ABSTRACT
In this chapter we begin our detailed exploration of how family responsibilities operate in practice. In the last chapter we argued that, at the level of publicly expressed norms, there are very few matters concerned with kin responsibilities on which there is clear agreement among a representative sample of the population. This might lead us to conclude that kin relationships are of little importance in contemporary Britain, indeed that the extended family has all but disappeared at least as a social support system-an argument which many other writers and researchers have addressed (Young and Willmott, 1957; Fletcher, 1966; Rosser and Harris, 1968; Firth et al., 1970; Morgan, 1975; Allan, 1985). However, it is dangerous to assume that beliefs expressed in a survey of this kind straightforwardly reflect what people actually do in their own families. The relationship between expressed beliefs and actions in practice is more complex than this in all areas of social life, family relationships included (see Finch, 1987b for further discussion).
