ABSTRACT
In this paper we explore the implications of interviewing around a topic which is embedded in personal experience while also being the property of public debate. Our research began in 1994, the International Year of the Family.3 Since then it seems that in the UK family life has never been out of the headlines. During the period of our fieldwork the public was entertained by debates such as Who Killed the Family? (BBC2, 31 October 1995), threatened by the spectre of the rise of the lone parent family (Independent on Sunday, 14 November 1995) and told that divorce is good for women (Guardian, 8 July 1995) but that it ‘blights children’s lives’ (Guardian, 3 April 1995). At this time the most prominent family in the land was adding no less than two separations, a divorce and a remarriage to the statistics of family change.
