Defining Family -- Relationships Week 12

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhbNJ4zJA1A

The clips above are both from reality TV shows in which families are the focal point. We see from these clips some VERY different styles of families. These clips show us a wide variety of discourses about the ways that motherhood, fatherhood, work, marriage and parenting function in a family.

It would seem, then, from watching these clips that discourses about families in popular culture provide a certain amount of flexibility—a way of seeing that all families are different.
However, while there is no question that these families look and behave differently from one another, there is also no question that there are dominant discourses present in these shows that create consistency in how we define families. For example, all of these families have two parents, which reflects a dominant discourse about the ways families should be structured.

In fact, these dominant discourses reinforce the basic parameters for how we perceive and understand families in the first place. In other words, these dominant discourses are what inform us that these groups of people are not just groups, but ARE families.

What are some of these dominant discourses? What do they tell us about how families should function? In particular, what do these clips show us about which types of relationships & roles families “need”?

In the end, while popular culture does reflect different “types” of families, what we can see from these clips, is that it also reinforces certain hegemonic ideas of what families should be.