ABSTRACT
This quotation from the American author Suzanne Berne's (1997) novel A Crime in the Neighbourhood reflects a common strand of contemporary thinking about personal relationships. From a haven of security, family life has become a dystopia for the twenty-first century: marriage, rather than for life, is increasingly viewed as an interlude before moving on to other social relationships. High divorce rates, the popularity of living alone (or going "solo"), and the dramatic growth of cohabitation are taken as key indicators of the challenge to traditional social relationships. In contrast, sociologists have challenged some of the more pessimistic forecasts about
the future of family relations. What David Morgan (1996) defines as "fam ily practices" may be changing, but the reality is more complex than one of abandonment of the family as an institution. Bonds may be loosening from one angle, but creating more options (and more potential partners) from another (Riley and Riley, 1993). More complex relationships (exempli fied in the term "reconstituted families") may suggest uncertainty from one perspective, but represent a widening of choice from other points of view.
