Family and Intimacy

In order to understand the current state of intimacy and care, it is necessary for us to change our perception of the notion of family and the heterosexual couple. As the definition of family changes, the definition of intimacy and care is required to change as well. Intimacy and care can also occur between partners who are not living together as family, and within networks of friends. This draws on the idea of considering close friends as your family. There are some people who do not have the desire or are not given to chance to have a nuclear family and so they turn to their friends in order to fulfill practices of care and support, as seen through the lives of Polly, Dale, Karen and Eleanor. They are able to share their personal lives and have an intimate relationship without being sexually involved.

Hochschild argues that feeling is a kind of pre-script to action. It is internal behaviour that we engage in that prepares us to act externally. Thus, there is a clear link between how we feel and how we act. There is more involved than this sense of inner authenticity. Our emotions and actions must be aligned with the norms and expectations that are found in every social setting. Each setting, each definition of the situation, will require different types of emotional responses and thus feeling management. Hochschild calls these scripts for emotions feeling rules: “Feeling rules are what guide emotion work by establishing the sense of entitlement or obligation that governs emotional exchanges”. These feeling rules are social norms that tell us what to feel, when to feel it, where to feel, how long to feel, and how strong our emotions can be. Not following the feeling rules, as dictated by society, tends to put a person in an uncomfortable position. Society, dictates that our main responsibility is to care for family, but if we were to decenter the family, friends would fall into the category that require care and intimacy.

1. Do you think there are different expectations in terms of the way a man and woman should ‘feel’ in public?

2. What is your opinion on the commercialization of intimate life?

3. Do you think that centering lives on friendship and decentering sexual partners is challenging the heterorelational social order? Do you think that along with single parent families, blended families and gay relationships there is room to bring friends into the definition of ‘family’?