“Family Troubles” and “Troubling Families”: Opening Up Fertile Ground

Abstract

The twin themes of “family troubles” and “troubling families” are closely linked, but they are also each distinct in themselves, and nuanced in particular ways. Rooted particularly (but not solely) in our U.K.-based academic experiences, we offer an account of family studies as siloed between a binary of “the mainstream”, focused on what may be implicitly understood as “ordinary” family lives, and “the problematic”, focused on aspects of family lives that may be of interest to social policy experts, professionals, and practitioners and geared toward interventions of some sort. What has been missing has been sociological attention to the pervasiveness of change and challenges as core for all family lives over time, with such changes sometimes experienced as troubling by family members themselves, and/or seen to be troubling by others such as professionals who saw them as “dysfunctional”, or policy makers who saw them as “social problems”. Practice and policy-oriented research has thus focused on interventions to “make things better”, or to achieve “reforms”, for families that are considered to be “problematic”. Consequently, what may be described as the “normal troubles” of family lives have been largely neglected. In this article, we explore what is brought into view by focusing on “family troubles” and “troubling families”; we argue that these themes offer fertile ground for opening up new dialogue between these contrasting bodies of work, questioning and crossing boundaries, illuminating taken-for-granted assumptions, and encouraging fresh perspectives.

The Aftermath of Death in the Continuing Lives of the Living: Extending ‘Bereavement’ Paradigms through Family and Relational Perspectives

“…Work on family troubles and troubling families (Ribbens McCarthy et al, 2014) has sought to enable dialogue and mutual insights between the more mainstream family sociology and the more problem-oriented approaches of social policy and professional practices. And yet, for such a dialogue to be effective, it is also important to recognise that each body of work has different purposes and consequently distinct frames of reference (Ribbens McCarthy et al, 2019). A sociological approach oriented, for example, to understanding how people behave and ‘make sense’ of their experience of death in the context of their everyday lives, will not seek to determine what is functional/dysfunctional behaviour, or a healthy/pathological emotional response.…”

“…In considering this question we focus, first, on ‘family’ as a significant social construct, including death as a key ‘family’ event, and second, on family members’ experiences of changes/continuities in everyday ‘family’ lives, relationships and practices in the absence of the deceased. A key baseline involves vigorous critiques of the term ‘family’ itself, which have developed since the 1980s (reviewed by Ribbens McCarthy et al, 2019), questioning whether it should be used as a sociological term at all. Morgan (1996, 2003, 2011) notably suggests that ‘family’ might be more useful as an adjective or potentially a verb, rather than a noun indicating a categorical object, and his introduction of the term ‘family practices’ has been extensively taken up (Almack, 2022; Ribbens McCarthy, 2022).…”

“…It is remarkable how silent family sociologists have been in regard to all the above questions. But perhaps this neglect itself exemplifies the tendency for ‘family troubles’ to fall between different bodies of work, with family sociologists primarily focused on ‘the ordinary’, while more ‘problem’-oriented research is framed by policy and professional agendas, ‘with the result that the “normal” troubles that all families experience have been neglected, even though such troubles may reflect the inevitably changing patterns of life’ (Ribbens McCarthy et al, 2019: 2210).…”

More–than–relationship quality: A feminist new materialist analysis of relationship quality and the potential of digital couple interventions

“…The practices approach is thus well‐suited to engage with the heuristic of contemporary families and couple relationships, showing how entities are seldom disentangled in lived experience. Moving away from a problem‐centered approach, practices research focuses on good‐enough relationships and ordinary family troubles (Ribbens McCarthy et al, 2013). Heterogeneity replaces homogeneity.…”

“…This contrasts with prevailing positive psychology and flourishing (eudaimonic) perspectives in family and relationship science which focus on a flourishing view of relationships and the factors that make relationships meaningful (Galovan et al, 2022). Family troubles are normal and may even enable couples to thrive (Fowers et al, 2017; Ribbens McCarthy et al, 2013).…”