ABSTRACT
In turning to the third and most recent 'period' of this review of marriage and domestic life, we have chosen the concept of realism as our central theme. We shall explore the idea that domestic life in the 1980s was characterised by realism, and explore various dimensions of what that means. Inevitably, such a concept has to be handled in a fairly complex way if it is to make analytical sense. However, at its simplest, the theme of realism offers a sharp contrast with the previous two decades, as they are discussed in Richards and Elliott’s chapter (Chapter 2, this volume), where the emphasis was on a new sense of openness about the possibilities for domestic relationships, backed up by a greater degree of sexual permissiveness. A sense of change in domestic relationships is also apparent in the 1940s and 1950s (see Finch and Summerfield, Chapter 1, this volume) although in a more muted form. By contrast, in the 1980s we see more of a sense of ‘back to fundamentals’.
