Family Rituals: Mapping the postmodern family through time, space and emotion

Abstract

Beyond metaphors of fragility, fluidity and liquidity, this paper intends to address the question of “what makes the contemporary family?” Inspired by the work of David Morgan, the postmodern family is mapped looking at family practices, specifically the ones which fit into a larger category: family rituals within divorced families with small children. Methodologically, the analysis relies on the accounts on birthday anniversaries, family vacations and Christmas celebrations, provided through episodic interviews, applied to Portuguese middle-class both men and women, in the context of a broader qualitative study. While some sociological recent theorization emphasizes the image of a family of inaccurate contours; through rituals it can be experienced by the actors themselves and, at the same time, observed and perceived by outsiders. In divorced families, children play a major role in the adults’ meanings of family rituals, forcing its reinvention. The experiences of “the last” or “the first” birthday, vacations or Christmas “prior to” or “after” the divorce, “with” and “without” the children, are iconic of how rituals somehow suspend families’ daily life in the view of a “special time and space.” This ephemeral condition is fundamental to understand not only “the families we live with,” but also “the families we live by” (Gillis, 1996), in this early 21st century.