ABSTRACT
Before moving on to look at experiences on a wide variety of family practices and family pathways in greater detail, it is appropriate to draw together the strategies adopted so far. At the outset, attention was paid to the power of the idea of ‘the family’ and a critique of the assumed existence of this stereotype or ideal type of family. In looking at theorising family lives, many practical and theoretical difficulties are to be encountered. One response to the range and extent of these difficulties is to develop a postmodern form of theorising which focuses upon family pathways. Family pathways are those situations in which individual life courses come together and some or all of the participants regard their shared lives as somehow being ‘a family’.
