ABSTRACT
Sociologists have used the concept of individualisation to refer to the way in which people’s lives have come to be less constrained by tradition and customs and more subject to individual choice. This in turn can only be understood against the background of changes in the labour market and in social provision by the modern welfare state in particular. Elizabeth BeckGernsheim (1999: 54) has described the effects of individualisation on the family in terms of a ‘community of need’ becoming ‘an elective relationship’. The family used to be held together by obligations based on solidarity and need, but also by the powerful prescriptions flowing from widespread acceptance of the male breadwinner model, with its idea of men bearing primary responsibility for earning and women for caring. Women’s increased participation in the labour market in particular has eroded this model at the level of behaviour and even more at the level of prescription. As Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1995) have argued, it has become difficult to mesh the labour market biographies of two adults with the demands of family life.
