This essay will inspect and discuss the components of individualisation and its effect on families and relationships. This essay will focus on the advancements of the traditional nuclear family. Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002, p. 27) described individualisation as the dissolution of previously prevailing social structures. This means that traditionally, an individuals’ destiny was once shaped by structures such as social class, gender roles or religion. This means that people’s lives were already laid down and their individual origins chose which line to take after and which “destiny” they prompted (Brannen and Nilsen 2005, p. 415). Individualisation addresses choice-making where social action is progressively made by the distinctive individual.
The nuclear family, of a married mother and father and their children, have certain gender roles and stereotypes attached to them. The father has always been the breadwinner of the family and the mother has the domestic responsibility of housework and taking care of the children.
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58). Marriage is no more about social status or an economical arrangement and individuals are able to deconstruct the orthodox notion of intimate life by liberalizing sexual relations with the same sex and commit to cohabitation (Allan and Crow 2001, p. 81). Homosexual relationships are another form of the nuclear family frame where artificial insemination and surrogacy are ways for both lesbian and gay couples to become parents. This notion of individualisation is reflected in television series such as “Modern Family” where there is a typical nuclear family but with a homosexual gay couple as parents to a girl. The family in the series has been constructed to resemble a nuclear family but their homosexuality in itself is a form of