ABSTRACT
Reading many textbooks, it would be easy to believe that ‘the family’ as ‘an institution’ is somehow timeless and without real form. Families, however, exist in a real material world in which the quality of the environment has a real impact. This is true from the squalor of ‘shanty towns’ in developing nations, through the punishment of placing homeless families in inadequate ‘bed and breakfast’ hotels in the UK, to the splendour of Hollywood mansions.
In following pathways through external environments, families are, in many ways, pursuing pathways through what is essentially a White man’s world. Family pathways not only exist in a material environment but are heavily influenced by the primarily ‘male’ nature of that environment. It is tempting to perceive sexual inequality in the limited terms of men taking particular roles and denying these roles to women, especially in continuous paid work. This approach is inadequate because it seems to imply that women could be ‘more equal’ if only they take up paid work and somehow assert themselves. This model also presupposes the superiority of, or even ‘naturalness’ of, paid work and the inferiority of unpaid work, especially housework and mothering.
