ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book focuses on implicitly and explicitly rejected images of man who show the person as being the relatively passive agent in the face of biological, psychological or cultural imperatives. It discusses analysing the ways in which the parents overcome the particular contradiction between seeing the children as 'free agents' and, at the same time, as realizations of parental projects. The book refers not merely to 'critical writers' to some extent outside the academic orthodoxies, but also to existing empirical work and to existing theorists such as the ethnomethodologists, interactionists and phenomenologists. It also discusses the whole of the sociology of the family is about the future of the family. The chapter focuses on how sex roles, particularly the role of women were determined by expectations in advance of real encounters so that women employees, such as were judged as women rather than as workers.
