What do these competing tendencies explain?

According to Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, the answer to the question ‘What do these competing tendencies explain?’ is simple: love. They claim that today’s ‘battle of the sexes’ is the clearest possible indication of people’s ‘hunger for love’. People marry for the sake of love and divorce for the sake of love; they engage in an endless cycle of hoping, regretting and trying again. While on the one hand the tensions between women and men are high, there remains a deep hope and faith in the possibility of finding true love and fulfilment on the other.

Beck and Beck-Gernsheim argue that it is precisely because our world is so overwhelming, impersonal, abstract and rapidly changing that love has become increasingly important. According to them, love is the only place where people can truly find themselves and connect with others. In our world of uncertainty and risk, love is real:

Love is a search for oneself, a craving to really get in contact with me and you, sharing bodies, sharing thoughts, encountering one another with nothing held back, making confessions and being forgiven, understanding, confirming and supporting what was and what is, longing for a home and trust to counteract the doubts and anxieties modern life generates. If nothing seems certain or safe, if even breathing is risky in a polluted world, then people chase after the misleading dreams of love until they suddenly turn into nightmares (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 1995: 175-6).

Love is at once desperate and soothing, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim argue. It is a ‘powerful force obeying rules of its and own and inscribing its messages into people’s expectations, anxieties and behaviour patterns’. In our fluctuating world it has become a new source of faith.

Each theoretical perspective used to analyze families illuminates different features of family experiences.

References

Beck,U. and E.Beck-Gernsheim. 1995. The Normal Chaos of Love. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Weitzman, L. 1985. The divorce revolution. New York: Free Press.

Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. 1986. “Gender and the Family.” Pp.348-380 in Analyzing Gender: AHandbook of Social Science Research, edited by Beth Hess and Myra Marx Ferree. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Thorne, Barrie. 1993. Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Eitzen, D. Stanley, and Maxine Baca Zinn. 2004. In Conflict and Order, 10th ed; Boston MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Ember, Melvin, and Carol, R. Ember. Anthropology. 6th ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1991.

Etzioni, Amitai. “How to Make Marriage Matter.” Time. Vol. 142, No. 10 (September 6, 1993): 76.

Furstenberg, Frank F; Jr; Andrew Cherlin. Divided Families: What Happens to Children When Parents Part. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University press, 1991.

Gerstel, Naomi. Divorce and Stigma. Social problems. Vol. 43, No. 2 (April 1987): 172-86.

Greenspan, Stanley I. The Four-Thirds Solution: Solving the Child-Care Crisis in America. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus, 2001.

Popenoe, David. Can the Nuclear Family Be Revived? Society. Vol. 36, No. 5 (July/August 1999): 64-79.

Roesch, Roberta. Violent Families. Parents. Vol. 59, No. 9 (September 1984): 74-76, 150-152.

Trent, Katherine. “Family Context and Adolescents’ Expectations about Marriage, Fertility, and Nonmarital Childbearing.” Social Science Quarterly. Vol. 75, No. 2 (June 1994):319-39.