Sort each finding by whether it supports the individualisation thesis or complicates it.
Groups: Supports individualisation · Complicates individualisation
- Births outside marriage have become ordinary across most of western Europe
- Intergenerational transfers of money and care within families have grown
- Partnership arrangements are increasingly negotiated rather than inherited
- Marriage has become a marker of achievement entered later by the more advantaged
Hints
- One column contains evidence of choices detaching from institutions; the other contains evidence of constraint and of families doing more, not less.
- Ask what a thirty-year-old living with parents and receiving family support shows about individualisation.
Show the answer
Supports individualisation: Partnership arrangements are increasingly negotiated rather than inherited, Births outside marriage have become ordinary across most of western Europe
Complicates individualisation: Marriage has become a marker of achievement entered later by the more advantaged, Intergenerational transfers of money and care within families have grown
The second column is the standard sociological objection: households are smaller and family obligations are heavier, particularly in southern Europe, where families absorb what services do not provide. Individualisation describes a real loosening of scripts and coexists with intensified material dependence between generations, and any account that notices only one of the two is describing half the evidence.
Practise Family, Generations and the Life Course
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