.2 63.9 23.3 12.8 70.0 21.6  8.4 64.8 23.2 12.0

Note: n = 905.

In the next section, we draw on our more qualitative data derived from interviews with young people’s parents and grandparents to explore some of the processes that might explain these consequences, focusing on arguments about politics in particular.

The absence of arguments In this section, we explore why it might be the case that arguments within the family are associated with activism outside the family. In doing so, we again highlight the importance of interrogating what the ‘civil’ in civil society might mean. As we discussed at the beginning of this chapter, the connection between civil society and civility is often implicit. As Flammang (2009) and Carter (1999) both argue, the development of civility is

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likely to be an important foundation for civil society. However, our data indicate that what we mean by civility may need to be critically scrutinised. Flammang and Carter emphasise aspects such as ‘courtesy’ and ‘respect’. While not wishing to suggest that these are unimportant, we would also want to argue that the kind of civility essential for civil society may also need to include the airing of dissent and disagreement. Civility should probably not be seen as the same thing as the absence of conflict or disagreement. The absence or presence of visible dissent between parents and children appears to be related to a number of family characteristics. Bernstein (1971) identifies two broad categories of family ‘control’ structures: the positionally oriented family and the person-oriented family. Within positionally oriented families, members are placed according to age (and usually gender) status. In these families, dissent can be seen as a lack of respect as younger members should defer to their ‘elders and betters’. Bernstein argued that these kinds of control structures are more commonly found in working-class families and ‘old’ middle-class families that are allied to the economic sphere of production (for example, the self-employed, those in financial services, manufacturing and so on). In person-oriented families, the control structure is less visible and is achieved through negotiation rather than ascription. Person-oriented families are more commonly found in members of the ‘new’ middle class, in other words, those allied to the symbolic sphere of production (for example, teachers, university lecturers and those working in the arts). Muriel (a former secretary) provides an example of the principles underpinning a positionally oriented family, which might explain the lack of disagreement between children and parents: “I just like them to respect their elders … it’s been ingrained in them” (Muriel, grandmother, Family G). Within these families, the significance of age status means that young people’s opinions are likely to be seen as being of less value than those of their parents, for example: “We don’t tend to have very big, deep discussions. I think they’re far too young. I think they probably won’t understand a word of what I’m saying” (Salem [a dentist], father, Family T). It is important to note that the absence of argumentation within positionally oriented families is likely to indicate not consensus, but rather a withdrawal from an interaction that might risk conflict. Ruth (a teacher) provides a clear example of this when she describes how her father-in-law has no awareness of her own political opinions: ‘I just don’t comment. So, I suppose if I’m with my mum and dad and we’re on our own … we’ll have a whole da-

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de-da talk about it, where I can talk quite freely because we’ve all got the same opinion. I tend not to talk about it in the house here, although Leonard [father-in-law] will bring things up and sometimes be quite vocal, but I don’t say anything … I don’t know if he would even know what my political inclination was because I just don’t say anything.’ (Ruth, mother, Family B) Ruth’s account suggests that while she is able to air her views freely with her own parents, and discusses political issues with her children and spouse, she does not feel able to do the same with her parentsin-law, despite them sharing a house together. This suggests that strong kinship ties do not necessarily map directly onto close physical proximity and daily contact. Natasha (also a teacher) also keeps her opinions to herself in order to avoid conflict, indicating the role of political silence in maintaining family closeness: “I don’t want to cause controversy by disagreeing with anybody else” (Natasha, mother, Family  A). On other occasions, the lack of dissent might indicate consensus; however, it may well be a consensus built on family tradition rather than achieved through deliberation and debate: “If I was to vote for anyone, it would be the Labour Party. I have done in the past but, then again, I’m not deep into politics and I think like my gran. All my family vote Labour” (Abby [care worker], mother, Family H). In addition to the need to ‘keep the peace’ or uphold a family tradition, same parents and grandparents believed that opinions and political beliefs are very personal matters and should be kept private. Some of our parents spoke of the need to ‘respect’ others’ entitlement to have opinions that are different to their own, which entailed keeping silent about their own opinions. Ruth, Bonnie and Natasha all expressed aspects of this: ‘I don’t like actually debating and arguing with people particularly, so I just respect people have got their views and that’s fine. And you won’t change mine, so therefore I probably don’t need to tell you what mine are because what’s the point of getting into a debate? Because I think what I think, and that’s fine, so you can think what you think. Never the twain shall meet.’ (Ruth, mother, Family B) ‘We never sort of bicker because somebody thinks differently to us. We just accept that we’ve got our own thoughts.’ (Bonnie, grandmother, Family Q)

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‘I believe that my views are mine … and everybody’s got their own opinion, haven’t they?’ (Natasha, mother, Family A) While it might be seen as particularly ‘civil’ to respect the privacy of other people’s opinions, the implications of this kind of civility for civil society may well be somewhat negative. Political participation – of whatever kind – is essentially about trying to influence others in order to achieve desired outcomes. Therefore, if even trying to influence others is seen as a sign of disrespect of their entitlement to think differently, then it is difficult to see how this kind of civility will drive civic action or political engagement.

Encouraging dissent While some families avoid arguments – either to ‘keep the peace’ or because politics are deemed to be a ‘private matter’ – other families appear to positively encourage and celebrate arguments: ‘We always disagree but we always say what we think…. I think everybody says what’s on their mind; it’s important you do.… I think that’s a good thing in all walks of life.’ (Penny, grandparent, Family H) ‘None of us are scared to say what we think or feel  … even if we’re having a massive argument…. But it’s not an argument; it’s just loud shouting. And then we’re fine then.’ (Daisy, mother, Family G) In these families, speaking your mind is not disrespectful of others. On the contrary, the ability to express your own opinions is seen as a sign of honesty and respect for those that you are closest to: ‘I’m not a person who thinks that an area should be offlimits, particularly with people that you’re close to. The people you don’t really know, or you don’t really care for, it doesn’t really matter, but the people you’re close to, you should be able to talk about things. Otherwise, you’re not really being 100 per cent honest, are you?’ (Daniel, father, Family O) Some families seem not only to not avoid arguments, but to actually relish them and even schedule them:

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‘What we try and do is try and go for an argument. I think that’s our entertainment…. We don’t have any off-limits, but you know it’s going to cause, it’s not an argument, it’s like heated debates, isn’t it? Very heated debates until in the end we’d say “That’s enough now. Let’s change the subject.”’ (Nicole, mother, Family N) ‘We just talk about whatever … so, quite often, it’s just a case of getting together to have these discussions.’ (David, father, Family M) Conversely, Ruth is concerned about imposing her own opinions on her children rather than helping them to develop their own point of view: “I can hear myself having conversations with my children, and like Zain in particular, and Adam, and they’ll agree with me, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, but I’m just spouting my opinion and now you’re agreeing with me, and I’ve given you that opinion now’” (Ruth, mother, Family B).

Learning how to argue In families with what Bernstein called a ‘person-oriented’ control structure, children are socialised into an environment in which ascribed positions (age, gender, filial relation and so on) are less important. Behaviour not only inside, but also outside, the family ‘would be subject to discussion with parents rather than to their legislation’ (Bernstein, 1971: 153). These families, Bernstein argues, have strong internal communication systems. Verbal communication is encouraged but ‘it is not just a question of more talk but talk of a particular kind. Judgements, their basis and consequences, would form a marked content of the communication’ (Bernstein, 1971: 154). This does not mean that there is no control on expression; rather, the control is less explicit. Indeed, it might be claimed that encouraging debates within the home is a means of helping children learn how to argue ‘properly’. Arguing ‘properly’ is likely to mean conveying conviction but without losing control, and generating just the right amount of conflict to be able to recover relations. Such lessons can be learned early. While Salem thought his 14 year old was too young to engage in debates and arguments, other parents believe that even young children can engage in debate: ‘We were all involved in that conversation [about Brexit] because Rebecca’s seven now.… So, they were all involved

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in that conversation. Obviously, their understanding of what that meant was kind of varied, and actually sometimes I think that you have this sort of window, where they’re a little bit younger, sometimes we’re actually, you’re able to have more of a kind of debate, a healthier debate.’ (Miranda, mother, Family C) Indeed, some parents and grandparents praised their children for disagreeing with them: ‘When we have arguments now, they get quite heated sometimes, as arguments do, only for a bit, a short time, and I, straight away, then I say to them, “I’m proud of you because you’ve got a point of view”, and I feel proud of it then because they feel so strongly about something. I think that’s good.’ (Victor, grandfather, Family N) It may be that allowing and encouraging dissent in the home helps young people to develop skills of argumentation that can be used outside the home. Moira, for example, who lives with her daughter and grandson, talks in particular about the importance of “recovering” from arguments: ‘There could be an argument and you could really get your hair off and walk out, and then you come back and say, “Yeah, that’s alright to do that but you’ve got to work through it and talk about it and move on”, because at the end of the day, there’s nearly always a solution, and to live together like this, you’ve got to compromise a lot.’ (Moira, grandmother, Family F) Nina describes how a political discussion with her daughter about Theresa May enabled her to see the life skills her daughter needed to “temper” her arguments: ‘I thought Tasha was going to boil over, I actually did, because that’s what she hasn’t learnt, she hasn’t learnt to temper it … she’s ended up being upset because she hasn’t got the life skills yet to deal with being crushed in a politician argument or whatever, or someone just dismissing your views as being nonsense.’ (Nina, mother, Family E)

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Similarly, Nina talks about the importance of her son knowing how to challenge “correctly”: ‘You know, it’s important to challenge where they think it’s right and justified, as long as they go about it in the right way. That’s what Alec, being 14 now, needs to know. Like, he wants to challenge but he doesn’t do it in the right way. He’ll challenge his teacher in the class … he just needs to be able to know when it’s appropriate and how to do it correctly.’ (Nicole, mother, Family N) Of course, these interactions are highly complex and it is difficult to determine any clear causality between arguing at home and civic and political engagement outside the home. Nonetheless, it should not be entirely surprising that the skills of finding one’s voice and trying to influence others are learned in the home.

Conclusion This chapter has sought to explore the significance of arguments within the domestic sphere for engagement in the public sphere. Our data indicate that there is a connection – even though most of the domestic arguments concern domestic matters. This is not to downplay some of the potentially negative aspects of family arguments, which can be highly stressful and painful experiences. Family arguments also reveal the ways in which young people’s behaviour is regulated (sometimes successfully; sometimes less so) along lines that are gendered and possibly ‘raced’. However, our research is important in showing how what goes on inside the home has consequences for what goes on in civil society. It would also certainly suggest that civility, especially enforced civility, is unlikely to foster dispositions to engage in civil society. Our data would suggest that families without arguments, especially when the silence derives from fear of conflict or respect for the privacy of personal beliefs, will not enable young people to find a voice.

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8

Politicising family food practices Introduction This chapter explores the role of family mealtimes and shared food practices in fostering skills and values that may be of benefit to civil society. A number of scholars have emphasised the importance of food and mealtimes for family life, and we extend this argument by outlining the ways in which skills and values developed in family food spaces can shape and inform political and civic activities. We begin by considering how food is incorporated into family routines and the extent to which mealtimes are considered an important family activity. We did not design the research project with food and family mealtimes in mind; however, during our interviews with parents and grandparents, these aspects of family life soon emerged as significant. Our discussions with participants indicate that shared family meals provide valuable spaces for family members to come together and learn from one another. We argue that family dinners also have significance beyond the family as an important vehicle for civic and political socialisation, providing an interesting site for the development of certain skills, values and knowledges that can help to equip family members to participate in wider civil society. We then think about the provision of food as symbolic of care for other family members, and demonstrate how the symbolism of food as care can, in some cases, extend beyond the home to connect and communicate a sense of care and responsibility beyond the family unit. In the final section of the chapter, we turn to the moral and ethical values attributed to certain foods in order to explore how family food choices can act as mobilisations of ethical, political and environmental issues.

Food and family routines A number of scholars have underlined the importance of food for the construction and maintenance of family bonds. In her classic text Feeding the Family, Marjorie DeVault (1991: 39) emphasises the practical work involved in ‘doing family’, explaining that a family is not a ‘naturally

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occurring collection of individuals’, but instead ‘constructed from day to day, through activities like eating together’. Similarly, Jackson (2009: 5) focus on ‘the practice of everyday life’ in which ‘the family’, as a social structure, is reproduced through routine activities like cleaning, cooking and caring for children. In her study of families in the US, Blum-Kulka (1997: 125) describes family mealtimes as a key ‘opportunity space’ for discussing ‘daily ethical dilemmas’, learning and teaching conversation skills that are central to civic and democratic practice. Of course, families will differ in their ability and proclivity to sit together to eat. Family food practices are likely to differ along class, ethnicity and faith-based lines, and the social dynamics of families will also be influenced by gender and generation (see, for example, Backett-Milburn et al, 2010). Different types of family (single-parent households, reconstituted families, stepfamilies and so on) may provide different contexts for food practices (Jackson, 2009). Places and spaces inhabited by the family may also be significant, with ‘close-knit’ multigenerational families perhaps meeting more routinely to share meals, while ‘world families’ (Beck, 2010; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2014 [2013]), liaise less frequently but with a greater sense of occasion. Over the years, a number of scholars have raised concerns about the erosion of family mealtimes prompted by a range of social changes, including a rise in fast food, shifting working patterns and the proliferation of attention-demanding devices and networks, including the television, Internet and social media. In the US, for example, Putnam (2001) reported that Americans were spending less and less time eating together due to the rising popularity of fast food. Brannen and O’Connell’s (2017) study into family mealtime routines suggests that while family lives have not necessarily become busier, a greater degree of asynchronicity across individual schedules – including both flexible work schedules and a variety of children’s clubs and activities – makes it harder for families to manage shared meals. A strong theme from our interviews with parents and grandparents, regardless of faith, gender, ethnicity and place, is the importance of shared family meals. Bridget and her mother Moira (Family F) both emphasised the importance of family dinners in the home that they shared with Bridget’s 14-year-old son Cian. Moira remembered this being an important part of her upbringing and something that she had sought to continue: even when her husband was working long hours, the family “always used to eat together on the weekend”. Feeding the family took on special significance on Sundays, with the wider family congregating at the house for a 2 pm roast: “Sundays is really busy…. I do dinner for about eight people” (Moira, Family F). If anyone is

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late or cannot come, Moira explains, “I just plate theirs up and they have it when they want, and if they don’t turn up at all, I take it to them [chuckling] on a Sunday night, they let me know.” A few weeks later, when I interviewed Moira’s daughter Bridget, Moira was away on holiday. In her mother’s absence, Bridget had tried to maintain the tradition of shared family meals: “Even though mum’s away, we’ve still managed, Lorna has come up and we’ve still, we haven’t had it on a Sunday, a traditional day, but we’ve still had a cooked meal and all sat together and ate that. So, yes, it does become a big part of you” (Bridget, mother, Family F). Carol was also determined to protect family meals from the encroachment of the television and to keep things as they had “always been”, adding that she did not have “any time” for people who “can’t be bothered” to eat together: “I don’t have a television in here, the television is in the other room, and it has always been that way, and we sit at this table and we eat… I always sit by here; Gruffyd sits by there” (Carol, grandmother, Family A). Carol was pleased that her daughter shared her views and was ‘strict’ about television as well: “She will only have a television in one room, so no eating in front of the television.” For Annie, grandparent to two teenagers, regular Friday night family dinners were one of the only times she felt that she could connect with her grandchildren. She explained that when she arrives on a Friday afternoon, the grandchildren are both on their “electronic machines” and it is only at mealtime that she has “a chance to have a bit of a chat” and to find out more about her grandchildren: “they go on their electronic machines and devices and they watch things on telly, and we don’t really talk a lot very much about serious things, except perhaps at the tea table when all these machines are off” (Annie, grandmother, Family P). Nina (mother, Family E) took her two daughters to have tea with her own grandmother every week, framing it as an important opportunity to connect with their great-grandmother: ‘I go once a week religiously, take the kids, they get off the school bus in town instead of coming home, and I meet them and we go to my grandmother’s for tea. They’re at the age where they get quite bored, they’re 14 and 13 now, but it doesn’t matter, they go because she’s 92 and she won’t be around forever.’ (Nina, mother, Family E) In these examples, the family dinner table is positioned as a respite from the ubiquity of communication technology – a place where

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‘screen culture’ has not yet drowned out face-to-face conversations (Flammang, 2009). Both the parents and the grandparents in our study identified shared mealtimes as an important part of family life. Parents, in particular, made efforts to get the whole family sitting down together regularly, despite increasingly ‘asynchronous’ schedules. For instance, David (father, Family M) and his family were heavily engaged in various voluntary, faith-based, musical and sporting activities, making it hard for them to find time to sit down together for a meal: ‘I think we’ll be able to have a meal together on Saturday night and Sunday night this week, which is unusual, but it’s going to have to be after a specific time to have us all together. And we do like to eat together, that’s something that if we can, but we’re quite, yeah, I’d say that’s something that we could probably be better at, slowing down and spending time together.’ (David, father, Family M) Similarly, Charlotte’s (mother, Family R) family did not necessarily eat together every night “because different things are going on”. She explained that “it’s a bit less hectic than it was when they were both going to Scouts”, which left only one night free for family meals. However, Charlotte still had concerns about not eating “as healthily as we should” and relying on ‘convenience’ foods to work around family members’ schedules. Moving away from the strictures of a ritual family meal (usually on a Sunday), Penny and Abby (Family H) discuss a fluid approach to food in which it is part of the currency of everyday family life. Different family members would call in at different times and Penny, in particular, saw it as part of her maternal role to feed all family visitors: ‘They’ll all call in the house at different times in the week, and they’ll all be fed, everyone gets fed and has tea…. My boy will come usually on a Saturday morning for breakfast or they just pop in and you feed them, and these [her two grandsons] will be passing maybe down the road and they’ll call in and then we’ll make them a meal and a drink…. Yes, you must feed everyone that comes.’ (Penny, grandmother, Family H) Penny described how food was shared among family members: ‘Yesterday, I made cawl…. I’ll have some and he’ll [Penny’s partner] have some, and then it goes over to my mother

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and my auntie … and then whoever calls in, “You want some cawl?” Somebody called last night, went home with a Tupperware of cawl. And so, you make it and you share it. And I like to cook bara brith, which is a cake, a Welsh thing, and I make two loads at a time, so it’s half to this person and half goes to that person. So, you cut it in bits and send it all over the family then.’ (Penny, grandmother, Family H) This account demonstrates that the relationship between food and family closeness can be demonstrated both through sit-down family mealtimes, and through the informal sharing and passing around of foodstuffs to be enjoyed at different times (both synchronous and asynchronous family food routines). Shared meals, shared values Family mealtimes were significant in parents’ and grandparents’ accounts of family closeness and a sense of belonging. Bonnie had fond memories of family mealtimes with her children as a space to talk about “anything and everything”, often with “a lot of laughing and joking going on”. She was delighted that her sons and daughter had continued the tradition of shared family dinners with their own children: ‘We always used to sit at the table for our food and chat around the table, and I notice all our children do the same thing … so it’s great because we go down there and we all sit round the table, we don’t go anywhere else, just round the table to talk, and it’s lovely, I like that, I enjoy that.’ (Bonnie, grandmother, Family Q) Family meals can also act as important markers of special occasions. Daniel (father, Family O) arranged to visit his mother so that they could share Christmas dinner together at her supported accommodation: “[They] usually book the guest flat for Christmas and they come here so I can have Christmas dinner with them … and one of the other tenants who hasn’t got any children, she comes and joins us” (Winnie, grandmother, Family O). Even outside of special occasions, a sense of ritual and familiarity when it came to food and mealtimes seemed to be important to some families and was linked to a sense of comfort or belonging. For example, Natasha explained that her

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daughters looked forward to eating certain foods when they stayed with their grandparents: “They do like that when they go to grandma and grandpa Gruffyd’s, they have fish fingers for tea and they have waffles for breakfast, its little things like that that they really like” (Natasha, mother, Family A). In this sense, the family dinner table can act as a ‘repository’ of family memories akin to a scrapbook or photo album (Flammang, 2009: 120). Indeed, the enduring importance of sharing food at the dinner table among the families interviewed suggests that it remains an important site for linking across the generations. In Flammang’s (2009: 125) words: ‘Seeing ourselves as part of a tradition makes us feel connected and valued. Much of a culture’s history and wisdom is orally transmitted and would be lost were it not for ritual meals.’ This has some significance for familial links to civil society since mealtimes seem to provide an important space for conversations on various topics, including ethical values and perspectives, gender and other power relations, and environmental issues. We now turn to the subject of family mealtime discussions.

Socialisation, civility and debate at the dinner table In addition to strengthening family identities and facilitating bonding between different family members, shared family mealtimes can also help to develop various skills and virtues. Building on research that identifies family mealtimes as important sites of intergenerational exchange and debate, we demonstrate how mealtime conversations and practices are positioned, especially by parents, as important sites for moral, political and civic socialisation through both knowledge sharing and opinion formation, on the one hand, and developing the skills of reasoning and argumentation, on the other. In her study of the cultural patterns of communication in family discourse, sociolinguist Blum-Kulka (1997) argues that the family dinner table is an important space for both socialising and socialisation. In addition to enjoying time spent together, fostering bonds and a sense of closeness, and the necessary talk facilitating the business of ‘getting fed’, the family dinner table is a site for socialisation in which older family members guide younger members on appropriate ways to interact according to familial and wider sociocultural conventions: ‘When the mealtime is shared physically and conversationally with children, it serves as a critical social context in which children become socialised to local cultural rules regulating conversation, such as the choice of topics, rules of turn taking, modes of storytelling, and rules of politeness’

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(Blum-Kulka, 1997: 12). Blum-Kulka (1997: 3) describes the family dinner table as a space for pragmatic socialisation, where children learn how to use language in socially and culturally appropriate ways, including ‘how to choose and introduce topics for talk, respond appropriately, tell a story, or develop an argument’. Dinner-table conversations can therefore support a child’s passage into adult discourse: ‘The amount and mode of participation of the child in dinner talk, as well as the topics and genres of talk he or she is exposed to at dinner, may play a crucial role in the development of notions of discourse and of skills in applying them’ (Blum-Kulka, 1997: 13). So long as younger family members are included as ratified participants,1 the family dinner table can provide them with various signals about how to select topics for discussion, how to take turns and involve others, how to talk about their day, and the appropriate degree of directness (Blum‑Kulka, 1997). Mealtimes are an opportunity for parents to role-model polite behaviour and to help children to understand the culturally complex rules of what and how to speak in relation to ‘goals, interactants, context and culture’ (Blum-Kulka, 1997: 13). The US and Israeli parents in Blum-Kulka’s (1997) study used dinner-table interactions implicitly and explicitly to teach children how to apologise, to identify and avoid rude behaviour, and to not interrupt. In our study, it was grandparents, in particular, grandmothers, who emphasised the importance of table manners and politeness. Penny describes how she taught her grandchildren table manners from a young age: ‘You’ve got to sit on the table … you have your food on the table and you don’t eat with your mouth open, and you use a knife and fork … them things I drum into them, and even the little one who goes to school, I say, “You tell them in school: ‘You eat like a mouse, not a fish’”, and I think he watches children in school and he comes home and he’ll say, “So-and-so’s eating like a fish”…. I said, “You need to teach them: ‘You eat like a mouse, not a fish’”, yeah.’ (Penny, grandmother, Family H) As we have already heard, Carol (grandmother, Family A) was rigid in her belief that family meals should be shared around the table, and this extended to a strict code of traditional table manners. Carol described a conversation with her granddaughter Willow following a school trip to Oxford University, in which Willow had her first experience of being ‘waited on’:

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‘She had a day in Oxford … it was only a fortnight ago, and she was “Oh, grandma, I am so excited, I have had a wonderful time, and they waited on me”, and she said they were all sat at these tables, and you see this is it, you can see it, I said, “Do you think you would, like?” and she said, “Well, I wouldn’t be frightened about going there” – so she wouldn’t be frightened, and they waited on the tables, and I said, “Thank God I taught you decent manners”, again, the strictness of eating at the table, holding a knife and fork properly, having a serviette.’ (Carol, grandmother, Family A) Carol seemed especially pleased that she had helped to equip her granddaughter with table manners that translated from her small terraced house in the Welsh Valleys to the grandeur of Oxford University. She felt that this had helped Willow to assimilate to this new environment and not to feel daunted by it. Table activities can therefore be beneficial to civil society by fostering both bonding and bridging capital – bringing together intimate family members but also providing a framework for behaviour at less-familiar tables, enabling participants to assimilate and ‘fit in’ with those around them (Flammang, 2009). These examples suggest that grandmothers play a particularly keen role in preserving certain sociocultural conventions linked to mealtimes, against the threat of erosion over time or across national borders. In this sense, they are working to maintain a shared family code, bonding members from different generations together. Beyond family socialisation, US scholar Julia Flammang (2009) argues that the family dinner table plays a wider civilising role. Highlighting the often-overlooked civilising component of civil society – that is, the manners and dispositions required to communicate sensitively and effectively with others with different views or beliefs – Flammang argues that the skills learnt around the family dinner table are a valuable tool in civic engagement. For example, qualities like thoughtfulness and generosity – required when serving and sharing food – are also assets in voluntary work. Flammang (2009: 3) champions the ideal of ‘civility’ as a quality that ‘entails a generosity of spirit that assumes the best, not the worst, of the stranger’, and that is modelled at the dinner table through, for example, turn taking, attentive listening, sharing food fairly and showing respect for different tastes. Furthermore, when all generations are encouraged to take part in mealtime conversations, younger family members can develop the skills they need to take part in ‘intergenerational multiparty talk’, especially subtler conversational skills, such as entering a conversation

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and aligning one’s contribution to previous talk. For example, the families in Ochs et al’s (1989) study used the family dinner table as a space to address problematic events in the lives of family members: through co-narration and drawing on family members’ cognitive and linguistic skills, families co-narrated to jointly construct theories of everyday events. The development and use of these advanced linguistic skills is often viewed as the outcome of formal schooling but this study suggests that they are also fostered through everyday practices of storytelling at the family dinner table (Ochs et al, 1989).This is significant if we agree with Flammang (2009) that civil society needs to connect people across generations, especially if intergenerational discussions within the family lead to intergenerational engagement beyond it. Data from the families in our study suggest that mealtimes are a key site for the development of civic values, both in terms of developing conversational skills and through substantive topics of debate. For some of the participants in our study, the shared preparation of food and family mealtimes provided opportunities to discuss political or social issues. For example, Rita said that cooking with her grandson Stuart created a conducive environment for exploring issues together: “Stuart, particularly, will say, ‘What do you think about this idea?’ when he’s making things and then we’ll talk about it, and often you don’t have to say anything, but talking about it is another way of finding out how you can do something differently” (Rita, grandmother, Family J). As a ‘safe space’ for sharing knowledge, airing grievances and expressing different viewpoints (Flammang, 2009), family mealtime conversations may also provide a means through which participants link personal troubles to public issues (Wright Mills, 1967). As we saw in Chapter 7, arguments and disagreements can also aid our understanding of the links between the family and civil society. As a key site for family discussion, mealtimes were sometimes the scene of heated discussions or arguments. For example, Victor and his wife (grandparents, Family N) often host their daughter Nicole and her family for dinner. Nicole explained that even though her dad is a strong unionist and used to vote labour, he had shifted to supporting his local Conservative candidate in recent years. Victor was the only one in the family to vote Conservative, and was the only one in favour of leaving the EU. Rather than shying away from the topic, Nicole said that the family often discusses it and that they all feel comfortable sharing their own views. Both Victor and Nicole describe their shared meals as lively, colourful events with frequent disagreements and heated debates: “It’s murder when we’re having

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meals here” (Victor, grandfather, Family N); “You’re guaranteed to row about it [politics] whenever we’re all together” (Nicole, mother, Family N). However, rather than being a threat to family closeness, these discussions seemed to strengthen the bonds between family members. Indeed, as we saw in Chapter 7, Victor praised his children for having a mind of their own. The accounts given by Victor and Nicole suggest that some disagreements or heated discussions can help family members to develop and share their argumentation skills, and to view issues from a number of different perspectives. As a strong unionist during his working life, Victor wanted to pass on to his children and grandchildren the importance of speaking out when needed: ‘I mean, most of my working life, I used to be a shop floor representative  … so I think that side, from my working life, I’ve passed down because my son’s going to be a shop steward now … so I think they’ve watched me and they’ve heard me speaking about representing. If something’s wrong, say against it.’ (Victor, grandfather, Family N) For those families keen to nurture space for debate with their children and grandchildren, family mealtimes are a particularly important site through bringing different generations together to share food. However, it is important not to overstate the potential for family mealtimes to foster civic engagement and the skills required to campaign for and represent certain interests. Just as the socialising and socialisation functions of mealtimes may be in tension with one another (Blum-Kulka, 1997), discussion and debate can sometimes be at the expense of family harmony and solidarity. Indeed, as we saw in Chapter 7, some participants avoided social and political debates to maintain family harmony. There are a number of potential reasons for social and political issues being struck off the menu: family members may not feel well informed or qualified to speak about such issues; they might fear reprisal; or they may regard political and social issues as a private matter of personal preference beyond the remit of family debate. Family members may have no interest in discussing civic issues and may prioritise other topics of conversation. Conflictual adult relationships in the family home can also create tension and stifle intergenerational dinnertime conversation (Flammang, 2009). Interestingly, in his comparative study of British and Swiss-German family dinners, Watts (1989) found that British families tended to focus on the maintenance of interpersonal harmony, while Swiss-German

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conversational styles were more competitive in their display of position and counterposition.

Food as symbolic of care within and beyond the family It is well established that foodwork is a means through which family members care for one another. Cooking a person’s favourite meal or sharing a family recipe can be seen as markers of family identity – of who we as a family are and what we do. Cooking with and for grandchildren, for example, has been recognised as a way of ‘making their time and relationships with them special’, and baking together may act as a bridge between generations, being ‘an activity inherently appealing to children but one in which grandmothers have skills to transmit’ (Knight et al, 2014: 308; see also Barolini, 2005). Colleen (grandmother, Family  B) reflects with pride that she was the first one to teach her granddaughter Jade how to make cakes, and Carol (grandmother, Family  A) was also pleased that her granddaughter Willow “makes really good cakes, I mean, proper cakes”. Rita (grandmother, Family J) makes protein bars and drinks to help her grandson with his sports training regime: “They’re so expensive, they really, really are … so, I do those for, well, I make them for Jack but everybody eats them. I make all these recipes up as I go along” (Rita, grandmother, Family J). Some of the older grandparents in our study also described how younger generations had taken on foodwork roles as a way to care for them. For example, Bonnie has four grandchildren living close by, and as she has become less mobile, they have begun to notice that things need doing and helping: ‘I find the children are brilliant, the three over there, they’re absolutely brilliant. Like I said to my husband yesterday, “How would we manage without these children?” He said, “I haven’t a clue.” We just wouldn’t, because yesterday, Sophie decided she wanted to cook our tea. So, she cooked that before they went home, and they changed the bed for me and, you know, all that sort of thing, that is so good … we only had bacon, egg, and Trevor had black pudding, but I’ve got a job to stand at the cooker to do it, so she said “Nan, I’ll do it” and she quite enjoyed it. I just sat out there watching her. I sat on the stool watching her, and we was talking while she was doing it, but, no, I thought that was wonderful.’ (Bonnie, grandmother, Family Q)

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Participants shared examples of family foodwork even when relationships were strained. For example, Colleen remembers her grandfather as strange and distant, as well as someone who had acted cruelly towards his own children. Despite this, Colleen remembered that her mother “used to take things around, meals and things”. Female family members, in particular, described a sense of pride in providing for other family members, as well as a sense of responsibility passed down from previous generations. This maternal responsibility is coloured by expectations from previous generations, often creating ‘burdens and tensions’ for mothers as they ‘live out their lives in different realities’ (Knight et al, 2014: 305). In preparing and serving food, mothers (and, where they are involved, fathers) are therefore engaged in ‘semantic provisioning’: the transmission of wider ideas about the moral and cultural meanings of food (Cook, 2009). These tensions were evident in Moira’s description of how she was encouraging her granddaughter – mother to a young son at age 17 – to learn how to cook properly in order to provide for her young family: ‘My granddaughter … she doesn’t know how to cook or do anything … so when she gets her own place … [I’ll] go down … and show her how to cook because they buy, her meal the other week for him, he works, but because he’s only 18, he’s getting £5.50 an hour  … so she was doing dinner for him, and we laugh, we haven’t stopped tormenting her, she was doing him dinosaurs with the smiley faces. She said “He’s lucky to get that”, which, yes, but we’re trying to say to her, “Look, he’s been working long, long hours, he was getting up to do the night feeds”, so she needs to pull her finger out.’ (Moira, grandmother, Family F) The examples so far highlight the various ways in which food is symbolic of care and provision within the family; however, we also discovered some instances of the caring aspect of foodwork stretching beyond the family home. Providing for their family led some parents to reflect on others in society who do not have food or shelter. Miranda was prompted to think about why some people do not have food and shelter, and decided to involve her children with the food bank as a way of acting on this injustice. Indeed, food was often described as a way to connect with people beyond the family home. Carol has owned an allotment since she retired and visits it two or three times a week to tend the fruits and vegetables that she grows there. Although she

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presented herself as fiercely independent, as the only female gardener and as a woman in her 70s with strong biceps, she was pleased that other allotment members would help her if there was something that she could not reach or get to: “there is quite a community there”. Carol’s regular trips to the allotment connected her to others with whom she might not otherwise engage. She also shared chutneys and jams made from her allotment produce with neighbours and friends. Other participants contributed food and drink to community events. Ffion had ‘helped out’ by baking cakes and making cups of tea at her children’s primary school, and her mother Gwen started organising an annual MacMillan coffee morning to raise funds for palliative cancer care after the death of her husband. In addition to the food bank, Miranda has actively involved her four young children in various church outreach activities, including a ‘street café’: “making drinks for people; chatting to people”. In Miranda’s account, food is framed as a means through which to nurture relationships with others, and to soften interactions and exchanges across difference: “I think it’s really, really good for them to be involved with and meet people who have got very different lives to them, very different experiences” (Miranda, mother, Family C). Roger and Maria spoke about their son-in-law Jean, who was volunteering at a Christian camp: “He’s doing all the cooking … for everybody for the whole week, and he’ll come back absolutely shattered” (Roger, grandfather, Family K). These examples suggest that the provision of food provides an avenue for family members (and not just mothers and grandmothers) to engage with their local communities. Here, feeding others beyond the family home is framed as a way to connect with, and care for, the community.

Shifting food practices: new food moralities? In addition to the undeniably moral (and often gendered) inflections of feeding the family (DeVault, 1991), food choices are increasingly being linked to ethical and environmental concerns. What we choose to eat and how we construct ‘proper’ meals offer a powerful but everyday vehicle through which social relations and divisions are symbolised, reinforced and reproduced (Gregory, 1995: 32). Growing public interest in the social and political importance of food is visible in the resurgence of farmers’ markets and community gardens in the US and UK, expanding food sections in various newspapers, and the explosion of food and lifestyle blogs, recipe books and television programmes.

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Domestic homes make a sizeable contribution to overall levels of food waste and the consumption of natural gas and electricity (House of Lords, 2014; DECC, 2015), and the family meal has captured the attention of environmentalists due to the carbon-intensive production, packaging and transport of certain foods (Jamieson, 2016). Families, then, have a significant role to play as they are ‘multiply engaged in producing or inhibiting the possibilities of a more sustainable and equitable planet’ (Jamieson, 2016). While families have sometimes been characterised as ‘enemies of social change’ (Jamieson, 2016: 336), the family environment and choices made about what to consume, and how, could prove crucial to environmental efforts (Paddock, 2017). Pushes towards more socially and environmentally just food provision can be seen in some of our participants’ interest in fair trade, organic and/or locally produced foods. One key message coming from environmental campaigners is the necessity to reduce the amount of ‘animal-based’ foods in our diets, with campaigns such as ‘veganuary’ encouraging people to try going vegan for the month of January. This contemporary emphasis on eating environmentally was not prevalent in the accounts of parents and grandparents; instead, where environmental issues did figure, they were often raised by younger generations. We return to the idea of ‘upward transmission’ from children to parents and grandparents in Chapter 9. Some of our participants identified as vegetarian but did not generally link their decision to environmental issues. Charlotte (Family R), the mother of two daughters, became vegetarian while at university after living with other vegetarian students, and remembers her mum asking “Well, aren’t you going to eat the turkey?” when she returned home for Christmas, and responding “No, maybe I won’t.” For Charlotte, this was a matter of taste and preference. Roger (grandfather, Family K) became a vegetarian after meeting his second partner Maria, who had grown up in a vegetarian family. Roger and Maria had “not tried to influence the children” and explained “if they come here, they have their burgers and whatever they want” (Roger, Family K). Maria added that the grandchildren were heavily influenced by their father (their son-in-law), who was a “great meat eater”. Indeed, during her interview, Roger’s daughter Eve said that she had been vegetarian for five years but when she got married, she “couldn’t stay vegetarian” because of her husband’s love for meat. Indeed, it was far more common for family members to say that they had reduced their intake of animal products, perhaps substituting beans and pulses for mince in some regular meals (Nina, mother, Family E). These practices were often linked to a sense of thrift, especially in

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grandparent interviews, where making the meat go a long way had been commonplace. This suggests that parents and grandparents found it both helpful and reassuring to link contemporary food moralities to the past and how things used to be. Some families were particularly resistant to the idea of reducing or eliminating animal products from their diet. Carol (grandmother, Family  A) was perturbed by veganism, exclaiming: “I have never understood [it].” She described a vegan wedding as “the worst wedding I have ever been to in all my life”, adding that “it was awful … the food was absolutely awful”. Carol’s strong response to veganism suggests that for her, the exclusion of animal products from a diet renders it not proper food. The role of food and mealtimes was a strong theme in both Carol’s and her daughter Natasha’s accounts, and they had a shared understanding of what a “proper home-cooked meal” (Natasha, Family  A) should look like, which was incompatible with the contemporary trend of plant-based diets. Frankie was similarly wedded to the food traditions in her family and described how fresh food and cooking skills have been shared across the generations: ‘My nan had the allotments, we always had fresh food, always went to pick it. We’d pick a load of peas, eat half of them and have to go back up and get more. But that’s come from my nan, my nan always cooked fresh, always had cakes. I always had a baking day. My mum does. My mum cooks, still cooks with the children now. Welsh cakes and mince pies, sausage rolls, always had a love of cooking.’ (Frankie, mother, Family S) These accounts suggest that shared family food traditions in which meat is an important element of ‘proper’ meals might hinder the adoption of contemporary recommendations around reducing or eliminating animal products in diets. Indeed, when asked about their level of interest in environmental issues, recycling and food waste were brought up much more readily than changing diets. Parents and grandparents almost universally described their efforts to recycle, save energy and reduce waste when they could: ‘I try to read about it and I try to do, be a good recycler and think about things, and not always successfully, think about buying things that are wrapped up or not wrapped up, but I suppose in the reality of getting on with life, it can

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fall to the bottom, but, you know, I think it’s a real issue.’ (Gillian, grandparent, Family C) For some, this was linked to a sense of thrift and the personal benefit of saving some money. This echoes the ‘make and mend’ ethic of post-war living among some grandparents (see Nicol, 2015). Natasha (mother, Family A) described her parents as “keen recyclers” who were concerned about food waste, but said that “I think there is a generational thing as well”: ‘In terms of things that my parents probably think are acceptable, I might not, and then Willow … and Sophia might have different views again, just because of where we are in our generation and what’s relevant … what was right at the time that we were growing up. Like, now my parents are really keen recyclers, whereas I can’t ever remember them recycling as a child, but we had milk bottles which went out the front, we never had plastic bottles, so there was the difference.’ (Natasha, mother, Family A) Recycling and reducing plastic waste seemed to have caught many people’s imagination. This, we suggest, may be due to particularly intense media coverage of issues surrounding plastics during the study following the BBC’s ‘Blue Planet’ series, though it also links with wider societal changes around personal responsibility and sustainability: ‘I wouldn’t have said that I would’ve been the recycling freak that I am now 20, 25 years ago because it would’ve been “I can’t be bothered with all of this”, but, I mean, everything now gets recycled, you would never think that you would manage on fortnightly bin collections, but it’s amazing what you can do. So, yes, who knows, as more information gets out, then it might well influence.’ (Bridget, mother, Family F) Another mobilisation of civically oriented food values is via the social justice accreditation of fair trade. Most of the parents in our study were familiar with fair trade, and most of their children had participated in ‘fair trade fortnight’ activities at school, but they varied in the extent to which they felt able to engage with it in their regular food-shopping routines. Natasha’s children had been introduced to fair trade fortnight via their school, and Natasha said that while she would not necessarily

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look out for fair trade labelling, she was “quite happy … when it’s got the little symbol”, adding that her younger daughter was “quite keen on that”. As we saw in Chapter 5, Daniel (father, Family O) was a strong advocate for fair trade, and his approach to food was strongly influenced by his Christian faith. In Chapter 9 on ‘upward transmission’, we will explore how Daniel’s children have prompted him to think about different ethical elements of food. Grandparents in our study were much less likely to reference fair trade when asked about ethical and environmental food practices.

Conclusion Our findings indicate that shared mealtimes continue to be significant for the formation and renewal of family identities, and that they provide an important space for intergenerational exchange and debate. Our data suggest that mealtime discussions are a key site for the development of civic values. In bringing different generations together, and keeping them in the same physical space to share food, family mealtimes provide fertile ground for debating political and social issues. As we have seen, shared meals can be marshalled to develop various skills that are pertinent to developing an interest and ability to participate in civil society. In addition, while increased ‘asynchronicity’ and the geographical dispersal of extended families may reduce opportunities for multiple generations to come together, our participants still found time to share food, and framed family food practices as an important way to demonstrate care and closeness. These findings also challenge Ginsborg’s (2008) construction of the Western ‘closed family’ and suggest that there is a more permeable boundary between foodwork within and beyond the home as some of the parents and grandparents in our study described how food was a vehicle to connect with members of their local community. As we have seen, family mealtimes open up potential spaces for exploring the moral, ethical and environmental dimensions of food. However, we must be cautious when considering the extent to which dinnertime debates make space for social change since perspectives will likely be coloured by inherited shared family ideas about ‘proper’ food. Indeed, research into the effectiveness of various policies encouraging ‘healthier’ eating practices now recognises that food choices and practices are not necessarily an individual matter, but socially embedded in family and peer relations (Jackson, 2009). Although the durability of family mealtimes and constructions of

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‘proper food’ may act as a ‘brake’ on social change (Jaspers et al, 2008), we do find some indication that alterations to ‘family food scripts’ (Curtis et al, 2009) may be possible when a sense of thrift or a return to bygone days is conjured. In Chapter 9, we consider the role of younger generations in reshaping family food practices as part of our focus on upward transmission. Note 1

In much of Western society, it is more or less taken for granted that children are ratified participants in mealtime conversation – especially in urban middle-class families – but there may be variation in the opportunities for children to participate in dinner talk and the extent to which their contributions are monitored and sanctioned. Varying socialisation agendas within different families may result in ‘different pathways to access to adult discourse’ (Blum-Kulka, 1997: 3). Indeed, Perlman’s (1984) study of the socialisation styles of white middle-class US families identified gendered differences, with mothers being more responsive than fathers to children. However, Blum-Kulka and Snow (1992) found no significant differences in practices of co-narration between children in working- and middle-class US and Israeli homes.

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Introduction As we have seen in Chapters 7 and 8, the home provides a forum in which ideas are not only transmitted ‘downwards’, but also debated and argued over. Parents may try to pass on their beliefs but, as we have seen, they do not always succeed. Young people are also influenced by their friends, classmates, teachers and social media, bringing into the domestic sphere ‘novel’ ideas and capacities. Drawing on our interviews with parents and grandparents, this chapter explores the significance of the ‘upward transmission’ of potentially important skills and ideas from the younger generation to their parents and grandparents. We begin by focusing on the ways in which young people can help their older relatives access a variety of social media tools and platforms, before looking at the ways in which younger generations can prompt reflection on deeply held values and attitudes, and can contribute to a shift in perspectives. Most notably, we detail how the rising prominence of environmental concerns has been brought to the attention of older family members, and how environmentalism enters into the family home through knowledge and practices learnt by younger family members in the classroom. We also explore how discussions with children and grandchildren present an opportunity for parents and grandparents to ‘update’ their perspectives on gender and sexuality.

Taming technology As we saw in Chapter 7, digital technologies and social media are often a source of tension between parents and children, and disagreements about the use of ‘devices’, games and apps have been the focus of some family arguments. However, for those families living a long way from one another, modern forms of communication such as email, Skype and WhatsApp are invaluable for helping different generations feel connected to one another. As we saw in Chapter 4, Veronica uses these

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technologies to keep in touch with her son and his family overseas. Carol’s grandchildren had taught her how to use the Internet and she was proud that she was now able to use a laptop to keep tabs on her children and their families via Facebook: Interviewer: Carol: Interviewer: Carol:

‘Does Duncan kind of keep you in touch with what’s going on?’ ‘Yes, when he remembers, because I send him rude notes. Thank God for laptops, you know. Tap, tap, tap, what is that photograph I have just seen?’ ‘Oh really, so you see stuff on Facebook?’ ‘And he hasn’t told me, then he gets the rude things off me!’

Grandchildren often played a key role in helping their grandparents to get set up with email accounts and teaching them how to use laptops, tablets and smartphones: Gwen:

Interviewer: Gwen:

‘Modern technology. They’ve taught me nearly everything I know about it [laughs]…. I’ve got my own laptop, I’ve got my own, what do you call it? My tablet. So, they, you know, they’re keeping me up to date.’ ‘So, it’s your grandkids that are showing you what to do?’ ‘Yes, they are, and would you believe even my great grandson knows how to work things?… it’s unbelievable, that’s how times have changed, with technology isn’t it?’

Gwen had been an active campaigner for Labour and CND in her youth, and while she no longer felt able to go on marches, she was able to engage with political issues online. She had signed a number of petitions, including one against fox hunting, for example, and also shared petitions with her daughter Ffion: ‘I have signed a few petitions, yes, if it’s something online. My mother … she sees things and then I will join in as well’ (Ffion, mother, Family D). Winnie had first become interested in learning how to use a computer when lessons began in her sheltered accommodation complex. Her motivation to learn intensified when one of her sons and his family went abroad for six months and lent her a laptop to help keep in touch:

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‘When John and Rebecca got married, they went to South America for six months. And they leant me their laptop … so, Mel, that’s Daniel’s wife, did me some diagrams, one, two, three, you know. She did me some diagrams. And I learned from that. To begin with. But that was just, I only wanted to learn, you know … how to do emails … so I could have contact with them when they were in South America.’ (Winnie, grandmother, Family O) When she found that she was “getting on alright with it”, she asked her other son Daniel, who worked in information technology (IT), for his help to get a computer of her own. She started out with a second-hand “throwaway” computer because her son “wasn’t sure” that she would be “any good”, and after using that for several years, she upgraded to a more modern machine. Winnie described how her granddaughter had helped her to connect to the Wi-Fi: “Skye went over, looked at the back and told them what to put on. I mean the children know far more than the parents.” One of the main benefits for Winnie was being able to enlarge text as her eyesight deteriorated: “I really can’t do so much now as I was then because I can’t see so well. Fortunately, I can enlarge, with a computer, you can enlarge it, you see … you can read it when you can’t read print” (Winnie, grandmother, Family O). Like Gwen, Winnie had used her new skills to sign online petitions: “Oh, I’ve signed a petition, yeah, because the Christian Institute do things now and again…. I did one just the other day…. I don’t agree with same-sex marriage…. I signed about that anyway. And I signed about abortion too. I don’t agree with that” (Winnie, grandmother, Family O). Winnie spoke about her computer as an important lifeline out into the wider world; this was especially important for Winnie as her limited mobility meant that she was restricted to socialising with the other residents in her accommodation complex. In addition to writing a residents’ newsletter, being online enabled her to follow her interests and connect with other like-minded people through a virtual writers’ group: ‘I belong to a writer’s group you see … there’s only four of us in the group. It’s a correspondence group because I can’t go out to any meetings. And so, what we’re doing … we write, we write an article of some sort. It’s a non-fiction group I belong to. I could have belonged to a fiction group.… I haven’t got the imagination now to write fiction. But we write a couple of pages to each other. Then

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we all comment on it and what we’ve written.’ (Winnie, grandmother, Family O) In sharing their digital literacy skills, grandchildren took on the role of ‘assistant’ or ‘teacher’. However, this did not always mean that parents and grandparents were universally positive about their grandchildren’s own use of these same technologies. For example, Colleen finds Facebook “useful” but worries about the amount of time that her grandchildren spend online: ‘And things like Facebook and things like that, that’s a bit scary. I know it’s useful as well because I go on there myself. They’re too much into that, I don’t think they live like I did, in the real world. It’s all on that. That’s the one thing that bothers me. Sometimes, you’ve got a job to get a conversation out of them; you’re alright when they haven’t got them. That’s a common thing, isn’t it?’ (Colleen, grandmother, Family B) Similarly, Charlotte, the mother of two teenage daughters, gets almost all of her news online, often via Twitter, but worries about her daughters doing the same thing: Interviewer:

Charlotte:

‘I suppose your girls are probably a bit young to be reading news, but do you know, if they were interested in something, where they would get their information?’ ‘It would definitely be online, yes, I’d probably worry about the validity of some of it [laughter], where Zoe would get it from, but then I suppose it’s only the same thing as Twitter really. I don’t know if you get news feeds on things like Instagram, Snapchat or something different. It would be more sort of, yes, social media that linked up I would imagine.’

As we saw in Chapter 6, children’s use of mobile phones and social media – both symbols of rapid social change – often sparked arguments between children and their parents. Parents were ambivalent about their children’s use of these new communication technologies, in part, because they did not always fully ‘understand’ how they work and the implications of using them:

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‘I find social media difficult. All I can do is … try and bring them up to be the best people that they can be. I think it’s one of the issues in modern society which I don’t fully understand because I don’t do social media … don’t know what influence they’re getting from social media, and I think a lot of parents don’t know that. All we can do … we have discussions about the things that happen on social media, so the sexting and all that sort of stuff. So, we have conversations about how you deal with that sort of thing, but I know that I don’t fully understand it all, about what’s out there.’ (David, father, Family M) ‘It’s very difficult for me to teach them anything about social media because I don’t use it at all … but I just think you just have to be more cautious, you can’t take people at face value as much; you have to be a bit paranoid I guess.’ (John, father, Family J) These quotes from David and John indicate their discomfort about parenting in an area that is unfamiliar to them, or in which their children may know more than they do. However, while parents generally agreed that their children had advanced technological skills, they emphasised that technical capabilities do not equate to having the maturity or criticality to be responsible online. Frankie sought to temper the influence of social media on her children by showing them that “You can’t believe everything that’s around you”, and highlighting the importance of being critical: “Look, exactly the same story, look at the different information here, which one is true?” We return to the distinction between skills and values later on in the chapter.

Social change, gender, sexuality and tolerance Parents and grandparents also spoke about becoming more aware of contemporary political and social issues through discussions with their children. In numerous instances, parents described learning from their children, prompting them to expand their understandings, re-evaluate tacitly held beliefs and reflect on the social changes that had taken place since their own childhoods. In particular, some parents spoke about their children being more accepting of gender identities and sexual preferences. For example, Natasha’s daughter had prompted her to respond in a more tolerant way to diversifying sexual and gender identities:

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‘She’s very, very, aware of being politically correct and accepting of everybody. She goes to a very multicultural school, but also like, you know, when you talk about lesbian, gay, “So what?”, you know? If there’s a boy who dresses up as a girl and wears full make-up, “So what? That’s fine’… yeah, very tolerant … [it has] maybe changed how I react … in a way that a person maybe my age might do, just because of my age, do you know what I mean? Whereas she’s a bit more, “Well, that’s just life mum”, you know?’ (Natasha, mother, Family A) Similarly, Nina described her teenage daughter’s ‘horror’ at sexual abuse scandals surrounding prominent figures in Hollywood, including disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein, and explained how this led Nina to reflect on her own position: ‘She’s got a real moral outrage about some things and you just think, “Yes, maybe I should be outraged”, but because I grew up through it, it just is the norm isn’t it? And it’s not the norm to her. She looks back at things, especially with all these sex allegations and things going on at the moment, she’s horrified, you know?’ (Nina, mother, Family E) This suggests that her daughter’s response drew Nina’s attention to a significant shift in social norms that had taken place from one generation to the next. Children’s reactions to certain controversial social or political issues can make visible these discontinuities and may prompt parents to reassess or ‘update’ tacitly held perspectives that do not align with the passions or frustrations of their children. Conversations within the family home, then, can be seen as a vehicle for parental exploration of emerging social issues in a way that they may not pursue if it were not for their children. This suggests that gender issues are entering the home via younger generations and influencing parental perspectives. Although it was common for parents and grandparents to talk about the ‘worsening’ of social relations over time – an eroding sense of community, less patience and tolerance, and more rudeness and selfishness in society – when it came to their own children, they were more optimistic about changes from one generation to the next. Miranda, for example, expressed her delight when her son asked if he could give his sleeping bag to a man who was living rough, and Eve

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was pleased when her daughter suggested offering a lift to a family who do not have a car: ‘Sometimes, they’ll put ideas in their mind, like yesterday, Rose said we could give these people a lift … to theatre group … a man and his two boys, and they were going to get the bus. It was cold and dark and not very nice, and I was just like, when they have ideas of being more compassionate than I would have been, more thoughtful than I would have been … we did give them a lift and I felt really good about it. I said “thank you” to Rose because I was like, “Thank you for giving me that idea.”’ (Eve, mother, Family C) Miranda attributed her own children’s kindness to their “uncomplicated” way of seeing the world, which was yet to be obfuscated by adulthood. Similarly, David spoke proudly about his son’s diverse friendship group: ‘I find it really quite humbling, when I see the group that they’ve got, a mix of boys and girls and there’s black kids, white kids, there’s gay, straight, and they’re all just mixing together and they all just get on…. I think he’s an awful lot more mature than I was at that age.’ (David, father, Family M) When comparing his generation with that of his children, David felt that “teenagers are much more accepting” and that “schools are better at dealing with” issues of diversity, whether regarding ethnicity, sexuality or gender. Thinking back to his own childhood, David remembered his own father being a very tolerant person, albeit in a different time with different social norms around language: ‘My dad, in particular, would be very much a “live and let live” type. Yeah, so he probably wouldn’t have been necessarily positively promoting, but he would have said, “Just let people live the way they live”, he was very accepting of people, no matter what their sexuality, their marital status, whatever, colour. He was of a generation where sometimes you would have to correct his language [chuckling], but that’s a generational thing, words that they used.’ (David, father, Family M)

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David’s account suggests that a thread of tolerance has run down through the generations within his family but has found different expressions or been enacted in different ways, according to the wider social context. In this sense, the transmission or sharing of views is neither straightforwardly upwards nor downwards, but is a combination of applying certain shared familial values in new ways that reflect shifting social norms. Indeed, it was common for parents to describe how norms around race and ethnicity shifted during their young adulthood, sometimes leading them to distance themselves from their own parents’ views as adults. Similarly, Eve remembered being worried about showing her father her wedding photos because of the multi-ethnic make-up of their church and wedding party: ‘I remember thinking, “I wonder what he’s going to think because our best man is Jamaican.” Two of our groomsmen were black; it was like the church was a whole range of colours. I think my dad was very, and mum to a certain degree, they lived in a very white, British area, and at school, there wasn’t many different colours, different accents. It was quite different … my granddad always said, “East is East, and West is West and the two shouldn’t meet”, and I’m like “no, no”. We’ve always wanted our children to be exposed to different people, different colours.’ (Eve, mother, Family K) Interestingly, Eve seemed a little ambivalent about new social norms around gender identity, describing a friend’s son as “a bit confused”. In the following account, we can see how Eve is grappling with a desire to understand and to be tolerant and accepting, while also hoping that he can get “help”, suggesting that she did not feel fully able to embrace gender fluidity: ‘He’s got very long hair and looks very pretty, and a lot of people think he’s a girl and he’s not bothered by that. I think we need to listen to them. They can get a lot of help these days, can’t they? Whereas before, it would have been like, “Oh, come on love”, I think we just need to, “tolerate” is the wrong word, but accept and listen to people, listen to their concerns and their fears and their confusion because we all get confused. Anyway.’ (Eve, mother, Family K)

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Eve’s account underscores the complexity of issues surrounding the idea of tolerance and inclusion, as well as how many of our perspectives are embedded in social norms specific to the time of our upbringing. Therefore, we must be careful not to overestimate the role of the upward transmission of ideas about tolerance and inclusivity within families. For some parents these discussions may lead to the adoption of new values or the updating of previously held views; however, for others, these discussions were more about helping them to appear to be more politically correct without fundamentally changing their views. For example, Ray had learnt not to bring certain things up with his granddaughters because he knew that it would “cause trouble”. John described the contemporary focus on gender as a “trend” and a “tick-box” exercise rather than an authentic shift in public opinion or practice: ‘Sexuality, I don’t know, I just think the younger kids, well from, I talk to my kids, I just think gender seems to be like a trend at the moment, so I don’t know, everyone’s got to talk about it or doing it, and I’m thinking I’m not sure why…. I don’t know, maybe it’s like a tick-box exercise because every organisation has to show that it’s being, for equality. So then they have to get involved or something, so then they promote it. So then everyone’s promoting it, if that makes sense? So, it has to be put it on your CV, you’ve got to tick the box, or you’ve got to do this or do that. I’m not sure, maybe that’s artificial, I don’t know, to my mind.’ (John, father, Family J)

Informing political views In a minority of cases, parents and grandparents told us that their children or grandchildren influenced their political views and practices. Ffion’s oldest son Sam had studied politics at university and has attended numerous protests and marches, so Ffion felt as though “he knows what he’s talking about”: ‘I do learn things from him, yes. He’s on a different level to what I know, to be honest with you…. When he comes home and we have a chat … I say “Oh, I didn’t know that about, the ins and outs, the real things about certain things that are happening”, you know? He’s a world of information is Sam.’ (Ffion, mother, Family D)

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Sam had also encouraged his mum to explore different sources of news to get a fuller understanding of political issues: ‘Sam tells me you shouldn’t listen to certain channels because you’re not hearing the true news … the BBC … he hasn’t got much faith in them to be honest. As I said, I flick through different channels, and you do learn more on other channels to be honest, you do, what’s going on in the world, that’s what I find … we only hear certain things on the main channels, don’t we?’ (Ffion, mother, Family D) Similarly, Toby, Daniel’s son and Winnie’s grandson, had become the ‘go-to person’ for politics within their family, and Winnie, in particular, relied on him to help her understand the latest developments: ‘My mum, basically nowadays, she rings my son, Toby … he’s 18 now … but he was very interested in politics from when he was about ten…. He had an alarm clock set to the Today programme so he could listen and wake up to John Humphrys. And she’d phone him up and say, “Toby can you advise me who to vote for? Because I’ve got to vote and I don’t know what to do”, which is not really true, but that’s what she’d say: “These are the issues I’m interested in, how do you think I should vote?”’ (Daniel, father, Family O) Although Daniel’s account suggested that his mother knew more about politics than she let on to Toby, Winnie herself described deferring to Toby completely when it came to the EU referendum. She explained that “he was annoyed” because he was not old enough to vote at the time, and as she “didn’t feel strongly” about it, she was happy to be led by him: Winnie: Interviewer: Winnie: Interviewer: Winnie:

‘I think as far as the referendum was concerned … I could have voted for leaving but I voted to stay because that’s what he told me to do.’ ‘So, did you have a big conversation about it?’ ‘Not very big no. I just wanted to know what to do because I didn’t know what to do.’ ‘And did you choose him to talk to because he –? ‘Because he was interested.’

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Winnie’s account can be interpreted in more than one way: it can be read as an example of ‘upward transmission’ in which younger generations are informing and shaping the civic or political practices of their elders; however, it might also be one of the ways in which grandparents can nurture and sustain younger generations’ engagement. Winnie gave agency to Toby’s political convictions by voting on his behalf when he could not.

Environmental concerns As we saw in the exploration of environmental family food values in Chapter 8, ideas about sustainability are prominent in some participants’ accounts. For some, an increased concern with issues of sustainability and environmentalism was prompted by becoming a parent and introducing new life into the world (Muddiman, 2020). However, most parents’ attention was drawn to environmental issues at a later stage via their children’s education at school. For example, Charlotte learned new things about how to live sustainably from her two daughters: ‘I think the children have both sort of had green issues, not forced on them, but they have been discussed and they know a lot about it from school. They get a lot of that sort of environmental education passed on from school, so they know the right things to do.’ (Charlotte, mother, Family R) The upward direction of this intergenerational sharing is reflected in Figure 9.1, where environmental concerns are highlighted in green, travelling up from Charlotte’s (C) daughters Zoe (Z) and Lisa (L) to her and her husband [P]. Again, as with political issues, Ffion described how her oldest son Sam explains “global warming and all the rest of it” to her because he “knows all the facts”. As a result of these discussions, Ffion had subsequently begun to notice “all the rubbish that’s washed up” along the coast when she is walking her dog and felt more aware of environmental issues. Similarly, Bridget explained that the environmental knowledge that her son Cian has picked up at school “has kind of reinforced that at home”. She contrasts this with recollections of her own childhood, when less was known about issues of sustainability: ‘Well, I suppose the education around it wasn’t, you know? It’s kind of been the last 15, 20 years hasn’t it? There’s been a massive push on recycling and the environment and the

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Civil Society and the Family Figure 9.1: Charlotte’s family tree map indicating environmental concerns

carbon footprint. It wasn’t something that was massively on the agenda when I was growing up. Certainly, now, I think it’s the kids that are educating, you know, that twoway learning. Because I can remember Cian coming home from school and saying “If it’s not dirty, wash at 30”, and I’d never heard of that, but it’s something that kind of gets in your head and you remember. So, yes, I think that the education is coming from the bottom up now.’ (Bridget, mother, Family F) Bridget’s account is reflected in her family tree map (see Figure 9.2), where a green arrow points up to her (B) from her son Cian [C]. In fact, it was common for parents to juxtapose the environmental consciousness of their children with their own childhood experiences: ‘I don’t think there was that much awareness when I was growing up. There certainly wasn’t recycling was there? I don’t remember doing recycling apart from putting back the milk bottles or your pop bottles, that’s about the only recycling we did.’ (Nicole, mother, Family N) ‘I’m 40 now, so I am just not sure that we were aware what an impact, maybe somebody was, but I’m not sure we were

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The upward transmission of civic ‘virtues’ Figure 9.2: Bridget’s family tree map indicating environmental awareness

aware quite of the impact that we were having…. I can’t remember when the outcry about the ozone layer was, but it happened when I was a child, at some point.’ (Miranda, mother, Family C) Miranda’s family tree map (see Figure 9.3) demonstrates that although her father Vernon [V] has become more environmentally aware in recent years, Miranda (M) did not attribute her environmental consciousness or that of her husband Nathan [N] to their upbringing. These points indicate that having children may be one way for parents to connect with emerging social, ecological or political issues that they may not otherwise have encountered. Indeed, although parents and grandparents did not often explicitly link their choice of food to environmental concerns (see Chapter 8), there is some evidence of younger generations encouraging the family to eat more sustainably. For example, Nina’s younger daughter wanted to follow a vegan diet because “ethics are quite important to her”. Nina found it “really hard being a mum for a 12-year-old vegan”, especially during family trips or special occasions. She has agreed a compromise with her daughter Suzy, whereby Suzy eats a vegetarian diet and the whole family have adapted to eating “as organically, and as free range” as they can. Daniel (Family O) also explained that he and his wife Mel had been thinking about becoming a vegetarian for some time when his

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Civil Society and the Family Figure 9.3: Miranda’s family tree map indicating environmental awareness

daughter Natalie brought it up after having a lesson in school about battery farming. Despite Daniel and Mel’s assurances that they only bought free-range meat and eggs, Natalie was adamant, and after much discussion, Daniel said, “Now, actually six meals out of seven are vegetarian because our daughter who is still living at home has kind of forced us into it.” Daniel also described how the family’s shared meals were transformed when they decided to “live below the line” for a week. Daniel’s son Toby instigated this activity after reading about it on the Internet: ‘It works out a £1 per person per day  … we did it as a family, we went five times four, that’s £20, so we got £20 and went shopping and bought the things…. It was an incredible thing. What we found is we’d start thinking about where our food came from, about waste, a lot more than we had.’ (Daniel, father, Family O) Daniel emphasised the importance of Toby initially suggesting the challenge as something that the whole family learnt from and as something that brought them closer to one another. He reflected that both of his children had had a profound influence on the ethical and environmental framing of family food practices: “It’s not just the generations coming down, it’s the generations coming up that push as well.” This is illustrated well in Daniel’s family tree map (see Figure 9.4), with arrows going in both directions between Daniel [D], his wife Mel (M), and his children Natalie (N) and Toby [T]. We explore the impact and extent of upward transmission further in

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The upward transmission of civic ‘virtues’ Figure 9.4: Daniel’s family tree map indicating environmental awareness

the following section, relating it to ideas of synergistic learning and role flexibility.

Synergistic learning and role flexibility The accounts of parents and grandparents presented so far in this chapter suggest that younger generations may indeed play an important role in bringing certain political and civic issues into the lives of their parents and grandparents. However, like sociologist David Uzzell (Uzzell, 1999, 2016; Uzzell and Räthzel, 2014), we find a number of factors limit young people’s capacity as ‘agents of change’ in influencing the practices of older generations. Uzzell argues that for the concerns of younger family members to be absorbed by older generations, there must be a pre-existing interest in, or valuing of, those concerns, and parents must be willing for their children to be the ‘expert’ and adopt the role of ‘pupil’. Indeed, while families play an important role in ‘challenging each other in the way they think about the world’ (Uzzell, 2016: 482), there may be limits to the degree of influence that younger generations are able to exert over their elders. Role flexibility We see this type of role flexibility, or reversal – where parents or grandparents become the ‘learners’ – in Daniel’s account of being encouraged to try ‘living below the line’ by his son; however, in the majority of cases, the practices of parents are informed by their own

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parents, suggesting a downward, rather than upward, transmission of values and practices. We also suggest that role flexibility is easier in some areas than others. The sharing of technical skills from younger to older generations, for example, seems to be viewed as fairly ‘normal’ and uncontentious among the families we interviewed (notwithstanding concerns about how these skills were being used by children and teenagers). However, in relation to the upward transmission of views or values, our data suggest a more complex interplay between the generations. In some families, younger generations appear to be empowered to share their views and perspectives to inform those of older generations (seen in how Winnie used her vote in the EU referendum to express her grandson Toby’s choice). However, in other families, this would be regarded as a very unorthodox approach to political participation, as we saw in Chapter 7. Victor voted ‘leave’ in the EU referendum despite his children’s and grandchildren’s wishes precisely because of the conviction that he was doing what was best for them. We suggest that the degree of role flexibility may be linked to Bernstein’s (1971) distinction between positionally oriented and person-oriented families. Children in person-oriented families may have more opportunities to set the agenda and steer family values than those in positionally oriented families. Social class is also important when considering the moral values that underpin changes in household practices: the ethical and environmental perspectives of children must be reconciled with the finite resources of both time and money, and some families may be more able to make changes that increase household running costs. Pre-existing receptiveness Prior research indicates that parental appreciation of nature and the natural world can make children more aware of environmental issues, and, likewise, that children may be able to engage receptive parents (Payne, 2005, 2010; Chawla and Cushing, 2007; Chawla, 2009). In the case of Daniel’s family, as we saw in Chapter 5, Daniel was engaged with various ethical and environmental practices through his Christian faith. It therefore seems probable that while it was the actions of his daughter Natalie that ultimately triggered the family’s move towards vegetarianism, the seeds had already been sewn earlier in Daniel’s life, making him more receptive to change. Daniel’s account supports the idea that early family experiences can ‘normalise’ relatively unusual behaviours. Indeed, in her study of UK climate activists, Hards (2011) found that a ‘conducive upbringing’

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was central to participants’ narratives. We also suggest that since the late 1990s (when Uzzell was conducting his research), it has become more acceptable to discuss environmental issues within the family home and is no longer something that takes place only in ‘certain types of families’ (Uzzell, 2016: 483). The sustainability agenda has gained significant momentum in the two intervening decades, and the accounts of parents and grandparents in our study suggest that environmental issues are felt to be much more part of their family values and a basis for everyday discussion. Participants’ accounts of being introduced to contemporary ideas about gender and sexuality also indicate that while children certainly help them to update the older generations’ perspectives, they are building on pre-existing values of tolerance and inclusivity. Parents who supported racial and ethnic inclusivity in their youth are now being called upon by their children to expand this sense of tolerance to include a wider set of categories around sexuality and gender. Here, we might argue that younger generations play an important role in linking older generations to contemporary issues and help them to familiarise themselves with aspects of wider social change. However, younger generations’ motivation and capacity to engage with contemporary social issues will, in turn, be influenced by their own upbringing and their socialisation within the family home. It may make sense, then, to move away from a simplistic model of ‘upward’ or ‘downward’ transmission in favour of Jessel et  al’s (2004) conceptualisation of ‘synergistic learning interactions’, in which parents, grandparents and children all learn from one another.

Conclusion The episodes of upward transmission or synergistic learning that we have described in this chapter indicate that there are opportunities for younger generations to bring new ideas and agendas into the family home, with implications for political, civic and environmental engagement. Being a parent or grandparent can therefore, in theory, help you to engage with contemporary social/civic issues and to see them in a different light. However, the degree to which (grand)parents’ views and values seem to be influenced by their (grand)children appears to be dependent on both the older generations’ pre-existing receptiveness to certain issues, and the degree to which there is space within the family hierarchy for synergistic learning. We must be cautious about the idea of ‘trickle-up’ environmentalism, in which younger generations educate and mobilise older generations, as the agency for

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younger generations to encourage more sustainable behaviours within the family setting is likely to be limited by existing power relations. However, we can be optimistic about the role of multigenerational learning in helping to bridge generational divides in a way that helps both parents and children to contextualise contemporary issues and to think creatively about how to move towards a more socially responsible and inclusive organisation of society.

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Reframing civil society and the family

Introduction This book set out to explore the relationship between the family and civil society. Along with Ginsborg (2013), we have argued that the role of the family in civil society has been largely overlooked in the social sciences, with the two domains often being presented as completely separate and, in some cases, as oppositional to one another. Our goal has been to empirically investigate the extent to which family relationships and connections can help us to understand civic and political engagement. Rather than use this concluding chapter to provide a summary of each chapter, we revisit the overarching research questions outlined in Chapter 1 to consider both what we have learnt and where we should look next.

Does the family strengthen or weaken civil society? Many of the sociological representations of both civil society and the family are highly value-laden. The public–private binary through which the relationship between civil society and the family is conceptualised tends to assume that civic virtues belong to civil society. In Chapter 2, we outlined how some of the positive attributes that are often associated with civil society are contrasted with the far less positive attributes of the family. All of the ‘good’ words belong to civil society: public, collective, voluntary and altruistic. Due to the supposedly oppositional status of the family and civil society, the family takes on all of their antonyms: private, individualistic, coercive and selfish. These attributions are deeply problematic. Chambers and Kopstein (2001) draw attention to instances of ‘bad civil society’. They give the World Church of the Creator in the US as an example, one member of which went on a mass shooting rampage targeting Jews, African-Americans and Asian-Americans. Since Chambers and Kopstein wrote their article, there have been many more such incidents where members of fundamentalist and far-right movements

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have targeted minorities. Here in the UK, the English Defence League would be one example. The consequences of ‘bad’ civil society are far more serious than advocates of civil society acknowledge. Additionally, as Phillips (2002) points out, members of civil society organisations bring with them their existing inequalities of resources, information and power. Indeed, civil society may be more rather than less coercive than other institutions. Just as the moral superiority of civil society has been questioned, so has the research reported here also shown that the family is not essentially private, individualistic, coercive and selfish. The participants in our research described a range of behaviours and practices that cannot be categorised by any of these terms. In many cases, their actions might be better described as publicly minded, collective, voluntary and altruistic. Of course, we acknowledge that the accounts that families generate about their activities and motivations are likely to highlight the more positive messages that they wish to convey. However, sociological accounts all too often focus on the dark side of the family. While not denying the significance that families play in social and cultural reproduction, we hope that this book has shown that families might also be agents of change. The home is an important locus of ‘family life’ in contemporary society and absorbs significant time and emotional resources. However, families not only absorb time and energy, but also generate emotional resources that drive social actions. As Jamieson (2016: 337) points out: ‘Agency, the capacity for action, is anchored in the emotionally charged intimacy of embodied personal relationships, and that the direction and organisation of much social life is enmeshed with and draws energy and direction from such personal relationships.’ Much of the ‘biographical baggage’ of family relationships – entailing gut feelings and nurturing capacities for collective action – has been lost in contemporary analyses of civil society. What emerges in our participants’ accounts is the intertwining of the commitment to close family members with a commitment to wider social interests. Far from competing with each other, they can be seen to feed each other. Putting aside engagement in ‘bad civil society’ (Chambers and Kopstein, 2001), of which we have no evidence among our participants, it is clear that our young people, their parents and their grandparents undertake various kinds of civic engagement because they think it is a ‘good thing’ – either to help others or because it is a cause they believe in. As indicated in Chapter 1, we had anticipated that we would find activities that might be interpreted as ‘self-interested’ rather than ‘purely’ altruistic, and we were prepared to argue against

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such an interpretation. However, we found very few instances that might be interpreted in this way. Generally, the actions described by our research participants were about benefiting others, not themselves. Of course, this does not mean that they did not gain satisfaction from this engagement, but neither they nor their family members were usually among the intended beneficiaries. In short, we think a case can be made to claim that the family is an important crucible for, rather than the enemy of, civic virtues. On the basis of the empirical research presented in this book, the family strengthens rather than weakens civil society.

How do families ‘transmit’ civic virtues? Having established that families play an important role in fostering civic virtues, it should not be assumed that this process is straightforward. Our empirical work confirms the results of other research in revealing the importance of grandmothers and mothers in the transmission of values. However, it is certainly not a case of simply ‘handing down’ family values through the generations. The family trees that we saw in Chapter 4 illustrate the messiness of intergenerational transmission, detailing ruptures and discontinuities as much as the intergenerational sharing of values and practices. Nowhere is the uncertainty of intergenerational transmission more clearly exemplified than in the challenges that our grandparents and parents described in passing down their religious faith (see Chapter 5). A whole range of factors contribute to these ruptures. Values, dispositions and routines are challenged and changed by significant lifecourse events, including marriage, (grand)parenthood and retirement, in addition to bereavement, geographic relocation, redundancy and periods of ill health. In particular, the combining of two sets of family values following marriage or partnership often seems to create turbulence. In addition to family-related events, young people and their parents are ‘pulled’ by their peers and work colleagues into different circles and allegiances that can affect their perspectives and opportunities for civic engagement. As we noted in Chapter 4, these circumstances are all set against a backdrop of continuous social change and shifting cultural norms within society, resulting in dizzying levels of complexity. We found Miles-Touya and Rossi’s (2016) threefold typology of transmission helpful: our parents contributed (with varying degrees of success) to ‘vertical’ (intergenerational) transmission; schools, universities, workplaces and civil society organisations themselves

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contributed to ‘horizontal’ (peer-to-peer) transmission; and ‘opaque’ transmission was prompted by significant personal or macro-events, for example, at the time we were doing our research, there was much debate over ‘Brexit’ and around an impending visit by US President Donald Trump. We have deliberately taken a broad definition of what it means to be ‘engaged’ with civil society. As Ekman and Amnå (2012: 286) proposed, activities such as taking an interest in politics or recycling have a latent political dimension that may lead to more manifest forms of civic and political engagement. We think it is possible to extend Ekman and Amnå’s argument and consider ‘latency’ not only in terms of the individuals, but also in terms of a form of ‘familial latency’, in which the values, practices and interactions of older family members may influence the participation of younger generations. If we take this broad definition, which includes orientations towards civil society as well as actual practices, then all of our family interviewees, and the overwhelming majority of our survey participants, were engaged with civil society. Using Lahire’s (2003: 329) framework, it is clear that our participants ‘have developed a broad array of dispositions, each of which owes its availability, composition, and force to the socialization process in which it was acquired’. We are yet to distil exactly how these dispositions are translated into actions. As Lahire cautions, it is dangerous to assume that a disposition to believe will lead to a disposition to act. Nevertheless, just because we are unclear about how the gap between belief and action arises does not mean that we should ignore beliefs. Dispositions to act will not develop in a vacuum. Our research also shows the importance of external triggers for civic engagement. Some of our participants can be described as what Schudson (1996, 1998) calls ‘monitorial citizens’. Rather than routinely engaging in civil society, they take an ‘anticipative stand’, keeping abreast of social and political developments and being moved to act only when they think it is necessary to do so. In thinking about processes of inculcating civic virtues, we were keen to explore whether some families were more or less effective in this. It does not appear to us that there is any straightforward relationship between family ‘types’ in terms of the level of engagement with civil society – at least not from the survey data or among our small and, to some extent, self-selecting interviewees. Certainly, there was no clear-cut difference that could be attributed to social class. This is not to say that all families are equally ‘engaged’ – those families with strong connections with church organisations appear to be more

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engaged in various kinds of voluntary work than those without such connections. As we saw in Chapter 5, our young people who have inherited a religious affiliation are more likely than their non-religious counterparts to be involved in a range of ‘civic’ activities, including associational membership, volunteering and donating money. However, our ‘religious’ families were not necessarily more politically engaged. As discussed in Chapter 7, it also appears that some families seem to actively celebrate political discussion and debate, which may contribute to skills of argumentation and persuasion – skills that are useful in civil society. This might indicate that some families are more ‘open’ or ‘closed’ than others (Ginsborg, 2008), and that some have personoriented rather than positional modes of control (Bernstein, 1971) within the family that may have implications for active engagement in civil society. However, we certainly could not divide our families into two types. It is also difficult to categorise some families as ‘active’ and some as ‘inactive’ because their engagement with civil society shifts over time as they manage the contingencies of family life. It is probably more accurate to talk about changes in the nature, rather than the level, of civic engagement.

How does the family link individuals to civil society? It is, of course, the case that individuals inhabit both families and civil society. However, we have been interested to explore whether and how the family dimension, rather than, for example, the labour market dimension, of an individual’s biography contributes to civil society. In other words, in what ways do families act as a key link in Ginsborg’s (2013) ‘golden chain’ between individuals, civil society and the democratic state? The importance of the family in the golden chain is most evident in the roles of women. Due to the alleged boundary between the public and the private, women’s relationship with civil society is often considered to be one of relative exclusion. Indeed, feminist scholars have tended to focus on ‘female liberation from the family’ (Ginsborg, 2013: 18, emphasis in original). There is little research that has considered the role of women as family members – mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters and cousins – because this ‘relegates’ them to the domestic rather than the public sphere. Yet, as we discussed in Chapter 6, the evidence from the accounts of the mothers and grandmothers in our study is that they are active participants along many directions. To some extent, their civic and political practices have been less visible, often taking place in the informal community

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of domestic settings. The lower visibility of these caring activities may also lead to their practices being undervalued or overlooked as just what women do. However, perhaps most crucially, their role within the orbit of the home is foundational ‘work’ in preparing the next generation of citizens: the level of engagement, interest, apathy or activism of offspring will, to a great extent, be informed by the character of these familial bonds. Therefore, the obligations of domestic life are not at odds with, but are at the heart of, civil society. Experiences of family life, in particular, the lifecourse transitions associated with parenthood and grandparenthood, also have a bearing on engagement with civil society. While it might be argued that family responsibilities reduce the time available for participation with current affairs or political issues beyond the family home – especially in the initial stages of caring for very young children – parenthood itself triggers new forms of civic engagement. Indeed, some of our participants had no engagement prior to having children, but their new responsibilities made them more aware of community issues and local activities concerning their children’s welfare (Muddiman, 2020). Our conversations with parents also indicated that parenthood can bring about a subtle reorientation towards civil society, that is, a shift in mindset prompted by bringing new life into the world. Although we would not wish to overstate the extent of ‘trickleup’ environmentalism, our parents spoke about experiencing a greater sense of responsibility and described how their attention was drawn to issues of sustainability. These were not the only changes in mindset described by parents. In numerous instances, parents described learning from their children, prompting them to expand their understandings, re-evaluate tacitly held beliefs and reflect on the social changes that had taken place since their own childhood. As discussed in Chapter 9, the youngest generation of participants helped their parents and grandparents with new technology, enabling them to get involved with forms of online activism. Young people also brought ‘new’ opinions into the home, for instance, around gender and sexuality.

Is the domestic sphere a political space? As we noted in Chapter 1, from a feminist perspective, the family has always been a political space in the sense that it has often been underpinned by economic and cultural norms that have subjugated women. However, we hope to have shown here that the family is

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political in another sense. The domestic sphere appears to offer a forum in which alternative values, beliefs and practices are contested. Within our small sample of families, just over half conformed to the conventional ‘nuclear’ family of two cohabiting biological parents and a handful of children. Furthermore, as we noted in Chapter 1, even if ‘assortative mating’ leads to some kinds of ‘homogamy’ between couples, the shared characteristics are often only along one dimension and are certainly unlikely to be shared with in-laws and their siblings. In general, there was remarkable heterogeneity within the families in terms of politics and religion. In terms of the implications for civil society, it may be that the differences within families are more important than shared characteristics. Certainly, disagreement seems to be more conducive to generating debate than agreement. As we saw in Chapter 7, even though most domestic arguments concern domestic matters, there appears to be a connection between the frequency or absence of arguments in the home and young people’s levels of civic and political engagement. While not downplaying some of the potentially negative aspects of family arguments, this association is important in showing how what goes on inside the home has consequences for what goes on in civil society. It would certainly also suggest that civility, especially enforced civility, is unlikely to foster dispositions to engage in civil society. Our data would suggest that families without arguments, especially when silences derive from fear of conflict or respect for the ‘privacy’ of personal beliefs, may not enable young people to find their voice outside of the home. Clearly, the research reported here is just a shapshot in time and includes only a relatively small number of participants from South and West Wales. However, it is clear from our data that various kinds of civic activism are reaching into and out of the domestic sphere. Many social movements are now concerned not with the ‘grand narratives’ of labour or nations, but with lifestyle choices. The connection between individual actions and global consequences has been highlighted by environmental campaigns, and as some of the discussions between the families in our study reveal, the battleground is increasingly in the domestic sphere of the home. In short, the vibrancy of debate within households, the ‘upward’ transmission of new perspectives from young people to their parents and grandparents, and the increasing translocation of global challenges into the domestic sphere makes it possible to suggest that the family has become a site, possibly the principal site, for the development and regeneration of civil society.

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Concluding remarks In conclusion, we believe that the relationship between the family and civil society merits continued empirical investigation. This research not only increases the sophistication of current conceptualisations of the relationship between the state, the family and civil society, but also provides a lens on family that makes its pro-social dimensions visible and valorises the capacity of families, as collective units, to make a difference. We certainly hope that we have shown that the relationship cannot be dealt with by simply placing the family in the private sphere and civil society in the public sphere. The ‘boundary’ between the two spheres is at least permeable, and possibly very porous or even non-existent. Family members – not just as individuals who also happen to be members of families, but also in their familial roles – engage with civil society along many dimensions and directions. Families transmit particular dispositions and orientations from one generation to the next. They inculcate particular skills, afford access to social networks outside the family and provide a social space in which ideas and practices can be shared and developed. Far from diminishing civil society, it is equally plausible to argue that families strengthen civil society.

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196

Index Note: Page numbers for figures and tables appear in italics.

A Abbott, P. 16 admiration 105, 106, 107 adolescence 43, 52, 69, 125 affective beliefs 52 agency 26, 68, 169, 175–6, 178 agents of change 173, 178 age range, parents and grandparents 36 age status 135 Allen, G. 26, 27, 100 allotments 152–3 altruism 9, 14, 49 ambivalence, intergenerational 126 Amnå, E. 8, 50, 180 animal products 154–5 Arato, A. 14, 16 arguments 125–40, 149–50, 183 associationalism 2 associational membership 133 associative activities 14, 21, 22, 76, 181 associative qualities 17 assortative mating 8, 183 asynchronicity 142, 144, 145, 157

B baking 151, 153 Barber, B.R. 17, 18 beanpole families 7 beliefs 52, 159, 163, 180, 182, 183 and education and workplace 69 parents’ 62 political 136 religious 3, 50, 75, 90, 91, 92, 97 and the church 93 organised 89, 95, 98 believing 84–5, 89, 91–3, 94, 95, 97 belonging 82–4, 89, 91–2, 94–5, 97 Berger, B. 8 Bernstein, B. 5, 135, 138, 174 blue-collar jobs 45

Blum-Kulka, S. 142, 146–7 bonding capital 148 bonds, family 15, 116–17, 141 boomerang families 7 bounded mobility 58 Bowling alone (Putnam) 8 boys and arguments 131 and civic engagement 99, 114 Brannen, J. 126, 142 Brexit 2, 180 Buddhism 86

C caring 104–5, 107, 109, 110, 123, 124 and civic values 111–12 undervalued 182 Carter, S.L. 14, 76, 97, 134–5 Chambers, P. 76, 177 change agents of 173, 178 receptive to 174–5 charity 76, 77, 78, 181 child citizen 18 childhood 18 children 18, 30, 43, 162–3 and education 54 and environmental concerns 169–7, 171–2, 174 and parents 28, 54–5, 163–5, 182 political views 167–9 protection of 16 and rebellious period 56–7 and religion 87 see also young people Christianity 81 Christians 77, 78, 79, 85–6, 87 churches 82–4, 89–90, 93, 94–5 church organisations 180–1 civic action 52, 68, 137 civic associations 21, 23

197

Civil Society and the Family civic engagement 8–9, 79, 99, 113–15, 178–9, 181–2 in the family home 49, 66, 109 and family mealtimes 150 and lifecourse 43, 52–3 and religion 76–8, 80, 81–2, 96, 97, 98 civic responsibility 52 civic values 49–50, 99, 112, 149, 157 civic virtues 4, 5, 44, 179–81 civility 127, 134–5, 140, 148, 183 Civility: Manners, morals, and the etiquette of democracy (Carter) 127 civil society organisations 133, 179–80 Clark, D. 27 class 45, 49, 174, 180 closed families 5, 181 closeness 103–4, 105, 107, 110, 111, 113–14, 145 clubs 21, 77, 82, 84, 85, 115, 142 coercion 22, 23, 97–8 cognitive skills 149 Cohen, J.L. 14, 16 collective responsibility 17 commonalities 105, 106, 107 common good 15 communality, family 107–9 communication technology 143–4 communities engaging with through food 153, 157 and religion 84, 94–5 community gardens 153 community of resistance 118 co-narration 149 confidence 51, 68 conflict 125–40, 183 Connidis, I.A. 126 conservative values 20 conversational skills 148–9 conversational styles 150–1 cooking 151–2, 153 courtesy 135 Crow, G. 26, 27, 100 cue-giving 51, 52 cultural norms 6, 50, 56, 74, 179, 182 cultural values 64–5

D Davie, G. 89, 93 Davis, K. 126, 132 Day, A. 94 debate 149–50, 181, 183 democratic engagement 18, 19 demographic variables 48 DeVault, M. 141–2 digital technologies 159–63 Dinas, E. 51 discipline 71–2 dispositions 4–5, 180, 183 dissent encouraging 137–8, 139 lack of 135–6 diverse families 17 domestic arguments 125–40, 149–50, 183 domestic labour, division of 48 domestic sphere 182–3 see also home donations 76, 78, 181 Donzelot, J. 15, 16 downward transmission 174 see also vertical transmission dynamic family relationships 56–8

E Eberly, D.E. 14 education 36, 48, 49, 54, 69–70, 74, 101 Edwards, B. 66 Ekman, J. 8, 50, 180 emotional closeness 103–4, 105, 107, 110, 111, 113–14 English Defence League 178 environmental concerns 1, 153–4, 169–72, 173, 174–5, 182 equality 73, 112–13, 121 ethical concerns 85, 132, 142, 146, 156, 174 and food 153, 171, 172 ethnicity 36, 166 Eto, M. 17, 21–3, 113 European Union (EU), referendum 1–2, 43, 168 exclusions 16, 181

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Index

F Facebook 160, 162 fair trade 154, 156–7 faith 5, 31, 36, 44, 59, 63, 75–98 see also religion faith schools 94 familial latency 8, 66, 180 families in survey 32 family arguments 125–40, 149–50, 183 family bonds 15, 116–17, 141 family closeness 103–4, 105, 107, 110, 111, 113–14, 145 family discussion 149–50 family home 26–7, 36–7, 49–50, 66, 109, 178 family inclusivity 107–8 family mapping 37–42 family meals 141, 142–3, 144, 145–51, 157–8 family memories 146 family norms 65 family politics 51 see also politics family practices 5, 20, 27–8, 49, 50 family trees 37–42 family types 5 family values 16, 28 see also values farmers’ markets 153 far-right movements 7, 177–8 fast food 142 fathers 51, 112, 129, 130–1 Federici, Silvia 124 Feeding the Family (DeVault) 141–2 female family members 99–124 feminists 15–16 Finch, J. 27 Flammang, J.A. 113, 127, 134–5, 146, 148, 149 Foley, M.W. 66 food banks 152 food blogs 153 food practices 112, 141–58, 171–2 food waste 154, 155–6 foodwork 151–2 Fox et al 51 Frankenberg, R. 26–7

Fraser, N. 17, 18 freedoms 71 free school meals (FSM) 44 free will 2, 55 Freise, M. 18 fundamentalist movements 177–8 Furneaux, C. 80 Furstenberg, F.F. 100

G Gauthier, A.H. 100 gender equality 73, 112–13, 121 gender identity 163–4, 166, 167, 175 gender roles, traditional 45 generosity 49, 148 Gilliat-Ray, S. 87 Gillis, J.R. 3–4 Ginsborg, P. 5, 15, 101, 123, 157, 177 and golden chain 2, 23, 181 girls and arguments 131 and civic engagement 99 and political engagement 79 Glasius, M. 19–20 golden chain 2, 23, 181 grandchildren 106, 107, 159–61 granddaughters 72, 107, 121, 147–8, 151, 152, 167 grandfathers 106, 112, 149–50 see also grandparents grandmothers 30, 102–4, 105, 106, 109, 111–12 and baking 151 and civic virtues 179 and cooking 152 and education 54, 101 strong women 115–16 and table manners 147–8 see also grandparents grandparenthood 6 grandparents 29, 30, 34, 35, 36, 45, 89–90, 105 and arguments 129 and changes during their lifetime 69 and civic engagement 114 and discipline 72

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Civil Society and the Family grandparents (continued) and family mealtimes 143, 144 and freedoms 71 and grandchildren 106, 107 and intended transmission 51 leading by example 57–8 and political views 168–9 and recycling 155–6 and religion 86–7, 88, 91, 92–3, 96–7 and technology 159–62 grandsons 107, 123, 149, 151, 168 see also grandchildren The Guardian 2

intergenerational influences 47 intergenerational injustice 1–2 intergenerational justice 1 intergenerational rifts 1–2 intergenerational similarities 28, 47 intergenerational tensions 43 intergenerational transmission 28, 50–1, 52–3, 85–8, 96, 122–3, 179 International Criminal Court 19 internationalisation 58 interpersonal harmony 150 Islam 87 see also Muslims

J H Habermas, J. 15 Hallers-Haalboom et al 129 Halsey, A.H. 2, 14 Hards, S. 174–5 harmonious families 66 Hogerbrugge, M. 9 home 26–7, 36–7, 49–50, 66, 109, 178 home life 26, 64 homemakers, female 100–2 homogamy 8, 183 hooks, b. 118 Hopkins et al 90 horizontal differences 62 horizontal ties 17 horizontal transmission 48, 49, 73, 180 household chores/responsibilities 112, 113, 130–1, 132 housework 100 Howell, J. 16–17, 18

I inclusion 17, 167 inclusivity 107–8, 175 inequalities 3, 4, 17, 19, 98, 178 influence, parental 54–5 Ingold, T. 40 instrumental volunteering 9 intergenerational ambivalence 126 intergenerational conflict 126 intergenerational discussions 149 intergenerational inequalities 98

Jackson, P. 142 Jamieson, L. 26, 27, 28, 154, 178 Jennings, K. 51 Jennings et al 52 Jessel et al 175 justice 1, 7, 15, 18, 19–20, 56, 79

K Keane, J. 18 kinship relationships 25–6 Knight et al 151, 152 Kopstein, J. 177

L Lahire, B. 4, 180 Langton, K. 51 latency 8, 180 the Left 3, 7, 19, 20 lifecourse 43, 53, 74, 179, 182 and changing values 55, 56 and religion 87 linguistic skills 149 lobbying organisations 21 locally produced foods 154 love 15 Lüscher, K. 126

M male-headed nuclear families 17, 18, 101 mapping, family 37–42 Mason, J. 23, 42

200

Index maternal grandmothers 30 McMullin, J.A. 126 mealtimes 141, 142–3, 144, 145–51, 157–8 meanings 27–-8 meat 154, 155 memories, family 146 middle class 44, 135 Miles-Touya, D. 48–9, 73, 179 misogyny 19 mobile phones 132 mobility 45, 58 monitorial citizens 8, 180 moral dispositions 52, 113, 115 Morgan, D. 27 mothers 30, 51 and arguments 129, 130–2 and caring roles 105, 111–12 and children’s education 54 and civic engagement 113–15 and civic virtues 179 and parenting 101 multigenerational families 142 multigenerational learning 176 Muslims 77, 78, 79, 86, 87 mutualism 14, 15

N nationality 36 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) 19 nuclear family 7, 17, 18, 183

O occupation 45, 48, 100–1 see also workplace Ochs et al 149 O’Connell, R. 142 opaque transmission 48–9, 73, 180 open-door policy 108–9 open families 5, 181 opinion formation 14, 135, 136–7, 138, 146, 182 organic food 154 organised religion 89–90, 95, 98 see also religion outreach work 83

P parenthood 6, 44, 48, 57, 100, 182 parenting 55, 101, 112–13 parents 29, 30, 31, 33, 36, 45, 89–90, 106 attitude to parenthood 44 and children 28, 54–5, 182 and civic engagement 79–80 and conflict 126 and discipline 71–2 and environmental concerns 169–72 and family mealtimes 142–3, 144, 147 influenced by their parents 62, 173–4 and political engagement 49, 51, 79, 167–8 and recycling 155–6 and religion 76–7, 86–7, 88, 91–2, 94, 96–7 and social change 163–5 and time children spend online 162–3 and vertical transmission 179 Pateman, C. 15, 124 peer-to-peer transmission 48, 74, 180 person-oriented families 5, 135, 138, 181 Phillips, A. 16, 19, 123 phones 132 pillar of representation 66 Pillemer, K. 126 plastic waste 1, 156 political associations 21 political correctness 167 political engagement 2, 52, 53, 54, 76, 78–9, 134 political ideologies 44 political Left 20 political parties 21 political Right 20 political space 182–3 politics 14, 51, 52, 62, 66–8, 135–7, 181 and arguments 139 discussed at family mealtimes 149–50 and influence of parents 49 and values 16

201

Civil Society and the Family politics (continued) views 36, 59–61, 63–5, 167–9 and women 117–23 positionally oriented families 5, 135–6, 174, 181 power relations 127, 176 pragmatic socialisation 147 primary socialisation 47, 49, 74 privacy of personal beliefs 136–7, 140, 183 private associations 21 private interests 18–19, 22–3 private sphere 13, 15, 27 pro-family groups 19–20 professional jobs 45 public associations 21 public good 15, 49 public interests 22–3 public sphere 3, 13, 14, 15–16, 22, 127 Putnam, R. 8, 108, 142

Q Quintelier et al 51

R receptiveness, pre-existing 174–5 recipe books 153 recycling 1, 155–6 referendum, EU 1–2, 43, 168 relational ambivalence 126 relational work 28 relationship status, parents and grandparents 36 religion 3, 31, 36, 44, 50, 59, 63, 75–98 and intergenerational transmission 52, 179 and young people 181 re-partnering 39 resources 27 respect 135 the Right 3, 7, 19, 20 role flexibility 173–4 Rossi, D. 48–9, 73, 179

S same-sex parents 7 same-sex partnerships 18

schoolchildren 29 see also children schools 44, 69–70, 179–80 Schudson, M. 8, 180 secondary socialisation 69–71 secularisation 43, 52, 75, 90, 97 self-belief 51 self-determination 51 self-interest 7, 9, 10, 15, 16, 49, 178–9 self-organising associations 21 semantic provisioning 152 separations, relationships 39 sexism 19 sexual harassment 72 sexual identities 163–4 sexuality 175 sexual misconduct 19 shared interests 104 shared meals 145–6 siblings 32, 59, 61, 62, 64 Sikhs 77 similarity, with other family members 104 single-parent households 7, 131–2 skills 27 social action 52, 79–80, 178 social activism 23, 76 social awareness 113–15 social bonds 27 social capital 98 social change 3, 4, 25–6, 55–6, 71–3, 74, 132 and family mealtimes 142, 157–8 and sexual and gender identities 163–4, 175 social class 45, 49, 174, 180 socialisation 146–7 social justice 18, 19, 20, 79 social media 132, 159, 160, 162, 163 social mobility 45 social norms 65, 71–2 social participation, and religion 77, 78 societal values 64–5 socio-economic disadvantage 44 socio-economic status 49 special occasions 145 the state 16

202

Index storytelling 149 Streeter, R. 14 strong women 115–16 suffrage movement 120–1 super-joiners 77 sustainability 1, 169–70, 175, 182 Swiss-Germans 150–1 synergistic learning 173, 175

and cooking 153 and religion 76–8, 80, 81, 84, 92 voting civic duty 52 EU referendum 43

W

T table manners 147–8 technology 159–63 television 142, 143 temperance movement 115 temporal extension 113–15 Thompson, A. 76 thoughtfulness 148 thrift, sense of 154–5, 156 time, and changing values 55–6 tolerance 164, 165–7, 175 traditional gender roles 45 traits 51, 52 ‘trickle-up’ environmentalism 175–6, 182 trust 66–7, 68 Twitter 162

U upward transmission 159–76, 183 US 14, 142, 177 Uzzell, D. 173, 175

Wales, and religion 75–6 Wallace, C. 16 Walzer, M. 17 Watts, R.J. 150–1 Weiner, M.H. 127 Welsh Revival 75–6, 86, 115 White British participants 31 white middle class 44 white working class 44 Williams, C.R. 76 women 99–124 and civil society 16 and politics 68 roles 181–2 strong 115–16 subjugation of 17 women’s groups 19 women’s rights 20, 121 working class 44, 45, 135 Working Families 20 workplace 48, 69, 70–1, 179–80 World Church of the Creator 177 world families 142 world making 25–6

V values 4, 27–8, 50, 51–2, 64–5, 115 changing over time 55–6, 74 and faith 84–5 in the political arena 16 and practices 111–12 veganism 155, 171 vegetarians 154, 171–2 vertical distinctions 62 vertical ties 17 vertical transmission 48, 49, 73, 179 virtues 7, 14, 44, 179–81 Voas, D. 88 voluntary associations 21, 22 volunteering 9, 20, 109, 110–11, 123, 148, 181

Y Young, I. 21 Young, M. 2, 14 young people and arguments 129–32 and civic engagement 80 and clubs 77 in conflict with parents 126 and mothers 105 and political engagement 78–9 and religion 87, 88, 90, 181 and social participation 78

Z Zimmer, A. 18

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The Civil Society and Social Change series provides interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives on the rapidly changing nature of civil society at local, regional, national and global scales. The series comprises a core set of edited volumes reporting on research findings from across the Wales Institute of Social & Economic Research, Data & Methods (WISERD) Civil Society Research Centre. Series editors: Ian Rees Jones, Cardiff University, Mike Woods, Aberystwyth University and Paul Chaney, Cardiff University

“A timely exploration of how families connect to civic society. Rich in theoretical insight and empirical detail, it guides the reader to a deeper understanding of issues central to everyday life.” Hilary Graham, University of York “A ground-breaking piece of sociological research which makes a notable contribution to the growing debate about the political role of the family. Outstanding.” Paul Ginsborg, University of Florence “A timely and unique contribution, this book links family life with fundamental national and global concerns about civic beliefs and engagement.” Julia Brannen, UCL Institute of Education The relationship between the family and civil society has always been complex, with the family often regarded as separate from, or even oppositional to, civil society. Taking a fresh empirical approach, Muddiman, Power and Taylor reveal how such separation underestimates the important role the family plays in civil society. Considering the impact of family events, dinner table debates, intergenerational transmission of virtues and the role of the mother, this enlightening book draws on survey data from young people, their parents and grandparents, and extended family interviews, to uncover how civil engagement, activism and political participation are inherited and fostered within the home. Esther Muddiman is a postdoctoral researcher at WISERD. Sally Power is a professor in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University and Director of WISERD. Chris Taylor is Academic Director of the Cardiff University Social Science Research Park.

ISBN 978-1-4473-5552-6

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