Modern family as everyday negotiation: continuities and discontinuities in parent-child relationships

Abstract

Case studies of parent-child relationships in three different European regions (West ern Germany, East Germany and The Netherlands) offer material for the compara tive analysis of the ongoing intra-familial process of modernisation (Beck) and civil isation (Elias) in postwar Western European societies. The data are drawn from ex tended narrative interviews with 12-year-olds and from parallel, but separate, semi- structured "mirrored" interviews with the same children and their parents. The re sults of this analysis show, that intra-family relations in general and parent-child re lations in particular are increasingly characterized by a familial "culture of negotia tion". This suggests that the balance of intergenerational power relations and of as sociated forms of social control within families have indeed changed, or are currently in the process of change. Contemporary intra-family relationships are characterized to a greater or lesser extent (depending on other aspects of specific social context) by situationally grounded processes of negotiation between parents and children. These processes replace both formerly "automatically given" power positioning of parents vis-à-vis their children and the traditionally legitimated childrearing perspectives as sociated with such a pattern of power relations.