ABSTRACT
In Chapter 2, the analysis of two commercial television dramedies, Offspring and Winners and Losers, and their semioscape of postfeminist kinship, suggests dramatic shifts in women’s lives since second wave feminism, specifically in terms of the affective bonds of family and friends. Here, we explore the ways in which heterosexuality and maternal intimacies are decentred as women’s most privileged forms of relationality. These television dramedies therefore represent a restructuration of the family and intimacy that accommodates women’s liberation, but also – consistent with the kind of popular feminist critique found in most of our chapters – reveal what has not changed in terms of women’s emotional labour and the familial bonds it maintains.
