Keele Research Repository

The research explores the mechanisms which structurally support and culturally sustain conceptions of the normal family, variations within and articulation between such conceptions, and disjunctions between reality and beliefs about that reality. Three paradoxes - the abundance of familial prescription directed at an institution perceived as private, assumptions of increasing egalitarianism and the tenacity of traditional familism despite objective conditions for change - considered within the context of ideology directed attention to differences in prescriptive sources and sanctions, variations in the social realities of audiences, the role of consentient and competing elements within an ideology and the persistent challenge to an ideology posed by reality. The analysis comprised a case study of the conjugal relationship propounded in documentary sources during the Second World War, a period characterised by the articulation of egalitarianism and disruption of familial patterns. Texts were selected by their origin in the State or general culture and their orientation to audiences - both undifferentiated and differentiated by gender, class and stage in the family cycle. They comprised the Beveridge Report, the published and unpublished evidence and internal official memoranda; the forces' education programme (BWP and ABCA) and two women's periodicals (True Romances and Good Housekeeping). A qualitative content analysis was undertaken, structured according to the problems central to each text. Within the democratic processes of policy formation familial behaviour was fragmented and sanctioned. Contradictions inherent in the propounded ideal were depoliticized by displacement to alternative domains and forms of discourse, thereby legitimising alternative articulations. The association between fragmented elements and stereotypes suggested the State's control over consciousness. The crucial juxtaposing of esteemed values affected the potency of challenge. In a unique and complex manner similar mechanisms sustained a particular consciousness for each discrete audience. Traditional familism encompassed subtly different familial models sustaining the obtaining distribution of societal power by class and gender.