Free Thinking Festival - The Family Is Dead! Long Live the Family!

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 24 November 2015

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What is going on inside Britain's families? From three-parent families and surrogacy, to stepfamilies - the fastest rising type of home in the UK - the days of the 'traditional' family are apparently over. The divorce rate in the UK stands at 42%, the highest in the EU, yet nearly 75% of us apparently consider ourselves to be happy with our lives at home. So what are the new rules of family life?

Joining Free Thinking presenter Anne McElvoy are:

Anne Fine - the first Children's Laureate and an acclaimed author of books for adults and children including Madame Doubtfire and Telling Liddy.

Tobias Jones - a novelist and communalist who opened his home as a sanctuary for people in a period of crisis and explores the results in his new book, A Place of Refuge: an Experiment in Communal Living.

Professor Sarah Cunningham-Burley, Professor of Medical and Family Sociology, Centre for Population Health Sciences and founding co-director, Centre for Research on Families and Relationships, University of Edinburgh.

Dr Tom Shakespeare from the University of East Anglia researches disability studies, medical sociology and ethical aspects of genetics.

Recorded in front of an audience during the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?
0:23.3	It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.
0:28.8	Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.
0:32.2	The family is dead.
0:34.3	Long live the family.
0:36.0	Whether we spend our days cleaving to a close-knit clan or strive to get away from the
0:40.8	constraints of house rules, family Christmases, and the accumulation of do's and don'ts that make
0:46.7	family life, the structures we create for ourselves and our children are a fascinating reflection
0:52.0	on tradition and expectations.
0:56.0	The traditional family has changed radically since the Second World War and it may be changing again. Divorces have climbed
1:01.8	from just 16,000 in 1945 to around 120,000 a year now and the proportion of children born out
1:10.1	of wedlock is around half of all British
1:12.6	births. But that picture isn't uniform. Some social groups are more likely to adopt the nuclear
1:18.7	family than others. And even within its confines, there are step families, blended families,
1:24.3	and a variety of ways of living together. Well, to explore the multifarious forms of the family,
1:30.5	I'm joined by a cast of guests with some different perspectives. Sarah Cunningham Burley is Professor of
1:36.2	Medical and Family Sociology at the University of Edinburgh. Tom Shakespeare is a sociologist
1:41.8	who's explored sexual politics and our search for meaning in the modern world.
1:46.8	Anne Fine has written more than 50 books for children and young adults.
1:51.1	Her mantelpiece groans with prestigious literary prizes, including the Carnegie and Whitbread Awards.
1:57.5	And Tobias Jones is a writer who's opened up his family home to all comers in an
2:02.9	experiment in communal living. He's written about that in a book called A Place of Refuge.
	...

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