Janet Finch-Negotiating Family Responsibilities (1992)

Negotiating family responsibilities
Negotiating Family Responsibilities provides a major new insight into

contemporary family life, particularly kin relationships outside the nuclear
family. While many people believe that the real meaning of ‘family’ has
shrunk to the nuclear family household, there is considerable evidence to
suggest that relationships with the wider kin group remain an important
part of most people’s lives.
Based on the findings of a major study of kinship, and including lively
verbatim accounts of conversations with family members, concepts of
responsibility and obligation within family life are examined. The authors
expand theories on the nature of assistance within families, and argue that
it is negotiated over time rather than given automatically.
Of interest to lecturers and students of social policy, anthropology,
sociology and gender studies, Negotiating Family Responsibilities is also of
considerable relevance to those seeking to understand contemporary family
life, especially policy makers and those who work in the caring professions.
Janet Finch is Professor of Social Relations and Jennifer Mason is

Lecturer in Applied Social Science, both at Lancaster University.
Negotiating family
responsibilities
Janet Finch and Jennifer Mason
Tavistock/Routledge
London and New York
First published in 1993
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge
a division of Routledge, Chapman and Hall Inc.
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
© 1993 Janet Finch and Jennifer Mason
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Finch, Janet.
Negotiating Family Responsibilities/Janet Finch
and Jennifer Mason.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Family policy—Great Britain. 2. Family services—
Great Britain. 3. Kinship—Great Britain.
I. Mason, Jennifer, 1958– . II. Title.
HV700.G7F49 1992 92–7058
362.82′0941–dc20 CIP
ISBN 0-203-39320-1 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-39603-0 (Adobe eReader Format)

ISBN 0-415-08406-7 (hbk)
0-415-08407-5 (pbk)
Contents
List of tables v
Acknowledgements vi
1 Understanding family responsibilities 1

2 Balancing responsibilities: dependence and 29
independence
3 Negotiating commitments over time 59
4 Making legitimate excuses 95
5 Reputations and moral identities in the negotiation of 127
family responsibilities
6 Conclusion 160
Appendix A Methodology and research design 179

Appendix B Should relatives be the preferred source of help for 197
someone in need of assistance? Survey findings
Appendix C Who does what for whom? 205
References 219
Name index 222
Subject index 224
Tables
2.1 Examples of who gives help to whom (based on the data given in 31
Appendix C)
4.1 Giving up employment to provide personal care 102
Acknowledgements
This book is based on a research study funded by ESRC grant number

GOO232197, between 1985 and 1989. We are grateful for the Council’s
support. We would also like to thank all of the people who took part in
our study as interviewees, both in the survey, and in the qualitative study.
We are very grateful to them for giving us their time, their views and their
experiences. Our study would not have been possible without them.
The fieldwork for the Family Obligations Survey, which formed part of
the project, was undertaken by Social and Community Planning Research.
We particularly appreciated the advice and support of Gill Courtenay,
which ensured that the data collected were of good quality. In relation to
the analysis of the survey data, we would like to acknowledge the support
of Mick Green, of the Department of Applied Statistics at Lancaster
University, who acted as our statistical adviser. We are very grateful for his
interest in the project, and his input to it.
Our qualitative interviews were fully transcribed and analysed on a
micro-computer. Secretarial and administrative support were vital to the
success of the enterprise and we were very fortunate in having Nichola
Hetherington with us throughout the project. She assisted us in a variety of
ways with administrative tasks, in transcribing tapes and also in data
analysis. Above all her interest in and enthusiasm for the project kept us on
our toes and helped us to focus on issues which were important in our data.
She was very ably assisted by Janet Hartley and Sandra Irving, who gave us
secretarial help at different stages of the project. We would like to record
our warm thanks to all of them.
There are a number of other people who helped us in various ways in
our research. In this connection we would like to thank Mohammed
Atcha, Hilary Conway, Ram Kaushal and Veronica Holmes. Also we
received feedback on our developing analysis through papers given in a
number of departments and institutions, and in particular we would like to
thank colleagues in: the Department of Applied Social Science, University of
Lancaster; the Centre for Women’s Studies, University of Lancaster; the
Social Policy Research Unit, University of York; the Department of
Sociology, University of Essex; the Departments of Sociology and of
vii
Anthropology, University of Manchester; the Department of Sociology,

University of Liverpool; the Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto;
the Departments of Sociology and Social Work, University of New South
Wales; the Australian Institute for Family Studies; the Department of
Sociology, University of Bergen; the Institute for Social Research, Oslo; the
School of Nursing, University of California (San Francisco). We owe a
special debt of thanks to the the Department of Social Policy and Social
Work, University of Manchester, and to Professor Paul Wilding. The
Department allowed us to use its facilities as a base during our most
intensive phase of interviewing in the Manchester area. We appreciate this
greatly and thank colleagues there for welcoming us.
In the final stages of preparing this book we were able to benefit from
the comments of Graham Allan and David Morgan, both of whom
undertook to read the whole manuscript. Their perceptive comments
helped us to sharpen up our arguments and we are very grateful to both of
them.
Jennifer Mason also wishes to thank Caroline Dryden and Andrew Jones
who have both taken a long-term interest in the project. Caroline has
always been ready and willing to discuss the arguments and analyses we
were developing for the book, and has been most generous with her sisterly
support. Andrew has amiably endured the writing of the book at close
range and has given much appreciated personal support to Jennifer during
the writing process. Also he has read and commented on draft chapters,
engaged in numerous discussions of the issues on which the book is based,
and in general given feedback and input which have helped to clarify and
develop the analysis.
Finally, we would like to thank each other for the stimulating and
rewarding experience of working together! We have collaborated with each
other in the fullest sense of the word in this research project, and in the
analysis and writing developed from it. This product is very much a joint
one, for which we jointly accept full responsibility.
1
Understanding family responsibilities
INTRODUCTION: WHY STUDY FAMILY

RESPONSIBILITIES?
This book is about relationships between members of families in adult life—
parents and children, brothers and sisters, aunts, nieces, cousins,
grandparents, anyone who is acknowledged as a relative. It is based upon a
research study which we have conducted into contemporary relationships
between adult kin, especially their significance as sources of practical and
financial help. At a time when public statements about the decline in family
life are commonplace, we were trying to find out whether these
relationships within kin groups do have any real meaning. We were
especially interested in whether concepts of family responsibility, or duty
or obligation make any sense to people living in contemporary Britain.
To introduce readers to the kind of issues with which the book is
concerned, and to illustrate that this is a topic which raises many
interesting questions, we begin by giving four brief examples from the data
which we have collected. These are not necessarily typical cases or common
experiences—indeed each one has some features which are rather unusual.
But they are all real. They were stories told to us by people in the late 1980s,
to illustrate how structures of practical and financial support worked in
their own families. All names are pseudonyms (see Appendix A for details).
Example 1:
Sarah Yates and her cousin Mary Mycock
Sarah Yates and Mary Mycock were two cousins, both of whom we
interviewed. They were about the same age (in their forties) and both lived
with husbands of a second marriage. Each had two children, though
Sarah’s were older than Mary’s and one had already left the parental
home. Their homes were about 20 miles apart but both had access to a car.
Sarah worked full-time as an ambulance driver. Mary was not doing paid
2 NEGOTIATING FAMILY RESPONSIBILITIES
work at the time we interviewed her, and saw looking after her two young
children as her full-time job for the moment.
Both of them spoke in warm terms about their relationship over the
years. Their contact was not necessarily frequent, but each did always feel
that she could call on the other if she needed help. It was a relationship in
which various types of assistance had passed in both directions. Mary had
made clothes for Sarah’s children when they were small, and had agreed to
make her elder daughter’s wedding dress. They had each looked after the
other’s children at various different times. Mary used Sarah as her main
‘shoulder to cry on’ when her first husband left her with little warning.
Over the years they had given each other various types of practical,
domestic assistance. Sarah gave us a direct illustration of this, when we
asked her to tell us what sort of things she and Mary tended to do for each
other. She told us that she had just contacted Mary to say that she needed
some urgent assistance. She put it this way:
Sarah Well I could tell you what I am doing tonight for instance. My
husband has been out there and taken all the plums off the plum
tree. And in my garage there’s fifty-odd pounds of plums. I’m tied up
with this fund-raising I told you about, and all those plums are going
to go bad if something’s not done with them fast. So I phoned Mary
up last night and I said ‘If I bring you about forty pounds of plums
and the sugar, will you make the jam?’ [laughs]. And she said ‘Yes’
[laughs], So that’s what I’m going up there for tonight [pause]. So
that’s the sort of thing I mean. We just—just natural, normal,
everyday things.
Example 2:
Maureen Vickers and her mother
Maureen Vickers was in her early sixties when we interviewed her. She
worked full-time for a group of doctors as the administrator of their
general practice, and lived in a flat with her unmarried son, who was in his
thirties.
Maureen told us in some detail about what had happened when her own
mother was terminally ill, many years previously. At that time Maureen
was living in London and had a full-time job. Her mother lived in Barrow-
in-Furness, more than 300 miles away and in a very inaccessible part of
Britain. Maureen had tried to persuade her mother to come and live with
her, when she realised that she could no longer cope on her own, but her
mother refused. So for two years Maureen and her sister (who also lived
near London) managed to look after their mother by an ingenious yet
extremely demanding arrangement. Maureen described it like this:
UNDERSTANDING FAMILY RESPONSIBILITIES 3
Maureen She had two years in her own home, with her bed downstairs,
and I used to go up and look after her for five days. When I left
my sister used to come up. You see, we did it turnabout.
Interviewer Did you actually go and stay at her house?
Maureen At her house yes. I stayed there for five days. And then my
sister came and she did her five days [pause]. So that we
wouldn’t get absolutely bogged down [pause]. Sometimes we
used to meet, because there was no train so we had to get the
bus, sometimes we used to meet at Levens Bridge. She was
getting off one bus and I was waiting for the other. We used to
say ‘Hi, is she alright?’ ‘She’s fine’ [pause]. And this used to be
about eleven o’clock at night. On this dark country lane, you
know, there could be only one person waiting there. I mean if
it wasn’t my sister, somebody must have thought ‘That’s a
funny woman over there’.
Example 3:
Leona Smith and her brothers
Leona Smith was a young woman in her early twenties, studying for a
degree at a college in the north west of England. She had been brought up
in Leeds and came from a family of Caribbean descent. Her parents had both
migrated to the UK before Leona was born. They had been divorced for
some years by the time we interviewed Leona. She had always lived with
her mother but also had regular contact with her father.
Leona was the only daughter in this family and had four brothers, three
older than herself and one younger. The youngest one was still at school
but the older three all had paid jobs—as a cabinet maker, a computer
programmer and an electrician. Leona told us how these three brothers, as
well as her mother, had all helped her financially during her time at
college.
Leona My mum and my brothers, those who have been in employment,
have played a major supporting role as regards my education. I
do have a grant from the local authority but it is inadequate to
deal with everything I require in producing and performing
well as a student. Money has been coming regularly from my
mum even though I don’t ask for it. I think she understands
that, as a student you need to do certain things, you need to
buy certain books, so she’s actually supported me there. So have
my brothers—not just financially but they come and see how I
am, see if I need anything [pause].
Interviewer The financial help which you get from your brothers, does that
come direct to you or is it sort of channelled through your
mother?
Leona Oh it’s direct to me. Sent in a letter. Sometimes they’ll make up
the amount my mum sends me in a letter that she writes to me
—which is really good.
Example 4:
Alf Smith and his mother-in-law
Our last example concerns Alf Smith’s relationship with his mother-in-law.
He is no relation to Leona Smith. Alf was in his forties when we
interviewed him and was living with his wife and his two teenage
daughters. He was employed full-time as a gardener for the local council.
He had done various manual jobs in the course of his working life, one of
which had been as a driver working for a transport company.
Alf told us of an incident which had happened at that time, when he got
caught trying to steal a large carton full of packets of butter. He did this
while he was picking up a delivery from a warehouse storing grocery
products. He planned to sell the butter to the nearest transport cafe, to earn
a bit of money on the side. With hindsight Alf considered that he had been
stupid to try to steal the butter because he knew that this firm had good
security. As a consequence of being caught, he lost his job and was
prosecuted for the theft. The court fined him but he had no money to pay.
At this point his mother-in-law stepped in to help. Alf told the story like
this:
Alf [After I had been caught] I phoned my firm up and they said ‘You’re
fired’. I said ‘Fair comment’. Anyway I finished up in court and it were
a fine of five pounds, which I hadn’t got at the time. Two days to pay. I
thought ‘Where am I going to get five pounds in two days?’ No job,
sort of thing. Well down at my mother-in-law’s, it were the wife, she
called at her mother’s coming home [pause] and she were telling her all
this. My mother-in-law, straight into her purse, you know. She said
‘There you are. Tell that lad to get straight up to the courts and pay his
fine. And he can pay me the money when he’s got it,’
These four stories are in many ways very different. They concern different
relationships—parents and children, brothers and sisters, in-laws, cousins.
They are about very different types of help—money, practical assistance,
looking after someone who is ill. The circumstances outlined are very
diverse—from ‘natural, normal, everyday things’ (as Sarah Yates puts it) to
a case where the need is extreme, like the care of a dying elderly woman.
What they have in common is that they are all examples of one relative
helping another. At the very least, they show that in these four families, kin
relationships do have some significance in adult life as the means through

which people receive various types of assistance.
But examples like these raise issues beyond the simple observation that,
at least for some people and in some situations, kin relationships can ‘
work’ as support mechanisms. We can see this by posing the more
analytical question: what is going on here? This can be developed in
several ways. We can ask for example: in what sense are any or all of these
people helping their relatives because they are relatives? We might imagine
that Maureen Vickers is unlikely to take on the kind of caring role which
she decribes for someone who is not a relative; possibly she would not do it
for anyone other than a parent. This reasoning also may apply to other
examples—the fact that people are related seems central to understanding
why they help each other. But what about Sarah Yates and Mary Mycock?
Is the fact that they are cousins of any real importance in understanding the
nature of their relationship and the assistance which they give to each
other? Or are we really looking at a pattern of mutual aid which could just
as easily grow up between two friends? They happen to be cousins, but this
may be of little relevance to understanding what is going on between them.
Even in those examples where we might feel more confident about saying
that help is given because the person in need is a relative, can we assume
that the help flows from a sense of family duty or responsibility? Are the
people who provide help doing it because they feel that they ‘ought to’,
that they have an obligation to help a relative which would not apply to
other people? Again in a case like Maureen Vickers’ the idea that her
actions flow from a sense of duty seems quite plausible. It seems much less
plausible to see Alf Smith’s mother-in-law in that light. Does she really pay
off Alf’s fine because she feels a sense of duty to the son-in-law to whom
she refers as ‘that lad’? Or is she actually more concerned about the
reputation of her family in the eyes of her friends and neighbours, and
therefore keen to see that the fine does get paid? Or perhaps her real
concern is to ensure that there is not too much financial pressure on the
household where her grandchildren are being brought up. If a sense of duty
is involved here, it may be a sense of duty to her daughter and her grand-
daughters rather than to her son-in-law, who is the person she actually
helps.
Translated into more general terms, these are the kind of questions with
which we began the research whose findings we discuss in this book. They
were questions which we were interested in before we heard any of the
stories which we have told here. Our interest in pursuing them stemmed
from intellectual questions which have their foundations in sociological
writings and in the analysis of social policy. We will now spell out these
intellectual underpinnings of our work, and address the question ‘why study
family responsibilities?’ in a more formal way.
We begin by clarifying what we mean by the term ‘family’ in this

context. We are focusing on relationships in adult life, so our work is not
about responsibilities for young children. Also we have not been concerned
specifically to study the responsibilities of spouses, though clearly these
cannot be totally excluded if one is interested (which we are) in the overall
pattern of responsibilities which develop in a family. Strictly, therefore, our
work is about kinship. If we were being precise we would use only the
word ‘kin’ throughout this book. However we have chosen to use it
interchangeably with ‘family’ and ‘relatives’ because these are the words
most commonly in use among the general population to describe the
relationships which we are studying. None of the people we interviewed
actually used the term kin. They did use ‘family’ and ‘relatives’ extensively
—sometimes interchangeably, sometimes drawing a distinction between
‘family’ who are close and ‘relatives’ who are more distant (Firth, Hubert
and Forge, 1970).
We wanted to concentrate principally on responsibilities associated with
adult relationships with relatives for three main reasons. First, much less is
known about them than about relationships associated with the nuclear
family household. A number of well-known studies of family, kinship and
community were conducted in the 1950s and 1960s (Young and Willmott,
1957; Stacey, 1960; Bell, 1968; Rosser and Harris, 1968; Firth, Hubert and
Forge, 1970) but then this type of research fell out of fashion. Most
research concerned with family relationships in recent years has
concentrated on the household, thus necessarily focusing mainly on
spouses and on parents with young children (for good summaries of this
work, see Brannen and Wilson, 1987; Morris, 1990).
Our second reason for screening out parents’ responsibilities for young
children, and responsibilities between spouses, was that these relationships
have a special status in that the responsibilities which they entail are
subject to legal definition. The responsibilities attached to other adult kin
relationships are not legally defined in Britain, or at least they have not
been since 1948 when the Poor Law was formally abolished. Before that
there was a legal expectation that, if the need arose, children were
responsible for giving their parents financial assistance, and grandparents
as well as parents had a responsibility to support children of immature
years. In Victorian Britain the Poor Law authorities attempted to enforce
these responsibilities in order to ensure that as few people as possible
became a charge on public funds (Wall, 1977; Quadagno, 1982). But since
1948, the responsibilities associated with relationships outside the nuclear
family and the household have not been systematically defined in law. Yet
it is possible to find examples—like those which we used at the beginning of
this chapter—which show that they can be channels through which
significant forms of assistance pass, and within which people do appear to
operate with a concept of family responsibilities.
Our third reason for being interested in relationships between adult kin
concerns the type of social and economic changes which have occurred in
the period when little social research on kinship has been conducted in
Britain. Interesting and important though the earlier generation of studies
is, we cannot assume that its findings are relevant to understanding kinship
in the 1980s and 1990s. In the intervening thirty years a good deal has
happened in British society which may have had some impact on kin
relationships—urban development, shifts of population across the country,
an economic recession, the rapid growth in the numbers of elderly people,
significant shifts in the political climate, the creation of a multi-ethnic
society through the migration and settlement of people from Asia, Africa
and the Caribbean.
The effects of these changes on kin relationships are not easy to predict.
On the one hand we might expect factors such as geographical mobility
and the break-up of settled communities through redevelopment, to mean
that kin relationships have become more fragmented and of less
importance in the last thirty years. The earlier generation of kinship studies
certainly picked up on the beginning of such patterns (see especially
Willmott and Young, 1960). On the other hand some of the social and
economic pressures which we have identified might work in the opposite
direction. Economic hardship caused by a recession could perhaps mean
that more people have had to rely on their kin for help. The increased
numbers of elderly people in the population, at a time when the government
has been trying to hold down public expenditure, has meant an explicit
shift in social policies, to encourage families to take greater responsibility
for the care of their elderly relatives. This shift can be traced through a
number of policy proposals and is well documented (see for example, Finch
and Groves, 1980; Henwood and Wicks, 1985; Ungerson, 1990). In so far
as such policies are successful, one might expect to find that kin
relationships have become more, not less, important. The tensions which
can be created between contradictory pressures—geographical mobility on
the one hand, responsibility for the care of an elderly parent on the other—
are illustrated graphically in the case of Maureen Vickers, which we
presented earlier.
In searching for research of more recent origin on kin relationships and
how they are changing, one finds very little which addresses these issues
directly. Contemporary kinship therefore is a topic about which little is
known, and one where there is a clear need to update earlier work. Yet the
case for studying family responsibilities does not rest solely on the updating
argument. Beyond that there is a range of questions about the nature of kin
relationships specifically which make them an intellectually interesting and
important topic for study. The book Family Obligations and Social
Change, which Janet Finch wrote while we were conducting our research
(Finch, 1989), explores some of these questions in considerable detail as
well as reviewing existing evidence about kin relationships and obligations.

In a sense that book forms the background to our study and we are not
going to offer a discussion of the same literature here. We shall simply refer
readers to Finch (1989) where we think appropriate links can be made.
Indeed we can go much further here because we have acquired a rich data
set which enables us both to examine similar analytical questions to those
addressed in Finch (1989), and to pose and address new ones. But also, it is
here that we jointly develop our own theoretical position, in the light of
our data.
The particular set of intellectual questions with which we engage in this
book concern kin responsibilities and how they operate in practice. As we
put it in discussing the examples at the beginning of this chapter: where
people give help to their relatives, do they do it because they are kin, and
what are the foundations of such assistance? This links with a key debate in
classic social anthropology, about whether kin relationships should be seen
as a special category of social relationships, characterised by feelings of
obligation and duty which do not apply to other relationships. The
obligation which distinctively characterises kinship, it is argued, is an
obligation to share resources and to give assistance when it is needed,
without thought of personal gain. The view is expressed succinctly by
Fortes, one of its major proponents, ‘What I wish to stress is the basic
premise: kinship is binding; it creates inescapable moral claims and
obligations’ (Fortes, 1969:242).
Against this, other anthropologists have argued that kin relationships do
not have this distinctive ‘moral character’ but can be explained in the same
way as all others—ultimately they are concerned with the material and
economic interests of individuals. (Key sources in this debate are: Worsley,
1956; Leach, 1961; Fortes, 1969; Bloch, 1973).
The idea that kin relationships do have a distinctive character which
marks them off from all others, and that this character is defined in terms
of moral rules concerned with duty and obligation, finds echoes in many
other places. It certainly has underscored the thinking of politicians and
policy-makers, as they have sought to draw a line between the
responsibilities which the state is going to assume for the welfare of its
citizens, and those which can be presumed to be taken care of by the
family. We have already referred to the Victorian Poor Law as an example
of kin responsibilities being enshrined in the law. It can be shown that lying
behind this was a belief that an intrinsic part of being a husband, or a
daughter, or a father, is that one recognises an obligation to give assistance
when it is needed (Finch, 1989). It is the concept of the moral character of
kinship translated into social policy and the law.
The abolition of the Poor Law has not completely removed such
thinking. Indeed many people have argued—though they have put it in
different language—that this principle has been strongly reasserting itself as
governments in Britain and in many other Western countries have sought

to re-draw the line between state responsibilities and family
responsibilities, and to encourage people to see the family as the first line
of assistance on which they should call, both practically and financially. This
can apply in a number of different circumstances, but most obviously the
pressure in social policy has come first, in relation to the care of the
growing number of infirm elderly people, and second, in respect of
providing housing and economic assistance for young adults who cannot
yet fully support themselves (see for example, Morgan, 1985; Wallace,
1987; Harris, 1988; Finch, 1990). In both these situations it is being assumed
that the strength of family ties, and the sense of responsibility which they
incorporate, will be sufficient in most cases to ensure that people’s needs
are met. In the eyes of some politicans at least, the case for doing so is
bolstered by an ideological commitment to strengthening family life which
—some people argue—is being eroded because people have been able to
rely too much on the state (Parker, 1986; Anderson, 1990). It is not too
difficult to see that the potential implications of this are very different for
women and for men.
This view of family responsibilities—as rules of contact associated with
genealogical relationships—in many ways seems very crude, though it is
important because it has been so influential. However it is possible to draw
on other types of social theory and develop a concept of responsibility and
obligation which has somewhat different features. Janet Finch explored
this in her book on Family Obligations and Social Change (1989:142–78).
She argued that existing research suggests that in practice people operate
with a concept of family obligation which is much more fluid than is
implied by the ideas of moral rules associated with genealogical positions.
The concept of ‘guidelines’ is more appropriate than rules, she suggested.
The available evidence suggested that it is not possible to identify clear
rules about what someone should do for a relative in defined
circumstances. But people do seem to acknowledge guidelines, in the sense
of considerations which it is appropriate to take into account in working
out whether to offer assistance to a relative.
Thus the case for researching family responsibilities has both an
intellectual and a policy dimension. Intellectually there are some interesting
and important questions about whether kin relationships do have a
distinctive character, and if so, what is special about them. These are
questions about whether kin relationships are distinctively defined in terms
of obligations and responsibilities; if so, to whom these apply, and in what
circumstances; and whether concepts like ‘following rules’ or ‘using
guidelines’ make any sense of how people relate to kin in practice. In
posing questions in this form, we are implying different possible meanings
for concepts like obligation and responsibility, and we explore these in
subsequent chapters. These intellectual questions imply that we need to
know what family responsibilities people acknowledge in principle and

what are their practical consequences. The answers to such questions are
also important in policy terms in a situation where governments seek to
place more weight upon family responsibilities. It is quite possible
that assumptions are being made, and incorporated into social policies,
which do not align with the ways in which kin relationships operate in
practice, and which contain unrealistic expectations about what kin will do
for each other. In policy terms it is important to know whether this is
happening in the 1980s and 1990s. It is not enough simply to assume that
the family as a social institution is ready, willing and able to shoulder the
burden of supporting its members who cannot fully care for themselves,
either practically or financially.
These issues about family responsibilities can only be addressed
adequately on the basis of empirical evidence. Our own research tried to
address them by posing empirical questions such as the following. In the
context of the late twentieth century in Britain, what responsibilities are
most of us prepared to acknowledge towards our relatives? Do we think
that relatives have a right to make claims upon us, or we on them? Which
relatives? What sort of claims? How does all this work out in practice?
Does the whole concept of ‘family responsibilities’ have any meaning or
significance in most of our lives? Should any of these questions be
answered differently for women and men? We designed a piece of research
which, we believed, would enable us to provide some answers to them. We
are using the rest of this chapter to introduce our research and to present
some key findings in a preliminary way.
THE FAMILY OBLIGATIONS PROJECT

The research on which this book is based was known as the Family
Obligations Project. We were collecting data for this study between 1985
and 1988 and our fieldwork was located in the geographical area defined
as Greater Manchester. This is a region in the north west of England with
nearly three million inhabitants. It covers the cities of Manchester and
Salford, a ring of small towns round it (Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale,
Stockport) and the rural areas between them. A few interviews were
conducted in Preston, a town marginally outside this region. The region
was the centre of the cotton industry in the earlier industrial period and the
towns mentioned experienced the urban growth associated with the
industrial revolution from the early nineteenth century. More details of the
location, and of the design of our study as a whole, are given in
Appendix A. The study was located in Greater Manchester only, but this
region is reasonably representative of the UK as a whole in terms of social,
economic and ethnic composition, and the questions which we are tackling
are big ones, raising issues which are important nationally and
internationally.
The design of our project reflected the research questions which we were
posing, and which we have set out in the previous section, about giving
and receiving help in kin groups. We included help of all kinds: giving and
lending money, occasional or regular help with domestic tasks and child
care, offering a home temporarily or permanently to a relative who has
nowhere to live, giving personal care to someone who cannot look after
themselves. We wanted to include a wide range of circumstances in adult
life where such assistance might be given—between different generations
and between people in the same generation.
Our study was in two main parts, a large-scale survey and an in-depth
qualitative study. We will describe each of them very briefly here, but more
details are given in Appendix A. The purpose of the two halves of the study
was very different, and together they give us a rich data set. In the survey we
were aiming to find out whether, in Britain of the 1980s, we could identify
any kind of consensus about family obligations and responsibilities. Do
people have a clear sense about what constitute appropriate responsibilities
and obligations towards relatives? Is there any kind of agreement about
‘the proper thing to do’, when faced with a relative who has a particular
need? We thought it important to pose these questions because
assumptions were being made in social policy which imply that there is
indeed a consensus over these matters.
This type of research question, focused on the issue of whether there is
consensus or agreement about principles of family responsibilities, implied
that we needed to study a representative sample of the general population,
hence the decision to pursue these questions through a large-scale survey.
This was based on a sample from the electoral register in forty wards in
Greater Manchester, and therefore included a cross-section of people from
the age of 18 upwards. In total we interviewed 978 people, a respectable
response rate of 72 per cent. On most criteria, our survey population was a
reasonable reflection of the general population (see Appendix A for some
details of the comparison), although of course it is not necessarily
representative of sub-groups within that population.
The research issues which we were trying to address through the survey
were about the norms and beliefs to which people give public assent. We
were not trying to use the survey to find out details about people’s
relationships with their own kin, nor even about how people incorporate
normative beliefs into their own family relationships. The type of questions
which we asked reflected this aim. Most of the questions in these
interviews were based on some version of the vignette technique (Finch,
1987a), where we presented our respondents with a situation where
someone is in need of practical or financial help. We then posed questions
which invited them to consider matters such as: should relatives provide
help in these kinds of circumstances? which relatives? what should they do

and why? A simple example would be this question:
Suppose that a young couple with a small child have returned from
working abroad and can’t afford to buy or rent anywhere to live until
one of them gets a job. Should any of their relatives offer to have the
family in their home for the next few months?
If respondents answered ‘yes’ to this, we then went on to ask them which

relatives should be the first to offer help.
In posing this type of question, we hoped to be able to determine
whether there is agreement about ‘the proper thing to do’ in a given set of
circumstances. We used hypothetical questions about third parties and
asked people to respond by telling us what these people should do. We did
not want to ask what our respondents themselves would do because the
answers of each would inevitably be coloured by his or her own family
circumstances and tied to their own experience. In posing hypothetical
questions about third parties, we were trying to elicit data on whether there
is agreement that if a given set of circumstances arises, there is an obvious
and proper way of responding. That is what we mean when we say that we
were trying to use the survey to tap publicly expressed norms about family
responsibilities.
Though we focused upon publicly expressed norms in the survey, we saw
this as only part of the picture at which we wanted to look. This type of
research can tap beliefs at one level—the level at which people
acknowledge publicly what is right and proper for third parties. But it does
not tell us whether or how such beliefs get translated into relationships
within families, or how far they are reflected in the responsibilities which
people acknowledge for their own relatives. Hence the other part of our
study, which was designed to understand how people develop
commitments and responsibilities towards their relatives in practice. In
developing a framework for studying this dimension, we focused on the
idea that kin responsibilities have negotiated as well as normative elements.
We based this idea, for example, on findings from the earlier generation of
kinship studies, in particular that of Firth, Hubert and Forge (1970), where
the authors concluded that kin relationships in Britain tend to be
‘permissive not obligatory’. By this they meant that there is an absence of
clear rules about precisely who should do what for whom. In the absence
of such rules, we reasoned, it follows that people have to work out what
type of responsibilities they are going to acknowledge to particular
relatives. Family responsibilities thus become a matter for negotiation
between individuals and not just a matter of following normative rules (for
further elaboration of these arguments see Finch, 1987b, 1989:179–211).
Thus a central theme of the second part of our study was to explore the
proposition that such commitments are the result of processes of
negotiation in families. Given that our aim was to study processes within
families in this part of the research, we had to take an approach very
different from the survey. Surveys offer an important means of studying
certain types of research question, but it is well recognised that they are ill-
suited to uncovering the dynamics of social processes. We therefore
developed a study which relied on qualitative research methods, principally
using semi-structured interviewing techniques.
Our qualitative study includes eighty-eight people, some of them
interviewed more than once. We conducted the interviews ourselves. In
contrast with the survey, at this stage of the research we were making no
attempt to construct a study population which would be representative in a
statistical sense. Our procedure for selecting interviewees was complex, and
is discussed in more detail in Appendix A and also in Finch and Mason
(1990a). We selected initially from people who had been in the survey
then, having re-interviewed them once, in some cases we asked permission
to approach their relatives with a view to interviewing them as well. The
relatives whom we approached were usually those whom our initial
contact person had identified as her or his close family. Thus, of the eighty-
eight people in this part of the study, some are there as individuals and
others have relatives included in the study. In total we included eleven ‘kin
groups’ where we interviewed between three and eight members of the
same family. We believed that there would be great benefit in interviewing
several members of the same family, since we were focusing upon processes
of negotiation and therefore we needed to know how these were
experienced by different parties to them. Much previous work on family
relationships has been criticised because researchers have interviewed just
one person from each family—usually a woman—and just let that person’s
account stand for the whole family group. We were anxious to avoid that
in our own work.
Appendix A gives details of how we selected interviewees initially and
how we arrived at the eleven ‘kin groups’. But we would like to underline
here what we mean by a ‘kin group’ in the context of our study. Essentially
it is one person’s kin group, the person who was our initial point of
contact. We invited that person to define whom she or he ‘counted’ as their
family, and took that as our definition of the group we were interested in
studying. If we had begun with a different person within that group, we
almost certainly would have got a slightly different definition of who
counted as their kin. Thus when we refer to one of our ‘kin groups’ we do
not mean to imply that it has any existence as ‘a group’ other than in the
context of our research. But the relationships within it most certainly do
have an independent reality.
The content of our interviews with the people in the qualitative study
focused principally upon their own families, though we did also repeat one
or two questions which had been in the survey. For most of the interview,
we simply asked people to tell us about relationships in their own families,
concentrating upon examples of support and assistance which they and
others had experienced. We tried then to draw them out on questions
concerning their own sense of responsibility to relatives and how this had
been arrived at. (More details are given in Appendix A.) These interviews
were tape-recorded and fully transcribed and we have already quoted from
some of them in the four examples which we gave at the beginning of this
chapter.
The two parts of the study were designed as a complementary whole,
enabling us to look at both public and private meanings of ‘family’, to
compare expressed beliefs with the realities of relationships in practice, to
understand both the normative and the negotiated elements of family
responsibilities. We were particularly concerned to keep a clear distinction
between beliefs and actions and not to make the common mistake of
assuming that actions can be ‘read off’ from beliefs. We were clear that the
kind of beliefs about family responsibilities which people express in a
survey cannot be used to predict what they themselves do in their own
lives. The foundations of social action are much more complex than that.
Yet there may well be some relationship between the two. The design of our
study makes it possible to explore issues such as that.
In presenting our findings, we have tried to capitalise on the
complementary character of our data set by discussing the survey data and
the interview data side by side. We do this in different ways in different
chapters. For the rest of this first chapter we introduce the findings from
both halves of our study, and provide an illustration of the potential of this
data set for answering the kind of questions which we have posed. We
begin with some key findings from the survey data.
PUBLIC NORMS AND FAMILY RESPONSIBILITIES

Is there a clear consensus among the British population about what kind of
responsibilities people should acknowledge towards their relatives? Our
survey was designed centrally to address this issue and—briefly but firmly—
the answer is no. In answers given by a representative sample of the adult
population, there are remarkably few circumstances in which people are in
agreement that the responsibility to give help lies clearly with relatives. We
have discussed aspects of our survey data in articles in journals, and we
will draw on these in summarising the main features here. Readers who
want more specific detail might care to consult those articles (Finch and
Mason, 1990b, 1990c, 1990d, 1991).
We can demonstrate that there is a lack of consensus about family

responsibilities by looking first simply at the proportion of questions
where there was a high level of agreement among our survey respondents.
In total our survey contained sixty-nine questions, or parts of questions,
which focused on normative issues. The answers to 48 per cent of these
show no consensus. In the remaining 52 per cent where there is some
agreement, when we look at what people are saying about family
responsibilities, no clear patterns emerge. Answers do not point
consistently in the same direction and messages are mixed.
At this point we should say what we mean by ‘consensus’ or a ‘high level
of agreement’. In asking questions about family responsibilities we are very
unlikely to find 100 per cent consensus. So how many people have to agree
with each other before we will count it as a high level of agreement–90 per
cent? 75 per cent? 50 per cent? This is not straightforwardly a statistical
question. It is more a matter of how data are interpreted.
We have developed a rule of thumb for interpretation using the idea of a
‘consensus baseline’ (Finch and Mason, 1991). Briefly, we have reasoned
that where we posed a question just inviting a yes/no answer (or in any
other way gave respondents only two options), anything more than 50 per
cent saying either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ would represent a simple majority.
However, a split of something like 52 per cent against 48 per cent could
hardly be regarded as a high level of agreement in either direction. Thus we
need something substantially more than 50 per cent, but less than 100 per
cent, to say that we would ‘count’ it as a high level of agreement. We
decided to use the principle that, where an answer attracts at least one-and-
a-half times the simple majority, we will take this as indicating significant
agreement. In the case of two-option questions, this gives us a figure of 75
per cent as our consensus baseline. Where we were giving respondents the
choice of three different answers, the corresponding figure is 50 per cent,
and for four-option questions it is 37.5 per cent. We have proceeded with
our analysis using these ‘consensus baseline’ figures, but we must
emphasise that we see them as a starting-point for interpretation, and an
aid to it, not as the ultimate arbiter of what agreement means.
As we have indicated, of a possible sixty-nine survey questions, 48 per
cent had a pattern of answers which reached our consensus baseline and 52
per cent did not. In this section we are not attempting an overview of all
sixty-nine questions but will concentrate on a group of fourteen, which are
the key questions for our purpose here. Details of these questions, and the
answers to them, are given in Appendix B. All of these are short questions
(as opposed to our more complex questions and longer vignettes) where we
sketched out a situation where someone needs financial or practical help,
and then asked respondents to say whether it should come from relatives.
Sometimes we simply asked whether relatives should help or not;
sometimes we suggested a specific alternative source such as borrowing
money from a bank, or state-provided support services for an infirm

person. Thus these questions help us to focus directly on the issue of
whether people see relatives as the appropriate way of providing assistance
rather than the use of some other source.
In these fourteen questions some answers reached our consensus baseline
and others did not. We will give some examples of the range of answers
given to these questions, beginning with the two in which there was clear
agreement that relatives should be the people to provide help. The highest
level of agreement was in the question, which we quoted earlier in this
chapter, about a young couple returning from abroad and having nowhere
to live: 86 per cent of our respondents said that relatives should offer a
temporary home (consensus baseline 75 per cent). The other question in
which there was agreement that relatives should help concerned a 19-year-
old girl with a baby. We said that she had been living with her boyfriend
but the relationship had broken up, leaving her without a home and
without money. We asked whether she should go to her parents’ home or
do something else; 79 per cent said that she should go back to her parents ’
home. We then asked those people who said that she should do something
else whether her parents should offer a home, and 77 per cent of them said
that they should (consensus baseline 75 per cent on both parts of this
question). Thus there were high levels of agreement among our survey
population that the parents should make their home available to their
daughter, even among people who actually thought that the daughter
should not accept this offer.
The fact that there are only two questions—out of a possible fourteen—
where our respondents clearly preferred the idea of assistance from
relatives to other alternatives indicates that there is no real consensus that
the family should normally be the first line of support for people in need. At
the same time our survey respondents were not straightforwardly rejecting
the idea of family responsibilities. Out of the fourteen questions which we
are considering here, only two produced a clear agreement that relatives
are not the appropriate source of help (see Appendix B).
The majority of the questions—ten in all—in fact show what we are
calling a ‘split consensus’, that is a pattern of answers in which views vary
about whether relatives are the most appropriate source of help. Often
people were split quite evenly on the question of whether relatives should
step in and offer assistance in defined circumstances. For example, one
question read like this:
If an elderly person, who has become very frail, and can only move
around with help, can no longer live alone should she or he move into
an old people’s home or go and live with relatives?
Only 27 per cent said that this elderly person should live with relatives,
and twice as many (55 per cent) said that she or he should move into an
old people’s home. But neither of these figures reaches our consensus
baseline of 75 per cent and as many as 10 per cent were uncertain, or said
that it would depend on circumstances. Thus our survey population was
very divided on the appropriate source of help in these cirumstances.
Where respondents had chosen ‘old people’s home’ we asked whether there
are any circumstances under which this elderly person should live with
relatives. Their answers were split just about equally between yes and no,
further reinforcing the impression that there is no clear agreement about
the role of relatives in providing help in these circumstances. Similar split
consensus patterns are found in the other ten questions in this group, some
of which are about accommodation as this question was, some about
practical and personal support, and some about financial assistance.
Details can be found in Appendix B.
Thus the clear impression from our data is that norms and beliefs about
family responsibilities are not easily recognised or clearly agreed upon
among the British population. However, it is possible that the kind of
patterns which we found could be related to the characteristics of our
respondents in a systematic way. The common pattern of split consensus
suggests that our data may be reflecting two or three different sets of
normative ideas among our survey respondents. For example, do women
and men answer these questions differently? Is there a split in beliefs about
family responsibilities along social class lines? Do people who themselves
have received considerable help from their families think differently from
others about the issue of responsibilities and obligations?
We did gather information about our respondents which would help us
to consider these questions, but it shows that there are no very clear
patterns. Somewhat to our surprise, gender seems to be of little importance
at this level of tapping the kind of norms which people express in response
to survey questions. On some questions there are some variations in the
pattern of men’s and women’s answers—usually quite small—but in other
cases there is little difference. However, when we put together the answers
where there is variation, no consistent messages emerge. We know from
many other sources that, in practice, women are more likely to give
relatives practical and personal support than are men (Green, 1988; Arber
and Gilbert, 1989). However, it seems from our survey that the
explanation of this does not lie at the level of publicly acknowledged
norms. Women and men apparently endorse similar beliefs and values at this
level. Thus we need to look elsewhere for explanations of the differences
observed in practice. Similarly there is little systematic difference in
answers given by people with different social class backgrounds, defined in
conventional terms. (See Finch and Mason, 1991 for more detailed
discussion of this issue.)
On the question of people’s own experience, and whether that affects the
views which they express in a survey about family responsibilities, it is
obviously difficult to know precisely what kind of experiences might be
relevant, and whether we have collected enough information about each
respondent to pick these up. We did ask some limited questions about
people’s own experience of family life—about whether they had given or
received assistance in the form of money, accommodation or personal care.
We are rather cautious about using these as they flatten out what may be
very disparate types of experience, and it could well be that some of our
respondents who did not report such experiences had in fact had them—
survey methods in general are not well suited to collecting this type of
information. But so far as we can tell from what was reported to us, the
experience of giving or receiving assistance with accommodation or
personal care has little effect on the way people answered our questions
about family responsibilities. In questions about money, there does seem to
be some relationship. Where respondents themselves had given or lent a
fairly substantial sum of money to a relative (we specified £300 or more)
they were more likely than other people to favour relatives giving financial
assistance in our questions about hypothetical situations (Finch and Mason,
1991).
In general, therefore, the rather mixed and apparently contradictory
pattern of answers in our survey is not explained by different groups of
respondents giving different answers. What seems to be happening is that
people were making judgements about the appropriateness of family
assistance in the light of the circumstances which we outlined in each
question. There are some circumstances in which most people do agree that
the family should take responsibility, as for example the case of the young
couple returning from abroad and needing a temporary home. But there is
no evidence at all of a general feeling that the family should normally be
the first port of call for most people.
We need to look therefore at those circumstances in which people do
tend to agree that the family should be the first line of assistance. Do they
have any common features? Looking across the whole range of our survey
data, three interesting features stand out. First, it seems most likely that
people will endorse family responsibilities in ‘deserving cases’ where the
need is presented as entirely legitimate and the person who needs assistance
is not at fault in any way. Our young family returning from overseas meets
these criteria very clearly. Their situation contrasts with that of another
hypothetical young family who, we said, needed money to pay for a long-
awaited holiday. In this case we had a high level of agreement that they
should ‘do without the holiday’ rather than seek financial assistance from
relatives. We see this as indicating that a holiday was seen as a luxury
item rather than a clear and legitimate need. We can also draw a contrast
with another question concerning a family with young children who needed
a temporary home because they had been evicted for non-payment of rent.
In this case 65 per cent said that relatives should offer help—a figure which
did not reach our consensus baseline and contrasts with the 86 per cent
who said that relatives should offer a home to the young couple returning
from overseas. We would argue that the difference between these two
figures reflects a feeling on the part of some respondents that the family
evicted from their home were less deserving because they were somewhat
responsible for their own circumstances.
The second feature which emerges from our data is that people are more
likely to accord responsibility to relatives when the assistance needed is fairly
limited—in terms of time, effort or skill. In the question about the young
couple returning from abroad we specified that they needed a home ‘for a
few months’. In other questions it was less clear that, for example, an offer
to give someone accommodation would be time-limited. In questions about
caring for someone who cannot fully look after themselves, our
respondents were more likely to accord responsibility to relatives if the
assistance needed was temporary, or did not demand high levels of skill.
But in questions which implied that the person needed nursing care,
including intimate bodily contact, more people were inclined to say that
state services were preferable to relatives.
Third, our data do support the view that responsibilities between parents
and children are accorded a special status. This is in line with earlier
research on kinship which indicates that, although in general relationships
are permissive not obligatory, parent-child relationships come closest to
having fixed responsibilities associated with them (Morgan, 1975). In
questions where we asked people to identify which relatives should provide
assitance in adult life, parents or children were much more likely to be named
than any other (Finch and Mason, 1990b, 1991).
However, in our data it is clear that people do not see parent-child
responsibilities as automatic or unlimited. We put the the following
proposition to our respondents and asked them to agree or disagree on a
five-point scale:
Children have no obligation to look after their parents when they are
old.
The response to this was one of our ‘split consensus’ items: 58 per cent of
our respondents said that children do have an obligation to look after their
parents but 39 per cent said that they do not. In other questions about
children looking after elderly parents, people tended to agree that children
had a responsibility to do something, but views varied on what they should
do. For example in one question (which we discuss in detail in Chapter 3),
we posed a dilemma of whether a son and his wife should take any
responsibility for his parents, who had both been injured in a car accident
and lived several hundred miles away. Most of our respondents favoured
an option in which they did take some responsibility—only 9 per cent said
that they should ‘let the parents make their own arrangements’. But as to
precisely what they should do, our respondents were evenly divided
between the other three options which we offered: move to live near the
husband’s parents 33 per cent; have the parents move to live with them 24
per cent; give the parents money to help them pay for their daily care 25
per cent.
There is some evidence in our survey data that we should not treat
parent-child relationships as symmetrical in terms of responsibilities. The
two examples in Appendix B where there is agreement that relatives should
help concern parents helping a child in young adult life—the young couple
returning from abroad and needing a temporary home, and the young
woman with a baby who also needs a home. In one of our longer vignettes
(which we discuss in detail in Chapter 5) we posed a situation about a man
called John Highfield who was in his early thirties and needed financial
help to start his own business. This question attracted high levels of
agreement that his parents were appropriate people to lend him money. By
contrast we have split patterns of responses in all the questions in
Appendix B which pose the issue of whether older people should seek help
from their children rather than elsewhere.
Thus there is a sense in which, at this level of publicly acknowledged
norms about family life, parents’ continuing responsibility to help their
children seems to be endorsed more strongly and more predictably than
any other type of family responsibility. However, even here there are clear
limits especially, it would seem, to do with ‘deservingness’ or ‘genuine need’.
The question about a young student getting into debt (see Appendix B) led
to a mixed pattern of responses with 65 per cent saying that his parents
should not pay off the debts (consensus baseline 75 per cent). Further, the
two questions in Appendix B which attracted a high level of agreement that
relatives should not help concerned couples in young adult life, one
wanting money to pay for a holiday, the other to pay private school fees.
We have to be careful about interpretation here, since in these questions we
asked whether ‘relatives’ should help and did not specify parents,
Nonetheless we know from other questions that parents would be seen as
the most likely source of help in such circumstances. In both instances, the
message was firmly that these are not cases of ‘genuine need’ and therefore
that relatives have no obligation to help: 67 per cent of our respondents
said that the first couple should do without the holiday and 79 per cent
said that the second couple should keep their children in state schools.
In summary, in responding to these survey questions a
representative sample of the population was telling us that, even when it
comes to parent-child responsibilities, there are no clear rules about what
you should do. At this point it is useful to refer to the distinction between
rules which tell you what you should do and guidelines which indicate how
to work out the proper thing to do in a given set of circumstances. In
analysing our survey data, we are referring to the former as substantive
issues and the latter as procedural issues, and we believe that our data show
higher levels of agreement on procedural than on substantive matters
(Finch and Mason, 1991). The first two significant features of our data
which we outlined above—deserving cases and commitments being limited
—can be expressed as procedural guidelines. We can turn them round and
say that, when faced with a decision about whether a relative should feel an
obligation to offer help most people think that it is appropriate to consider
matters such as: is this a case of legitimate need? is it a luxury or a
necessity? is this person in need of assistance through no fault of their
own? how big a commitment would an offer of help entail? If the person in
need is a parent or a child, the test to be passed may be less stringent but
on the whole it is still appropriate to ask this kind of question.
Thus we can say with some confidence that our survey data show that
there is nothing approaching a clear consensus about family
responsibilities. In the late 1980s in Britain people apparently were not
acknowledging clearly identifiable principles about what kinds of
assistance family members should offer each other. There is no evidence of
a clear acknowledgement at this public normative level that families should
be the first line of support for their members. This is something of a
contrast with assumptions made in social policy. Leaving aside the question
of what people will actually be prepared to do in practice it seems that,
even at this level, relatives cannot be relied upon to acknowledge that they
have clear responsibilities.
FAMILY RESPONSIBILITIES IN PRACTICE: A CASE

EXAMPLE
As we have explained, our study was set up on the assumption that
understanding family responsibilities requires us to look at different
dimensions, using different kinds of data. Our survey gives us important
data about publicly expressed norms, which help us to answer key
questions about family responsibilities especially as they relate to questions
of public policy. But these kind of data can tell us very little about how
commitments and responsibilities develop in practice. As we have indicated,
we see processes of negotiation in families as central to understanding this,
and this view is supported by some of the messages coming out of our
survey data. The message that ‘circumstances’ are highly relevant to
determining which responsibilities relatives should acknowledge points to
the importance of looking at negotiations within families. So too does our
observation that there is more agreement over procedures than over the
substance of obligations.
Our qualitative study was designed to enable us to look at family

responsibilities in this way. To conclude this chapter we are going to
present a preliminary example from our qualitative data set. We are using
this as a way of illustrating the kind of questions which can be addressed
with data of this type, and as a means of demonstrating how our two data
sets mesh together and enable us to answer complex questions about family
responsibilities. In the course of doing this inevitably we throw up questions
which we cannot deal with fully in this preliminary example, but which
point the way to some themes taken up in later chapters.
Our example comes from the Gardner kin group, where we interviewed
Tim, who was in his early twenties, and his parents, Lawrence and
Caroline. Tim was their only child. Though of course all families have
unique features, there was nothing strikingly unusual about this family.
Certainly they saw themselves as very ordinary. Tim had graduated from
university about eighteen months previously and, at the time we
interviewed him, was running a small business on an Enterprise Allowance.
Tim acknowledged that the business was not doing very well. We
interviewed him twice and by the time of the second interview, suspecting
that the business might not keep going when he could no longer claim the
Enterprise Allowance, he was beginning to apply for jobs and anticipating
a possible career in management. During his time at university Tim had
had one year working full-time as the social secretary of the students’
union. He had been brought up in the Greater Manchester region, in the
house where his parents still lived. Lawrence was a self-employed
upholsterer, having taken on his own father’s small business. Caroline was
a trained dress-maker, working sometimes for Lawrence, sometimes for
other employers, and sometimes had periods when she did not work for
wages.
In our discussion here we are concentrating upon Tim’s relationship with
his parents over questions of money and economic support. Tim was in the
process of moving into independent adult life when we did our interviews—
a process which was quite protracted in his case because he had had four
years at university, followed by a period where he was attempting to
establish himself as self-employed. The questions upon which we shall
focus are: what responsibility did Tim’s parents feel for giving him
financial support during this period when he was becoming established as
an adult? what responsibilities did they feel for securing his financial future
in the longer term? through what means had these commitments been
arrived at? how were they understood by each of the three parties
involved? did the responsibilities acknowledged now have any implications
for the relationship between Tim and his parents in the future?
All three Gardners told us about their financial relationships, Tim and
Caroline both talking about this issue quite extensively. Tim’s parents had
obviously given him a considerable amount of help and were continuing to
do so. While he was a student, though he was entitled to a grant and

ultimately he received it, it was not clear that he would get one because the
assessment of his parents’ income was complex, principally because his
father was self-employed. In Tim’s view also his father’s accountant was
‘very incompetent’. Thus he went through most of his student career
without being certain whether he was going to receive money from his
local authority. Lawrence and Caroline could not afford to support him
out of their own resources but felt a strong responsibility to ensure that he
was able to take up his university place. So Caroline took a sewing job in a
factory to meet Tim’s expenses. As she put it herself:
Caroline I had to go back to work because Lawrence could not keep us and
pay for him, which is what I did. I went back to work and my
entire wages just kept Tim in his hall of residence [pause]. We
worked it out and over a year, we knew that the rent was roughly
three hundred and something pounds for each term [pause]. And
we decided that, three years ago it wasn’t so bad, that he could live
on between £25 and £30 a week [pause]. So I used to deposit this
every week.
According to Tim, when his grant finally came, it was a large lump sum
and ‘it just went straight to my mum because she’d worked to keep me
there’.
His parents’ economic support did not finish when Tim graduated,
though its form was more indirect thereafter. When he left university, Tim
successfully applied for a government Enterprise Allowance, which gave
him a year’s financial assistance to set up a small business. This was a
market stall selling clothing, some of it hand-made, and some sold to
specific orders. His parents again helped here, in two ways. First, they
released some money which had been left for Tim as a trust in his
grandmother’s will, and he used this initially to buy stock.
Second, as a trained dress-maker, his mother’s skills were very useful to
him and she put herself at his disposal. Caroline was advising Tim on
which clothing to purchase from manufacturers, how to price goods for
sale, and also making clothing which he sold through his stall. Despite the
fact that the business had not been wholly successful, Tim saw his mother’s
contribution as crucial in getting it going at all. Though he was very
grateful to her, he presented their relationship as one which was strictly
defined in economic terms, and from which she gained appropriate
rewards.
Interviewer Do you pay her?
Tim We pay her by how long it takes her to do something.
Interviewer We are interested in whether there are special terms between
families on financial sorts of things. Do you pay her as much as
you would someone else, or more, or…
Tim We pay her, I’d say more than I would someone else because
the work which she does for us is very, very good.
Caroline gave us a rather different account of the arrangement. Describing
the clothes which she had made for Tim to sell she said:
Caroline He gets the money for them. You know, he charges the shop
price.
Interviewer Yes. And he pays you?
Caroline Oh yes. He’ll say ‘Here, that’s for making that dress, mum.’ It’s
not an hourly rate by any means but I do take it.
The two slightly differing accounts of the financial arrangements between
mother and son are interesting here, reflecting the different ways in which
they position themselves in relation to the commitment which Caroline was
showing to securing her son’s economic future. Caroline positions herself
as a mother who is doing everything which she can to get her son
established financially, and her work for him is really part of her
continuing responsibility to him rather than a means to financial gain for
herself. Thus she is quite happy for the pay to be ‘not an hourly rate’, in
other words, that she does not actually get paid fully for the work which
she does. On the other hand she says ‘I do take it’, indicating that she
knows she needs to be careful not to move the relationship too far away
from a business arrangement. For his part Tim is keen to emphasise the
business element, saying that he pays his mother the rate for the job. Any
other arrangement would rather jeopardise his adult status. As he puts it
elsewhere in his interview:
Tim I feel now that I’m 22 I’m old enough to look after myself really. I
wouldn’t say that I don’t want to take any more off them. But I feel as
if by this age I should be independent [pause]. I suppose in a way
because I’m still near them I’m still linked to them. But I would never
take any money from them. Like in the business I always pay my mum.
[Emphasis in original]
In this family therefore we have an example of parents—especially a mother
—who had taken significant economic responsibility for a son in early
adult life, though the negotiation of the form which this should take was
actually quite tricky. Though clearly regarding it as a part of continuing
parental responsibility, she and Tim are both keenly aware that more is
at stake simply than his economic position. It is clearly in Tim’s material
interests to go on accepting help from his parents; however, he does not
want to because it would compromise his independence and his adult
status. Even his present reliance upon his mother’s expertise and labour to
support his business is somewhat uncomfortable, hence his desire to define
it purely as a business relationship and not a continuation of his economic

dependence on his parents,
Taking this family as an example of one where parents do see themselves
as retaining some responsibility for their son’s financial status into adult
life, on what kind of foundations was this responsibility based, and how
had it come about? One important factor was that Caroline in particular
saw herself as coming from a family whose members had a strong sense of
commitment to each other, and an extensive history of mutual aid. She
described her family as, ‘very close [pause]. You kick one and they all limp
[pause]. Now Lawrence’s family are not quite so close.’ Caroline saw
herself continuing this in her relationship with her son. The point which we
want to emphasise is that, in Caroline’s eyes, she was not saying that any
family would provide the kind of help which she had given Tim, that it is
simply a ‘natural’ part of family life. Rather she sees it as a characteristic of
her family to be a channel of mutual aid, a characteristic in which she took
pride. We discuss a different example of mutual aid in Caroline’s family in
Chapter 2 and, certainly in relation to other kin groups in our study, they
do represent a family whose members took a particularly strong view of
their responsibilities towards each other.
Thus the kind of economic responsibility which Caroline accepted for
her son cannot be understood fully without knowing the context of her
wider kin relationships. It also cannot be understood without knowing
something of the personal biographies of all the people involved. Lawrence
and Caroline both had a strong sense that it was important to give Tim a
better start in life than either of them had had. Lawrence seemed to have
gone into his own father’s business without much enthusiasm and did not
want his own son to do the same. The way in which biographies get
interwoven also comes through when we consider what implications their
considerable assistance to Tim is likely to have for their future
relationships. Caroline and Lawrence had spent much of their married lives
fulfilling commitments to supporting one or other of their ailing parents on
a daily basis. The first of these—Lawrence’s father—had died just a few
months before we conducted our interviews. As Caroline put it:
Caroline We have lived here literally tied. We’ve just been saying, this is the
first time in thirty years that we will be just us [pause]. Lawrence
and I have never been able to go anywhere without telling
somebody where we were going. If we wanted to go away for a
weekend or something we had to make elaborate arrangements.
The experience of being highly committed to her own parents and parents-
in-law led Caroline to say that she did not want Tim to feel tied in the
same way by responsibilities to herself and Lawrence. Tim also felt that he
would be less closely involved with his parents once he had left home and
in a sense he was looking forward to that. However, his own view of his
future relationship with them was coloured by aspects of his own

biography and theirs. He had watched Caroline and Lawrence’s strong
commitment to the support of their own parents in old age and realised
that there would be a very sharp contrast if he himself took no
responsibility for them. In this context, he is aware that as an only child
their interest is centred on him. In looking into his own future, he envisages
moving to London, marrying at some stage and possibly having children
himself. He sees this as a time when he would be much less involved with his
parents than he is now, though in regular contact. However, looking
further into the future, ‘in my mid-thirties’, he envisages a time when he
might begin to feel a clearer sense of responsibility to his parents.
Interviewer In what sorts of ways do you think that [moving to London]
would affect your relationship with your parents and the wider
family?
Tim Well the ties will slowly start breaking! would think. The
responsibility, well the responsibility won’t be broken at all.
There’ll still be weekly contact by telephone or letters or
whatever.
Interviewer What, you feeling responsibility to them or them to you?
Tim Them to me. I don’t feel responsible to them at all really.
[Laughs] Until my mid-thirties I probably won’t do.
What comes across very clearly in this extract is the importance of time.
Tim sees family responsibilities as varying over his life-time, rather than
being fixed features of the scene. But time is important in another sense too.
Responsibilities towards parents or children are not negotiated in a vacuum
when a need arises, but are built upon a history of the relationship between
parent and child, into which the biography of each gets incorporated and
gives significance to the form which responsibilities might take. Tim
anticipates that at some point he will take on an active responsibility for
his parents, at least in part because he has seen them do it for their parents.
He knows that it will be important for him to acknowledge that he does
feel responsible for them, though he also knows that he will want to
establish at a later stage precisely what form that responsibility will take. His
parents seem also to have the same broad understanding of their future
relationships, though neither they nor Tim seem to have a very clear idea
of what it would mean for them in practice that he would take some
responsibility for them in old age.
In discussing the Gardners, so far we have placed the emphasis on the
private negotiations between the three parties, but there is also a public
dimension to the way in which their relationships get shaped. Public norms
about family responsibilities do have some relevance, but they are not rules
which simply get ‘applied’. Their importance enters the scene through a
sense—conveyed especially by Caroline—that there is an external audience
who observe what goes on and make judgements upon it. When she talks
about going out to work to keep Tim at university she says:
Caroline Me doing this for Tim is quite normal up here. You know you
find that mothers are quite willing, perhaps not to make the
sacrifice I made with every penny I earned [pause]. But there are
other ladies. There were two in the place that I worked. One of
them had two of her boys—but they were in a better position
because they did get their grant straight away and she just helped
with a contribution.
The picture which Caroline conveys here is being part of social world in
which mothers make economic sacrifices to put their sons through higher
education. She has obviously talked about it extensively with other
women, and shared the details of their respective arrangements. She does
not see it as a natural part of motherhood—by emphasising that ‘it is quite
normal up here’ she implies that she believes that mothers elsewhere
(perhaps outside the north west?) do not do it. But showing that she is
willing to do this—indeed that she will go further than most and give
‘every penny she earned’ to her son—establishes her public identity as a
generous and committed mother. The point is that she was not simply
obeying the rules of motherhood and doing what was expected. She was
doing more than could be expected and thereby gained the respect of other
people. Her public identity, as well as her relationship with her son, was
bound up in these negotiations.
Many points could be drawn out of this case study. However, since it is
simply being used as a preliminary example here, we shall confine
ourselves to a few which seem important to make at this stage. First,
people do acknowledge responsibilities to kin but—in this example at least
—they do not conceive of this as following rules of obligation. In this
respect our survey data and our interview data point in the same direction,
and underline the complexity of understanding these processes in the
context of kin relationships in contemporary Britain.
Second, we think that the case which we have discussed does underline
the importance of looking at the process of negotiation of responsibilities if
we are to gain a full understanding of how they work in practice. Our
survey data necessarily treat responsibilities in a static way, posing
questions which have to be settled at one point in time. But in reality
specific responsibilities emerge as part of longstanding relationships
between the parties which have a past as well as a present, and anticipate a
future. The past and the future are at least as important as the present in
understanding how people come to accept family responsibilities.
Third, public norms about family obligations do get taken into account
when people are negotiating their own responsibilities to kin, but again not
in a straightforward way. People may be concerned about how their
actions will appear to the outside world but this is not a matter of
following the correct rules. It is more to do with constructing public images
and personal identities.
CONCLUSION
We have tried to use this chapter to introduce our study of family
responsibilities in several senses. First, we have been discussing the
foundations of our work, especially the intellectual and political
importance of studying these questions. Second, we have tried to introduce
readers to the main features of our data set, to give a flavour of what it
contains and what can be said about it.
Our main substantive point in this chapter concerns the central question
of whether people in Britain in the late twentieth century do have a clear
sense of family responsibilities and of what actions they imply. The simple
answer to this is no. However we have also been able to point to some
clues about how people do arrive at responsibilities and commitments in
practice, and what significance these have. We have highlighted the
importance of understanding processes and procedures; of looking at
relationships between two people in the context of their family relationships
as a whole; of understanding people’s present actions in the light of their
own biographies and those of other people; of looking at exchanges of
assistance as a two-way process and seeing how people position themselves
in relation to that process. These are all issues which we take up and
examine further in the rest of the book.
2
Balancing responsibilities: dependence and
independence
INTRODUCTION: THE IMPORTANCE OF KIN

SUPPORT IN PRACTICE
In this chapter we begin our detailed exploration of how family
responsibilities operate in practice. In the last chapter we argued that, at
the level of publicly expressed norms, there are very few matters concerned
with kin responsibilities on which there is clear agreement among a
representative sample of the population. This might lead us to conclude
that kin relationships are of little importance in contemporary Britain,
indeed that the extended family has all but disappeared at least as a social
support system—an argument which many other writers and researchers
have addressed (Young and Willmott, 1957; Fletcher, 1966; Rosser and
Harris, 1968; Firth et al., 1970; Morgan, 1975; Allan, 1985). However, it
is dangerous to assume that beliefs expressed in a survey of this kind
straightforwardly reflect what people actually do in their own families. The
relationship between expressed beliefs and actions in practice is more
complex than this in all areas of social life, family relationships included
(see Finch, 1987b for further discussion).
The findings of our qualitative study suggest that, in practice, kin
relationships are an important source of assistance to individuals, and for
some people they are very important. We asked our interviewees, in a very
open-ended way, whether there were examples in their own families of
people helping each other and they offered us a large number. In
Appendix C we have summarised some of the main patterns of giving and
receiving assistance which we found in our qualitative data. Of course we
need to be cautious about what we think these data can tell us about
experiences of the population in general, as opposed to the experiences of
individuals, where they have rich potential. Our qualitative study
population was not designed to be a representative sample. Therefore we
do not know if the patterns which we found among the eighty-eight people
whom we interviewed would be repeated in a larger and a representative
group. For example, by chance we could have selected a lot of people who
have lent money to relatives, or rather few people who have cared for a
sick person. So we cannot use the data from our study population to say
how common it is to do either of these things. However, although we
cannot generalise from their experience in that particular way, we can
indicate what are the common or unusual experiences among this group of
people—who do number eighty-eight, quite a large group by comparison
with many intensive studies of family life. We shall be using the data from
their interviews particularly to tell us something about the range of
experiences which these people have had and therefore about a range of
ways in which relatives do assist each other in contemporary Britain.
The data summarised in Appendix C give an overview—of the sketchiest
kind—of what the experiences of our study population look like when they
are added together. They show, for example, that almost everyone has
either given or received financial help, though often the amounts of money
passing between relatives were small. They show that about half the women
—and only slightly fewer of the men—said that they had helped to look
after a relative who was ill or incapacitated. They also show that about
half the people in our study population have had experience of living in a
household which contained an adult relative who was not part of a nuclear
family. In all these three major categories—help with money, housing and
personal care—experience of being involved in family assistance is
therefore quite widespread among our study population, though of course
simply adding together people’s experience in this way masks wide
variations in what this actually means, and especially in the demands which
it made on the individuals involved. But our main point is that these are
situations with which many people have some familiarity.
In addition to these, Appendix C documents a wide range of other types
of assistance which relatives give each other—practical assistance, looking
after young children, emotional support. The significance of these
examples lies not so much in the number of people involved but in the wide
range of examples which we are able to document. Family members do, it
seems, support each other in many different ways when needs arise. The
important question of how such assistance comes to be transacted is
something which we address in later chapters.
On the question of who gets involved in such exchanges our data show a
rather diverse pattern: under each type of support we have examples of
assistance being given between cousins, aunts and nephews, grandparents
and grandchildren, or in-laws. However it is also clear that, in the
experience of our study population, it is more common for help to be given
between parents and children. Since our survey data suggest that parents’
responsibility to help their children is stronger than the reverse, it is
interesting to find that this pattern is also reflected to an extent in the
interview data. Table 2.1 summarises these patterns, for different types of
support. We have excluded child care, on the grounds that it is unlikely to
BALANCING RESPONSIBILITIES 31
Table 2.1 Examples of who gives help to whom (based on the data given in
Appendix C)
* This excludes 21 young adults who had never left the parental home, but might
well do so.
be given by children to their parents; similarly we have excluded personal

care because it is more likely that older people rather than younger people
will require this. The categories included in Table 2.1 are restricted
therefore to types of help which, in principle, could pass either up or down
the generations.
Table 2.1 shows that parent-child exchanges dominate over all others
except in relation to giving practical help. Parents’ support for their
children is much more common than the reverse in relation to financial
help and emotional support, and to a lesser extent in provid-ing a home.
But in relation to practical help, we have more examples of children giving
this to their parents than the other way round. We must underline that we
are not claiming that these figures show the prevalence of such experiences
in the population as a whole. They are simply the examples which our
group of interviewees gave to us, and which reflect the balance of their
experience. It is the meaning and the dynamics of these exchanges which
was our main concern in our research, and upon which our discussion
concentrates.
We shall be filling out the picture given in Appendix C as we move
through our discussion in this and subsequent chapters. But in adding
people’s experiences together in this way, we run the risk of missing
another important point. There is actually considerable diversity of
experience among our study population in the extent to which they have
been involved in giving or receiving any of the different types of help which
we have mentioned. At one end of the spectrum are some people who seem
to have been through practically the whole range. For example Sally
Brown, a woman in her late thirties when we interviewed her, with two
young children, at various times in her life had:
• received financial help from her parents to put her through a teacher
training course, and then subsequently to buy her first house;
• moved back to live with her parents when she was unexpectedly
widowed in her twenties;
• relied heavily on her parents’ emotional support during the period
following her bereavement;
• helped to nurse her mother through a terminal illness;
• received regular babysitting from her father;
• given practical help to a cousin who was caring for her own infirm
mother; given practical assistance to a sister who was getting established
with her own small business;
• given a temporary home to her father who was coming to terms with his
own widowhood;
• anticipated that she would have her father to live with her at some stage
in the future.
For Sally Brown, this list could probably be extended even further. For
other people it would be very much shorter. At the opposite end of the
spectrum we could place someone like Maureen Vickers, who was aged 65
when we interviewed her. She lived with her son, who was in his thirties,
had never married and had always lived with his mother (one of the
situations in which adults do share a home, though one which is relatively
rare in our data set, as Appendix C shows). Apart from the mutual assistance
between herself and her son, Maureen gave the impression of resolutely
resisting any commitments to other relatives. Indeed before the interview
started she said that she had ‘no family’ other than her son. In fact she had
a sister, nieces and nephews in the south of England but she saw them
rarely and felt no specific ties to them. She said, ‘I never think of going
down there and she never, well she never comes up here because I have no
room for her.’ Maureen also had had a brother who was now dead, but
when he was alive she ‘never saw him, never bothered with them’. She
could give no examples of assistance passing between relatives and she
positively disapproved of any financial assistance passing in families, and in
this was very unusual in the context of our study population (see
Appendix C).
If everyone had been like Maureen Vickers, we might be concluding that
in practice kin are of little significance as providers of social support.
However, we should also point out that Maureen had, in the past, fulfilled
a very major commitment to caring for her mother in the last years of her
life—indeed we used this example in Chapter 1. We have also noted that
she and her son were heavily dependent on each other. Therefore it would
be wrong to say that mutual aid between kin has been unimportant in her
life. It has, however, been confined to parent-child relationships, which
was not the case for most people in our study population.
So there were variations in our study population in the extent to
which people were involved with kin. In some cases people simply did not
have many relatives, but in other cases the variations cannot be explained
so simply. Our subsequent chapters do address this issue, especially
Chapter 3 where we examine how commitments to kin develop over time.
However in general there would be few of our interviewees who would
totally deny the importance of kin as a potential source of assistance, A
common theme in our data set, which is reflected in a large number of
interviews, is that people value the wider family group especially for its
capacity to provide a network of support in crisis situations. The least that
you can do for your relatives is to rally round in a crisis—this seems to be
the touchstone of whether a family can really be said to ‘exist’. The
assistance given in this kind of situation may not necessarily be very
demanding—though it can be so sometimes. At absolute minimum (the
‘very least’ you can do) it entails being a sympathetic listener and giving
moral support when crises arise involving death, divorce, serious illness or
some major life change. A small minority of our interviewees said that they
would prefer to turn to friends for support in such crises but, for most
interviewees who commented on this, kin would be the people on whom they
would expect to rely for moral support. Indeed it felt like the essence of
family life that you have people to fall back on in a crisis.
Where such crises generated practical needs, again it was seen as an
absolute minimum that relatives should offer help, especially if this help
was not too personally demanding. Though we were given a variety of
examples, we noted that giving lifts in cars was mentioned by a number of
people in this context. Also interesting is that several of those examples
involved young men giving lifts in their car to a relative who needed to go
on regular hospital visits, to someone who was temporarily incapacitated,
or who had recently been bereaved. In these instances both the
commitment and the inconvenience seemed fairly minimal, yet our
interviewees thought it worth mentioning these to us as examples of
assistance given and received. We think that they are indeed important—
and their symbolic significance is at least as important as their practical
value. In defining these as examples of kin support, our interviewees are
telling us that their own family ‘works’ because it responds to members’
needs. They are also telling us that young men, who otherwise may be
rather little involved in exchanges of assistance, are not absolved
completely.
These then are some of the main patterns apparent in our qualitative
data set. We will be using it more extensively—along with our survey data
—in this and subsequent chapters. In short it shows both the continuing
significance of kin as people who provide assistance of various kinds, and
also considerable variety in people’s experience of giving and receiving such
assistance.
GIVE AND TAKE IN KIN EXCHANGES

We see therefore that in practice many people do share mutual aid of
various kinds with members of their kin group. However, at the level of
publicly endorsed norms and beliefs, there is no obvious set of rules which
indicates that any of us has a responsibility to give particular types of
assistance to our relatives. The emphasis on procedural guidelines (rather
than substantive rules) which emerged in Chapter 1, indicates the
importance of focusing upon the processes through which help gets offered
and accepted, given and received.
In much of the existing literature on kinship the concept of reciprocity is
a key idea which is used in explaining the foundations of mutual aid in
families. It refers to the way in which people exchange goods and services
as part of an ongoing and two-way process. Receiving a gift creates the
expectation that a counter-gift will be given at the appropriate time.
Though reciprocity can take different forms, it is widely seen as being
central to the dynamics of kin relationships (Finch, 1989:162–7). In
common usage, the idea that family life is essentially a matter of ‘give and
take’ expresses the same idea while leaving unclear the crucial question of
who should take what from whom, and in what circumstances. In the rest
of this chapter we shall explore the dynamics of two-way exchanges as a
way of developing an understanding of the underlying processes which lead
one person to give help to another when a need arises.
Our survey data indicate that repaying favours done in the past is a
potent idea at the normative level. This comes across clearly in one of our
longer vignettes concerning the continuing relationship between a woman
and her former mother-in-law after the younger woman’s divorce. In the
vignette, we built up a story in which the two women had a long history of
mutual assistance and posed questions about whether this should continue
despite the formal change in their relationship. We set out the question like
this, inviting people to answer in three stages:
a. Jane Hill is a young woman with children aged 3 and 5. She was
recently divorced. She wants to go back to work and she needs the
money. But if she has a job she must find someone to mind the
children after school. Her own family live far away but her former
mother-in-law Ann Hill, is at home all day and lives nearby. Jane has
always got on well with her former mother-in-law.
Should Jane offer to look after Ann’s children?
b. Ann does offer to help and Jane goes back to work. Some years
later Ann has a stroke and needs regular care and help in the home.
Should Jane offer to give up her job and look after her former
mother-in-law?
c. Jane does give up her job. A year later Jane remarries.
Now that Jane has remarried, should she go on helping her former
mother-in-law?
Why do you think she should go on helping/should stop helping?
In answering the first part of the question 87 per cent of our respondents
said yes, Ann should offer to care for Jane’s children. As our consensus
baseline (see Chapter 1 for explanation) was 75 per cent for this question,
this represents a notable measure of agreement. On the question of Jane
giving up her job to care for Ann the proportion saying yes fell to 43 per
cent with 41 per cent saying no. This split pattern of answers was similar to
some other questions where we asked about a woman giving up a job to
care for an elderly person. On the last part of the question 77 per cent said
that Jane should go on helping her mother-in-law despite her own
remarriage (again above our consensus baseline of 75 per cent).
Obviously there are a number of interesting issues raised by this pattern
of answers, concerning the nature of in-law relationships and the impact of
divorce upon them. We have discussed these in detail elsewhere (Finch and
Mason, 1990c). The main point of mentioning this example here is because
we believe that it shows the continuing strength of the principle of
reciprocity. Even though the two women have had the formal structure of
their relationship changed by divorce and then by remarriage, it appears
that most of our survey respondents feel that their history of mutual aid
gives them compelling reasons to go on helping each other. They have built
up commitments which, we would argue, themselves provide the driving
force for the relationship to continue. This interpretation is reinforced by
the reasons which people gave us for their answers to the final part of the
question, where many respondents emphasised that the relationship should
continue because of the support that Jane and Ann had given each other in
the past.
Thus, at the level of publicly expressed norms about family life, our
survey population endorsed the principle of reciprocity. On the other hand
they also gave us indications that the principle of reciprocity should not
override everything. This is apparent where about half our respondents said
that Jane should not give up her job to look after Ann. They were, as it
were, drawing the line at that point. A similar message comes through in
another vignette, where we asked if a grand-daughter should give up work
to care for Mary Harper, her ailing grandmother. We built in the
possibility that respondents would see this in the context of repaying
favours done in the past, by indicating that the grandmother previously had
paid the deposit to enable her grand-daughter to buy a house. However,
even in these circumstances, only 29 per cent said that the grand-daughter
should give up her job and 57 per cent said that she should not. Neither of
these figures reaches our consensus baseline but it is interesting that twice
as many people said that the grand-daughter should keep the job, as said
that reciprocal responsibilities would require her to give it up. (There are
also issues here about the circumstances under which women are expected
to give up jobs, which we have discussed in Finch and Mason, 1990d.)
In the survey data therefore we find that most people do endorse the idea
of repaying favours done and see this as an important principle in kin
relationships, but acknowledge that there are limits to what can be
expected as repayment. In these questions which we have discussed, the
principle of reciprocity was endorsed equally strongly by women and men,
and by younger and older respondents. The main variations in the way that
people answered these questions concerned our respondents’ own
economic circumstances. We can identify a small group who seem to
endorse the principle of reciprocity very strongly, by picking out just those
respondents who said both that Jane Hill and the grand-daughter in the
Harper vignette should give up their jobs to provide care for the elderly
relative who had helped them in the past. There are 107 of them, about 10
per cent of our survey population. We looked at the characteristics of this
group and found that the categories of respondents who were most likely
to say that both women should give up their jobs were those whose own
labour market position was relatively weak—people with no educational
qualifications, or who fell in the lowest income band, or whose
occupations put them in the lower social classes, using the Registrar
General’s scale. People who identified themselves as Christian (as opposed
to having no religion) were also more likely to say that both women should
give up their jobs to care for their elderly relative who had assisted them in
the past. (These relationships are all significant at less than 1 per cent
level.) It looks as if we are picking up here a reflection of people’s views
about the importance of a woman having a job rather more than variations
in adherence to the principle of reciprocity. In general, therefore, our
survey data offer no evidence that there are significant sub-groups of the
population with distinctive beliefs about reciprocity. Certainly the factors of
age and gender do not make any noticeable difference at this level of
publicy endorsed beliefs.
So what about the principle of reciprocity in practice? Does it represent a
significant part of the way in which people develop commitments to their
own kin? Does it explain why some people get more involved than others
in kin exchanges? And in what ways does the dynamic of gift and counter-
gift actually work?
In examining our qualitative data on these issues we are going to argue
that the dynamic of reciprocity is important in kin exchanges but that it
works in specific ways. Central to our discussion of how reciprocity
operates in practice is the concept of balance. We are going to argue that
getting the balance right is a central part of negotiating responsibilities and
commitments within kin groups. But the way in which ‘balance’ is
calculated does not rely solely on the material value of the goods and
services exchanged. A central theme in classic accounts of reciprocity is

that exchanges of goods have a symbolic as well as a material value. Our
analysis follows this theme, focusing particularly upon one aspect of
symbolic value which is prominent in our data: the balance between
dependence and independence. This is the key idea around which we
develop discussion in the rest of this chapter. In particular we examine the
processes through which individuals try to achieve ‘the proper balance’ in
their relationships with kin, ensuring that no one becomes too frequently
on the receiving end of assistance without also being in the position of a
donor, and vice versa. Giving something in return enables the proper
balance of dependence and independence to be maintained, and enables
you to go on receiving.
These are the central ideas which we shall explore in the rest of this
chapter. In order to highlight some of our key themes, we begin by
discussing a case example. In this example, it is apparent that striving for a
proper balance between dependence and independence is a crucial factor in
shaping kin relationships over a long period of time. It also shows that
personal costs can be entailed in trying to achieve a proper balance.
EXAMPLE: SARAH ALLEN’S RELATIONSHIP WITH

HER PARENTS
When we interviewed her Sarah Allen was a woman in her late forties,
living in a terraced house (which she owned) with her son Tim, who was
23 and about to begin a job as an executive officer in the Civil Service.
Sarah herself had not been employed for several years although previously
she had worked as a secretary. She had left her last job because she was
suffering from depression. Sarah’s parents were both still alive and they
lived across the other side of the Greater Manchester conurbation. Sarah
was seriously concerned about her father’s state of health and her mother’s
capacity to cope. Although social services were involved with her parents,
their situation caused her considerable anxiety and she visited them very
regularly, taking a very complicated and lengthy journey involving several
buses. Sarah had two older brothers, both of them married with grown-up
children, both living nearer to her parents, both of whom had their own
transport, but both of whom were less actively involved with their parents
than was Sarah.
We are going to focus upon Sarah’s relationship with her parents, in
particular with her mother, about which she talked at length. Her
predominant feeling about her parents at the time of interview was
anxiety: ‘they’re hardly able to look after themselves but my mother won’t
admit it’. This anxiety focuses particularly on her mother. Her father was
showing clear signs of senility and the whole family found him very
difficult. Her mother, however, had to manage him all day and Sarah was
very aware that their relationship had never been an easy one, ‘I suppose my
mother has a lot of guts really because she’s the one that’s with my father all
the time.’ Though she admired her for her current fortitude, at the same
time Sarah’s own longstanding feelings about her mother were never far
below the surface. She told us that their relationship had always been
difficult and that her mother had always found fault with her. Despite her
desire to give her parents support in the circumstances where they now
found themselves, this dimension of their relationship still surfaced.
Sarah If on a vulnerable day, if I’m tired or whatever, she starts on things
that are kind of lashing out at old wounds. Well, I mean, really for me
to suit her I would have to be an entirely different person.
If we just consider Sarah’s present situation, we can see her trying to
renegotiate her relationship with her parents in a way which changes the
previous balance of dependence and independence. She wants them to
accept her help in a way which would make them more dependent on her
than they have ever been in the past—a redefinition which clearly her mother
is resisting. Sarah’s capacity to redefine the relationship to suit the changed
circumstances is coloured by the history of her relationship with her
mother. The personal animosity between them certainly is one aspect of
that. But to understand fully the nature of Sarah’s present difficulties with
her parents, we need also to understand the way in which the balance of
giving and receiving, of dependence and independence, had been negotiated
in the past.
Central to this past history of the balance of responsibilities is a period
when Sarah was a younger woman. She had gone to live in the United
States when she was in her early twenties and was married to an American
citizen. When that marriage ended, she returned to England with her son,
who was then 5 years old. She went to live with her parents for about three
years and clearly was quite heavily dependent upon them both for material
and emotional support. Her mother also ‘took over completely’ the
upbringing of Sarah’s son. In a sense, her parents were put in a position
where they accepted Sarah’s renewed dependence on them, at a time when
they might otherwise have expected her to be wholly independent.
Sarah says this was a very difficult period and ascribes some of the
difficulties to her own inability to work out an independent lifestyle.
Sarah I wasn’t doing anything about getting out [pause] expecting to be
rescued I think, by a knight in shining armour. But in the end it was
my mother who did something about getting this house.
Her mother, having accommodated Sarah and her son for three years, took
the initiative to move Sarah into her own house and found the money to do
so. This appears to have been an attempt on her mother’s part to redefine
their relationship by making Sarah more independent of her. However, her
mother kept control in important ways: by keeping actual ownership of the

house in her own name for some years and by monitoring Sarah’s activities
quite closely, especially in relation to the care of her son. Sarah gives
detailed descriptions from this period (which clearly were still vivid in her
own mind) about incidents where, for example, her mother complained
because she was not washing Tim’s clothes properly. Sarah commented
that she now understood a bit better than she did at the time how these
situations arose, which often led to ‘terrible rows’.
Sarah I was reflecting on this, reflecting on the relationship, and I just
happened to remember this—it was years before. And I thought: she
manoeuvred me. It’s as if she wants me to be incompetent, selfish,
apparently either because that’s the way she perceived me years ago
and she can’t do with perceiving me any other way. So she
manipulates the circumstances so that I wind up appearing that way.
So, at the time we interviewed her, Sarah was struggling to redefine the
relationship with her parents to take into account their apparent need to
become more dependent upon her. This is a situation which no doubt
many daughters have to face. Yet we cannot simply understand the
situation in this family as ‘an example’ of the difficulties which both
mothers and daughters experience in coming to terms with the dependency
of the older generation. The distinctive features of Sarah’s struggle were
created by the history of this relationship—a relationship in which Sarah’s
mother had come to see herself as ‘responsible for’ Sarah in a strong sense.
For her part, Sarah certainly felt a need to repay the considerable assistance
which she had received in the past by helping her parents in old age. The
strength of her commitment is demonstrated by the fact that she persevered
in trying to help despite her continuing difficulties with her mother.
However, Sarah’s offering support was not sufficient—her parents also
needed to be willing to accept it. In a sense, the same events which
probably made Sarah more persistent in offering her help also made it
more difficult for her mother to accept it. Because she had felt responsible
for Sarah for many years, we can see that it would be especially difficult, in
this case, for her to enter into a changed relationship in which Sarah became
‘responsible for’ her.
This example suggests that issues of dependency also are concerned with
the exercise of power in family relationships. At least in Sarah’s eyes, when
her mother ‘took responsibility’ for Sarah and her son in the past she was
also constituting her position as one in which she had considerable control
— her mother kept ownership of Sarah’s house for several years, she
monitored Sarah’s activities closely, she ‘manoeuvred’ and ‘manipulated
the circumstances’ of Sarah’s life to produce the outcomes which she
thought appropriate. There is a sense in which the concept of ‘taking
responsibility’ for someone else necessarily implies that you have some
control over their activities. Just as feminists have argued that women’s
financial dependency in marriage creates a situation in which women are
subordinate to men, so Sarah’s account of her dependency upon her
parents demonstrates that she felt in a subordinate position, especially to
her mother who apparently played the more active role. All this had
happened many years previously. But in her current attempts to redefine
their relationship so that her parents accept that they are the dependent
ones, Sarah inevitably is facing her mother with a transfer of power and
control. We did not interview her mother, so of course we cannot be sure
how she sees the situation. But, on the basis of Sarah’s account, the way in
which the relationship between them has developed over time seems bound
to make it very difficult to achieve an acceptable balance bet wen
dependence and independence in her parents’ old age.
This case has unique features of course, and we are not claiming that it
represents a common experience. We have used it here because it opens up
some of the themes which are found, albeit in different forms, in other
parts of our data set in relation to the balance of responsibilities. We see,
for example, the interplay of material dependencies in other dimensions of
the relationship between two individuals. What is at stake are personal and
social identities, not just the exchange of goods and services. We can also
see that these have a strongly gendered character—the issues over which
Sarah and her mother had tangled for many years were matters
distinctively concerned with the performance of women’s domestic and
family responsibilities. Yet despite the distinctive difficulties of this
relationship, we can also see that the parties were striving to create a
‘proper balance’ in their relationship, which got negotiated and
renegotiated over time as circumstances changed.
We move on now from this case example to look at our two data sets
more generally, and to consider the processes whereby people try to
achieve the right balance of responsibilities.
DIRECT REPAYMENT
The most obvious way in which a balance can be maintained in kin
exchanges is to ensure that the same kind of assistance flows in both
directions. Payment is made in the same currency, as it were. In that way
no one gets into debt and the balance is kept. The ‘currency’ need not be
money: it can
entail exchange of goods, accommodation, labour and time. Our data makeit clear
that the scope for direct repayment is fairly limited, but that certainlyit does
occur.
Our interview data contain a number of examples where people try to
achieve a proper balance in this kind of way. Relationships between people
in the same generation predominated here: of a total of eighteen examples,
eleven were between siblings, siblings-in-law or cousins. Indeed it seems

particularly characteristic of sibling relationships that a debt should be
repaid in the same currency. Both women and men talked about this form
of reciprocal support, although the actual examples given reflected the
different ways in which men’s and women’s lives are organised.
Our clearest examples of direct repayment fall into two categories. First
were those where women shared child care arrangements. Appendix C
shows the full range of child care arrangements reported to us by
interviewees and it can be seen that, out of a total of forty-five examples,
nine involved sisters or sisters-in-law looking after each others’ children,
mostly on an occasional basis and with husbands participating in the
arrangements in one case. Examples involving sisters or sisters-in-law
represented about half of the child care arrangements which we categorised
as ‘occasional’ and in this sense they form the most characteristic type of
‘occasional’ child care arrangement. The most characteristic type of
‘regular’ child care arrangement, among our study population, was care by
the child’s grandmother.
In the examples where sisters or sisters-in-law provided child care for
each other it was stressed that one woman could ask for her children to be
minded if she needed this, in the knowledge that she would be able to
repay with exactly the same favour in the future. This neatly solved the
problem which we were often aware of when people talked about child care
—that it is all too easy to ask a relative (even a mother) to mind your
children too often. It is something where people commonly did see a real
potential for the exchange to become unbalanced, whether they were
potential donors or potential recipients. In these circumstances, sharing
child care with a relative who herself has young children is the ideal
solution, because it enables the balance to be maintained.
Second, several examples of direct repayment concerned money, mostly
on a small scale. This might involve actually providing small amounts of
money when a brother or sister was short, or sometimes in subsidising
some activity directly, for example paying the entrance fee for a brother to
accompany you to a club.
Appendix C documents different types of financial assistance from
relatives which had been experienced by people in our study population—
for example, money for housing, for travel, to support education or
employment—and in each category almost every example entails money
passing from older to younger generations. In general, therefore, our data
confirm a pattern which emerges from other studies, that there is an
expectation that money will pass ‘down’ the generations in families, and
not be shared on a reciprocal basis (Finch, 1989). Children sometimes
worry about this, and insist that they are receiving a loan which will be
repaid, but parents mostly see a continuing responsibility towards their
children in adult life, and do not expect to receive direct recompense.
However, in our category ‘daily living expenses’ the pattern is a bit

different. Out of sixty-one examples, twelve are of brothers giving money
to sisters or vice versa. Most of these examples are of people in their young
adult years, but sharing these small sums of money is not confined to
young people. One arrangement was described by various members of the
Mansfield kin group, which comprised six adult siblings, all with their own
children and separate households but mostly living within relatively easy
reach of each other (see Appendix A for kin group details). As Kevin Ellis,
who had married into the family, put it:
Kevin If one of the family wanted to go out and he phones up and says
‘Well, we can’t go out because I’ve got no money’ or something, I
mean any one of the family would turn round and say ‘Oh well,
we’ll lend you some and pay us back when you can.’ I think that
happens quite a lot through the family [pause]. It’s something that’s
always been taken for granted I think, if you’ve got it to lend,
Because you always know you’re going to get it back anyway and it
works both ways, you know. They’ll do it for you and you’ll do it
for us.
As is clear in this example, money has a currency value in the most literal
sense and can be paid back directly either as a loan being discharged, or by
means of giving the same amount on a different occasion. Indeed these two
forms of paying back may well be difficult to distinguish in practice.
Direct exchanges—whether of money or child care or anything else—are
the most literal expression of the importance of keeping the balance
between giving and receiving. The essence of these direct exchanges is that
they do not create any sense of one person’s being dependent upon
another. They often involve precisely the same ‘good turn’ being done but
at a different point in time. This seems to be a strategy particularly
prominent in relations between people of the same generation. In most of
the examples described, the type of help given was relatively undemanding
and the timescale of repayment was quite short. This was not necessarily
the case with more indirect examples of ‘paying back’, to which we now
turn.
INDIRECT REPAYMENT: NEGOTIATING RATES OF

EXCHANGE
There are two rather different senses in which exchanges of assistance
between kin can be ‘indirect’. In the first type of indirect exchange, two
individuals exchange goods or services with each other, but different types
of assistance flow in each direction: one gets child care, the other gets help
with decorating, for example. In the second type of indirect exchange, there
are more than two people involved: A receives assistance from B, but ‘pays
back’ to C.
We shall deal with each of these in turn. The first type of indirect
exchange is, as the American sociologist Alvin Gouldner (1973) put it in
his discussion of reciprocity, ‘tit for tat’ rather than ‘tat for tat’. Most
forms of exchange are like this, he argues. This immediately raises the
potential problem of agreeing on the right ‘currency’ for the exchange.
There is no obvious way of determining how much practical help would
repay a parent for lending you the deposit on a house, for example, or
whether taking your mother to live with you when she is old is equivalent
to the child care which she provided when your children were young.
However, if the principle is important that one party should not become
too dependent upon the other, then it is important to find some way of
‘counting’ equivalence.
In our data set we have thirty-two fairly clear examples of exchanges of
this sort of indirect exchange—that is, where our interviewees gave some
indication that they saw a particular example of assistance as part of a
pattern of ongoing mutual support. Unlike our examples of direct
repayment, most of these examples of indirect repayment involved people
in different generations, half of them being between parents and children.
The gender balance of these indirect exchanges seems a little different from
the more direct examples, especially those which concerned money. In
about half the cases (seventeen in total) both parties are women. In most of
the rest, at least one of the parties was a woman. We have very few
examples of indirect exchanges of assistance between two men, the clearest
of which we discuss in some detail below (see: John Green and his
grandchildren).
Again in contrast with our earlier examples, sometimes very significant
forms of assistance were being repaid. It is also notable that, though some
repayments were concurrent, in a number of cases the timescale of
repayment was over many years. For example, Jane Ashton’s step-father
had provided regular child care for Jane’s youngest child so that she could
go out to work. Jane helped him in a variety of practical ways and fifteen
years later she was setting up arrangements for him to move into her home
at the point when he died. In another example, Marion Smith had
supported her sister emotionally and practically when she went through the
very traumatic experience of her husband being murdered. Giving
emotional support at a time of bereavement is not uncommon in our data
set. Appendix C shows that, out of forty-nine examples of people giving
emotional support to a relative when specific events occurred (as opposed
to doing this on a regular basis), fifteen involved a bereavement. However,
the particular circumstances of Marion Smith’s sister made the support
which Marion gave very significant. In return, and several years later, she
had felt able to ask her sister to lend money to assist with the purchase of a
house. This is the only example which we have of such a loan between
siblings, since financial help with housing is otherwise almost exclusively
confined to parents helping their children. However, in this case, it would
appear that the scale of emotional and practical support which had been
given in the past made it possible for Marion to ask for a type of financial
assistance which otherwise is rare between people of the same generation.
This example brings into focus the question of rates of exchange, and
how they operate in these indirect examples. How is the ‘value’ of one form
of help calculated, so that it can be repaid on an appropriate scale in a
different form? We are going to explore the issue of rates of exchange by
considering three examples, each of which highlights different issues. These
cases are not intended to be ‘representative’, but they have been selected to
cover a range of rather different experiences and situations. Between them
they enable us to draw out some analytical points about negotiating rates of
exchange which would apply more widely in our data set. We will present
each example descriptively and then discuss them in relation to each other.
Example 1:
John Green and his grandchildren
This example concerns the relationship between John Green and his
grandchildren, especially one grandson. This case is unusual in our data
set, since we have very few examples of clear, reciprocal responsibilities
being built up between two men. John was in his seventies when we
interviewed him and, although not in very good health himself, was heavily
committed to caring for his mother-in-law who had lived with his wife and
himself since they married ten years previously. John had been married
before and widowed at quite a young age, subsequently bringing up the
only child of this first marriage. His son now had three children, a
daughter and two sons, one of whom was married with a young baby. John
defined his son, grandchildren and great-grandchild as ‘his family’ and saw
it as his responsibility to assist them where he could. Most of the examples
of assistance which he gave us were financial, for example, when the great-
grandchild was born, he had offered to take on full responsibility for buying
all the clothes needed as the child grew up.
John’s grandchildren, especially one unmarried grandson, gave his
grandf father quite significant practical assistance round the house and
garden whenever it was needed. Of itself this is not very remarkable.
Appendix C shows that most of our examples of giving domestic and
practical assistance of this type involve younger people helping older
relatives. What is distinctive about this case is the context in which such
help was given. Both John and his wife had been in professional
occupations and were comfortably off financially. John’s assets were to
pass to ‘his family’ on his death and his grandchildren knew that they were
going to be major beneficiaries. As a result, John felt able to call on his

grandchildren’s practical assistance as of right, in advance repayment for
the financial help which they would receive from him. John explained his
view of the implicit bargain with his grandchildren in this way:
John I’ve got two grandsons and quite frankly I expect of them, and
I’m not going to be surprised because I expect it. I’ll say ‘Look,
I’ve done for you, now you can do something for me.’ And I
know that they won’t have to be asked. So they’ll know, the two
of them you know. The bread’s coming back, sort of thing
[pause]. I expect them to come down and keep the garden in
order and, er, possibly repair a few things under my
supervision [laughs] and that sort of business. I don’t intend to
just sit back and say ‘get on with it’.
Interviewer No.
John I’ve got to have my supervisory capacity otherwise it’s not
going to be any good to me. So it’s got to be a partnership in
that respect you see.
It seems that the grandchildren themselves were very aware of this bargain
and one of them, who was clearly something of a favourite, was able to
mention it openly though in a joking way, according to this exchange
which John reported:
John This boy Peter, he’ll come here and on one occasion he says ‘You
know grandad when you push off’ he says ‘you can leave me this
house. I rather like it. Yes, I like it. I think you had a bit of taste when
you…’. He’ll come down here, you know Peter, the middle one and
‘Hello Peter, what do you want? What are you here for?’ ‘I just
thought I’d come round and see how my property’s getting on.’ He’s
very pert but he’s a good lad. If I get on the phone and say ‘Peter, so
and so, I want a bit of a lift with so and so.’ ‘Yes. When?’
Example 2:
Jane Smith and her husband’s kin
Our second example concerns the relationship between Jane Smith and her
husband’s kin, centred on relationships with her mother-in-law. Jane was a
woman in her thirties with two young children. Neither she nor her
husband were in paid work but their financial circumstances were not as
stretched as they might have been because Jane’s own mother, who had a
private income, helped them regularly. Jane’s mother-in-law had few
financial resources and sometimes ran out of money completely, at which
point she would come and stay in Jane’s household and live on their
resources for a while. Another indirect beneficiary was Jane’s sister-in-law,
who apparently expected Jane to drive her mother to visit her. Jane was
therefore in the middle of a rather complex web of financial and other

dependencies which inevitably were rather difficult to manage at times.
As Jane expressed it to us, a particular focus for dissatisfaction was the use
of her car.
Interviewer Do you have quite a lot of contact with her [your mother-in-
law]?
Jane Yes. Well we…of her children we’re the only ones with a
telephone and a car [laughs],
Interviewer Oh right.
Jane So we get called upon frequently for…well if she wants to come
down and see us, or wants to go and see her other daughters,
she calls us [laughs].
Interviewer: And you take her over do you?
Jane Yes well it’s fairly local. She comes and stops here quite often
if we need a babysitter.
Interviewer Oh that’s handy.
Jane Occasionally yes, yes [pause] I get a bit cross. With one
daughter she tends to use us rather a lot. I don’t like that.
Interviewer What—do you mean not sort of pulling her weight? with her
mother?
Jane Well it’s difficult because she hasn’t got transport. But she’s
working and we’re not. She just takes it for granted sometimes
that we’ll pick her up and take her there, take her anywhere,
and then drop her off home again.
Jane makes it clear here that there is some element of reciprocity in this
relationship, in that her mother-in-law will babysit for them, but that this
is not enough to repay the expectations that Jane’s car will be available for
her mother-in-law’s use. Further, she resents the fact that her sister-in-law
can call upon the use of her own car, without apparently reciprocating at
all. In this instance the rate of exchange is unsatisfactory to one of the
parties creating, from Jane’s point of view, an inappropriate level of
dependency over matters of transport. Jane is also left feeling that she is
being ‘used’ by her mother-in-law and her sister-in-law.
Example 3:
Caroline Gardner and her cousin
Our third example concerns Caroline Gardner, whose relationship with her
son we discussed in Chapter 1. Here we are using data on the relationships
between Caroline’s own kin from her family of origin. In describing her kin
group to us, Caroline presented them as unusually close, with complex
intertwined patterns of practical assistance. She gave a number of examples
of assistance which passed between aunts, uncles and cousins in her kin
group, as well as between closer relatives. Apart from moral and emotional
support at times of crisis, these examples all concerned practical assistance
based upon the expertise of different relatives and Caroline insisted that it
all took place on the basis of exchange: ‘no money changes hands’. On the
basis of Caroline’s account the Gardners certainly fall at one end of the
spectrum of kin groups represented in our study, especially in relation to
sharing practical assistance. They also are one of two or three families who
routinely mentioned aunts, uncles and cousins.
The example which we are going to use here concerns the relationship
between Caroline and her husband Lawrence on the one hand and Rose, a
female cousin of Caroline’s, a woman in her sixties who had lived alone for
many years. Caroline was very friendly with her and they saw a lot of each
other. Rose had a three-piece suite which needed recovering and this was
clearly a job which Lawrence Gardner could easily have done, as he was a
self-employed upholsterer. As Caroline saw it Rose certainly could not
afford to pay to have this job done outside the family because ‘she only has
a widow’s pension’. However, Rose was reluctant to allow Lawrence to do
the job for no payment. She clearly was concerned that assistance of this
kind, if translated into money terms, would be ‘too much’—more than the
normal kind of help which flowed backwards and forwards in her kin
group. If she accepted this help from Lawrence, the relationship between
them would become unbalanced. Thus Rose entered into a very elaborate
arrangement for ‘paying back’ which indicates how important it was that
she did not get into a situation of inappropriate dependency upon Caroline
and Lawrence. The opportunity to devise this arrangement arose because it
was her custom to visit them once a week and have a meal with them.
Caroline What happens is she [Rose] does my windows and…this’ll
sounds daft on your tape [laughs]…she wants her suite
recovering and knows it’ll cost too much. So she cleans my
windows and she’ll do the ironing or whatever tomorrow and
I’ll put three pounds in a tin. She says, when there’s enough in
the tin Lawrence can recover her suite [laughs]. So there you
are.
Interviewer Oh how interesting. How interesting.
Caroline She won’t take the money off me, I can’t give her money. I buy
her dress lengths and make them up if she wants blouses. She’ll
take those off me but she won’t take money. But…
Interviewer No. But equally she won’t let your husband do the suite
because that would be too much.
Caroline No. She wouldn’t let him do that. So she said…we’ve got an
aunt coming in September to stay. She sleeps with our Rose
because she’s got room [pause] And she wanted it recovering
and she said ‘Will I have enough money for September?’ I said
‘Look. If you’ve not, we’ll do it for you anyway and you can
work it off!’ [laughs], Isn’t it awful?
This example is a rich one in relation to the issues which we are developing
in this chapter. Caroline Gardner indicates that rates of exchange are of
considerable importance in her family. Yet if this becomes too explicit, the
processes of negotiation break down. In her own account she is making
them sound explicit and so she distances herself from this by ending up
laughing and saying ‘Isn’t it awful?’
At the same time, it is clear that Rose has a finely tuned sense of what
constitute appropriate rates of exchange, coupled with a strong desire to
ensure that the balance of her relationships is kept even. Her scheme for
exchanging her own labour for that of her cousin’s husband was made
difficult by the fact that she wanted the exchange to be equivalent in financial
terms, yet the actual transfer of money would contravene the customs of a
family in which money never changes hands. The indirect exchange of
equivalent services was arranged very literally, by calculating it in financial
terms but placing money in a tin rather than handing it over. Caroline, as
the person with potentially more to give, makes it clear that she can see the
ludicrous side of this, but understands the reasoning which goes behind it
and therefore will play the game on her cousin’s terms.
Negotiating rates of exchange

By considering these three examples together, we can make a number of
points about indirect exchanges and the processes by which they are
negotiated. First and most obviously, it is often a very complex matter to
arrive at an understanding of equivalent exchanges, which both parties see
as appropriate, and which will not leave one party in the position of a
net giver or a net receiver. Jane Smith clearly had quite a different concept
of this from her mother-in-law and sister-in-law. Caroline Gardner and her
cousin also had rather different concepts, in that Caroline would have been
happy to settle for terms which were less advantageous to herself.
Second, the problem of not becoming too dependent on relatives is an
ever-present worry for some people but apparently not for others. For Rose
it was a major concern that, in negotiating appropriate rates of exchange,
she should maintain a proper balance of dependence and independence. In
sharp contrast, John Green saw no practical danger of the balance shifting
so that he became too dependent. He felt that anything which his
grandchildren might do for him could be seen as a right rather than a
favour, given their position as his heirs.
What might make the difference between these two cases? Gender could
certainly be one factor. John Green’s lack of concern about being perceived
as too dependent may simply be a man’s insensitivity to that possibility.
One could argue that men’s lives—especially those of men like John who
have had responsible jobs—generally are not organised in such a way as to
put them in dependent positions, and therefore they are less attuned to this
possibility in old age. By contrast, women are more likely to have
experience of being dependent upon other people at many points in their
lives—as wives, as mothers of young children needing some support, as
people who cannot earn high enough wages to support themselves in full
financially.
This explanation does fit the cases which we have used here, but looks
less straightforward when we consider our data set as a whole. We have at
least one case of an elderly man, John O’Malley, who apparently was very
concerned about becoming too dependent on his daughter Jill. He had
contracted multiple sclerosis and already relied on his wife quite heavily for
practical assistance. He talked with considerable anxiety about the
possibility that she would die before himself, leaving his daughter to take
on the responsibility for an infirm father who could not be of any practical
assistance to her—a responsibility which she expressed herself very willing
to shoulder, in her own interview. This case is striking because there was a
financial consideration of a similar type to that in the Green family. The
O’Malleys were also secure financially and Jill was their sole heir. They had
already given Jill’s husband substantial financial help in his business. Yet
for John O’Malley, unlike John Green, the financial support both given and
to come did not counteract his concern about getting into a situation where
he was receiving more than he could give. The most obvious contrast
between the situations of the two elderly men is that John O’Malley,
because of his physical condition, had already experienced a degree of
practical dependency which was not part of John Green’s experience. In a
sense, therefore, his case strengthens our argument about the experience of
gender as a factor in attuning people to the possibility of becoming too
dependent. On the whole it is women rather than men whose lives are lived
in ways which give them experience of dependency, but some men do have
such experiences. Where they do, it would seem that this can sensitise them
to the possibilities of imbalance in family relationships in ways which
otherwise are more characteristic of women.
Our third and final point about these examples of indirect exchange
concerns the exercise of power in this type of negotiation. It appears that
the capacity to dictate the rates of exchange does not always rest with the
person who—to an outsider—is in the most powerful position. In John
Green’s case, he took that right on the basis of the financial power which
he held. But in the other two cases, the person with less to give appears to
have been the one who successfully dictated the terms. Rose was able to
insist on the terms in which she was going to engage in exchange of
assistance with Caroline Gardner and her husband. In this instance it was
relatively easy for her to accede to Rose’s terms which, although looking
slightly ludicrous, were nevertheless favourable to Caroline. Jane Smith

however, despite apparently being in the more powerful position in that
she had control of the car, was unhappy about the terms of exchange
which her in-laws had succeeded in imposing and felt exploited as a
consequence.
In understanding the difference between John Green and the other two
cases, again gender may well be an important factor. As a man, indeed as a
man who had worked in responsible jobs all his life, it probably came quite
naturally to John to exercise the power over his grandchildren which their
financial relationship to him apparently conferred. Certainly his reference
to retaining a ‘supervisory’ role over the assistance which his grandchildren
gave him seems to be a characteristically male form of relationship. For
John, it drew explicitly on his experience of his working life, where his
interviews make it clear that he did exercise supervisory authority over
other people and that he took pride in doing so. Few women have such
experiences to draw on and to bring into the way they shape their family
relationships. This is one reason why it is difficult to imagine a parallel
example in which a woman places herself in the position, not only of
requiring assistance, but also of supervising how it is carried out.
In summary, it is apparent from these examples of indirect exchange that
the idea of achieving a ‘proper balance’ is a very prominent consideration.
We have used the metaphor of ‘rates of exchange’ as a way of discussing this,
but it is important not to take it too literally. People are not simply trying
to estimate the material value of goods received or labour performed in
order to set the one against the other. It is more a question of deciding what
is to count as enough to balance out one exchange against another—
enough, that is, to ensure that one person is not perceived as being too
dependent. There are no simple rules for calculating this. Indeed what counts
as ‘enough’ may well vary from one family to another, and from one
situation to another in the same family.
Despite the importance of the principle of reciprocity in the examples
which we have discussed so far, it would be inaccurate (at least in terms of
our data) to see absolutely all assistance in kin groups as locked into a logic
of paying back which requires very fine calculations. In turning to the
other type of indirect exchange, we move into territory where this logic
operates rather differently, and in some ways is less prominent.
INDIRECT EXCHANGE: GENERALISED

RECIPROCITY
We move on now to the other type of indirect exchange, where repayment
is not straightforwardly between two individuals. The ‘paying back’
involves a third party, possibly more than one. In these situations the
process of negotiating the balance between dependence and independence

is diffuse and involves a number of individuals.
In existing literature on kin relationships, especially anthropological
literature, these issues are conceptualised through the concept of
‘generalised’ reciprocity, which is contrasted with ‘balanced’ reciprocity
and is said to be particularly characteristic of kin relationships. In its
simplest form, balanced reciprocity implies direct repayment between two
individuals on an equivalent scale. The concept of generalised reciprocity,
by contrast, denotes circumstances in which a fairly immediate counter-gift
is not expected, or may not be expected at all. There is simply the
expectation that repayment will be made at some point, possibly to the
same person but also possibly to a third party (Sahlins, 1965; Lévi-Strauss,
1969; Finch, 1989: Chapter 5). Alvin Gouldner, commenting on this
phenomenon in American society, calls this type of reciprocity ‘an all-
purpose moral cement’ which binds the parties together by creating a sense
of indebtedness, and locks individuals into a set of relationships which
have a diffuse and generalised expectation that people will reciprocate
(Gouldner, 1973).
We shall consider examples of generalised reciprocity under two
headings. First, there are instances where people feel an obligation to ‘pay
back’ the support which they have received themselves, by giving the same
kind of help to a third party. In our interview data, we have twelve
examples of a person talking about this kind of exchange. In most of them
the person who feels the pressure to pay back to a third party is talking
about repaying the support which they received from an older generation,
by giving similar assistance to the generation younger than themselves. The
form of the exchange remains the same (older generations support younger
ones in very similar ways), but the individuals who occupy the positions of
giver and receiver change over time, as they move through their life courses.
A case typical of these twelve is Jill Archer, the daughter of John
O’Malley whom we mentioned in the previous section (see Appendix A for
details of this kin group). She typifies this form of exchange in the way she
presents her relationships with her parents and her children, although she
is unusual in that the actual amounts of money at her disposal were greater
than for most of our other respondents. Jill was married to a veterinary
surgeon. She worked full-time in her home caring for her four children—
who were aged between 6 and 19 when we interviewed her—and in
supporting her husband’s work. She was an only child and had received
significant financial and practical support from her parents in the past. The
most substantial example—and it was one which all our interviewees in
this family talked about—was a gift of £10,000 (at mid-1970s prices) from
Jill’s parents to her husband, to enable him to buy into a partnership in a
veterinary practice. This is one of a total of ten examples which we have
where financial support was given to a relative to help establish or sustain
a business venture (see Appendix C) but it was also the single largest sum
mentioned to us.
In discussing relationships across the generations in her family, Jill talked
about her willingness to give money to her children—substantial amounts
if necessary—to support their various activities in adult life, and linked this
with the fact that she had received generous financial help from her own
parents.
Interviewer With things like, say gifts of money to Shula, do you think that
you would feel in years to come you’d like her to offer to pay it
back, even though you weren’t giving it to her as a loan?
Jill No, no. It’s only money. But it’s alright for me to say that
because I’m secure. And that’s what it is—it’s only money. And
I’ve had it freely given to me. My parents are totally generous.
Reflecting similar reasoning, though on a different scale of financial
assistance, another of our interviewees, Tilly Trotter, told us that she tries
to give her adult daughters financial help whenever she can, just as her
mother did for her.
Tilly She [my mother] were fabulous. And I’ve tried to do that with
my girls.
Interviewer Have you?
Tilly Yes, I’ve tried to do exactly the same. Well I’ve not tried—I’ve
done it. It’s come natural, you know. The other night [one
daughter] [pause] knocked on the door and ‘Mum, have you
enough? I’m just a bit stuck for my electricty and gas.’ ‘There
you are.’ She has it—which my mother did for me.
Both the Jill Archer and Tilly Trotter cases are about repayment of money
across generations, and both concern mothers and daughters. About half of
the twelve cases which we have categorised in this group would fit this
description. Rather different from these were three cases which were
distinctive in that they concerned the migration of members of the family
from one country to another, where support from other kin—usually those
who had already migrated—was a significant way of facilitating these
moves. The assistance could come in various forms including money. It
involved reciprocal assistance across generations and was not confined to
parents and children.
One of these cases came from an interview with a man of Asian descent,
another from a young woman of Caribbean descent and the third from Paul
Bailey, who had been brought up in Belfast. Paul’s account of the importance
of repaying the assistance which he himself had received was explicit, as
were the accounts of the other two respondents who discussed migration.
As a younger man, Paul had received help from an uncle to assist his
migration to the United States (where he did not stay). Later he settled in
England, and felt that he wanted to repay the help from his uncle by giving
similar assistance to his own nephew when the occasion arose. The young
nephew was living in Belfast and, in Paul’s eyes, was in a rather vulnerable
situation in a violent city. Paul was clear that he felt a responsibility to help
his nephew settle in England.
Paul I wanted to go to America once and my uncle Jack [pause] he
works on the boats and he sent my fare to go to America and he
also got me a job. He only knew me as a young boy, you
know, he didn’t know me as a man. He just took me over on
the strength of family. He was really nice.
Interviewer Do you think that most families are like that or do you think
it’s unusual?
Paul I think so, yes. Same as Micky you know. When I, when I
brought my brother’s son over—we didn’t really know what
Micky was like. We knew him as a young boy but, you know,
he was 17, 16 when he was with us—a young man. I was just
taking him over because I knew he was my brother’s son.
It is interesting that the three cases in our data set concerning migration
come from people whose origins are in very different parts of the world. It
appears that we are not talking about a phenomenon located in Indian
culture, Irish culture or whatever, but picking up patterns of assistance
which can occur widely in situations where it is fairly common to try to
migrate for economic reasons (Grieco, 1987; Finch, 1989:20–1). In these
situations, the kin network appears to be drawn in quite extensively.
Assistance seems to be given simply, as Paul Bailey put it, ‘on the strength
of being family’. These cases seem to come close to Gouldner’s description
of generalised reciprocity as a form of indebtedness which acts as an ‘all
purpose moral cement’ which binds whole, large kin groups together.
However, in our own data set this seems to be distinctive to the situation
of migration. In other examples of paying back to a third party, more
typically the exchanges are between parents and children across three
generations, but do not extend more broadly.
We turn now to consider a different group of cases, where the repayment
comes in the form of help of a different kind, but again to a third party. These
examples are obviously much more diffuse and our interviewees did not
normally present them explicitly as ‘paying back’. We have included those
cases in which there seems to be at least some evidence that the
participants thought of their actions in this way, but there are probably
many more of a less explicit kind in our data set. The clearest examples of
this form of indirect exchange come from that minority of interviewees
whose lives seem to be organised around kin relationships more
significantly than others, and who presented their families as units where a
lot of mutual support passes on a routine basis. In such families, one can
trace patterns of assistance which seem to be based upon a generalised

expectation that people will do good turns for each other on a regular
basis. In other families, it is much more difficult to trace these more diffuse
types of generalised reciprocity.
The Jacksons are one of our kin groups (see Appendix A) where this
more diffuse version of generalised reciprocity seems prominent. This was a
family in which the parents and their three adult sons (of whom we
interviewed two) all seemed to see themselves as locked into a set of kin
relationships in which mutual aid was a regular expectation. In interviews
with different members of this family, we were able to document various
different types of assistance flowing in all directions: financial help,
emotional support, child care, practical assistance, personal care. One of the
sons, Robert, who was in his thirties and who was our first contact in this
family, said that his family was ‘second to none’ for giving each other
mutual support and they obviously all took great pride in this.
Although the most regular flows of assistance were between the parents,
children and children-in-law, the wider kin network was also included in a
more muted form. The mother, Mary Jackson was heavily involved in
giving regular practical and personal assistance to an elderly uncle and two
elderly aunts who lived in the neighbourhood, as well as being available for
any relative to call on in a crisis. Her husband and children were also
drawn into this wider enterprise. For example, Robert told us that he was
always called upon even by quite distant relatives when someone had died,
to help with and advise upon practical arrangements. He was seen as being
particularly suited to this because he had worked as a police officer for
part of his life. He told the story this way in relation to the recent death of
one of his great uncles:
Robert Well my Auntie Ethel and my mother and myself, we all shot
over [to the hospital] the day he died. We all jumped into my
car. As I said to you before, when it comes to death, it’s me.
Interviewer You’re the expert [laughs],
Robert This is what happened. When it came to the death, it was down
to me to give advice and sort things out. My mother said,
‘What about funeral arrangements Auntie Ethel, what do you
want us to do?’ And she said, ‘Well Robert, what do you do?’
[pause]. I sorted everything out and my Auntie Ethel did
nothing, and my mother did nothing. There was nothing to do.
It had all been sorted. It was down to me again. Death is
Robert, you know [laughs].
In the accounts of the Jackson family, and others like them, one certainly
gets a feeling of ‘generalised indebtedness’ being an important facet of
family relationships and the foundation of much of the assistance which
passes between kin, especially perhaps of smaller-scale assistance. We
should emphasise again, however, that we think that there is a minority of

kin groups to which this applies—certainly this is so within our data set.
The families in which we can identify it most clearly—the Jacksons, the
Mansfields and the Gardners (see Appendix A for details)—are all kin
groups where most of the key members have been geographically mobile
over short distances only, where there is a considerable amount of regular
contact between kin, and where most members of the kin group have
working-class occupations (typically ‘respectable’ working class).
However, we have other kin groups in our study which apparently fit these
same criteria, but where we do not get the same sense that ‘generalised
indebtedness’ characterises their relationships. So the nature of kin
relationships is not straighforwardly explained by factors such as
geographical closeness, though they play some part.
In those situations where we can identify these diffuse forms of
generalised reciprocity, there is another important feature. It seems that the
impulse to ‘pay back’ is rather more muted than in other forms of
exchange which we have discussed. By and large people do not seem to be
overtly concerned about keeping tally of whether they are net givers or net
receivers in the kin group as a whole. Although there may be some feeling
that ‘it all evens out in the end’, the emphasis is much more upon everyone
being prepared to share with others what talents and skills they have.
There apparently is considerable tolerance for situations where some
people are net receivers. It appears that this does not significantly threaten
the balance between dependence and independence for any individual
member of the kin group.
This tolerance of imbalance within the kin group as a whole is made
explicit by Caroline Gardner, whose family was one of those which was
extensively involved in sharing practical assistance. In answering a question
about whether people ever worried that someone was being given a lot of
help but not giving very much back, she said, ‘Er not really, no. We must
be well adjusted.’ Caroline then went on to describe the help given recently
to her cousin Rose, by a number of her kin as well as herself. Over one
weekend various members of the family had got together and cleaned,
repaired and decorated a flat which Rose was going to move into, laid
carpets and bought new furniture for her. She also was receiving assistance
with gardening over a longer term, and various members of the family tried
to subsidise her financially in appropriate ways. When she had finished
describing all this, Caroline said:
You see what she does, now that she’s 60, she babysits. If there’s a
dance on and one of her brothers has got children [pause] if they
know they’re not going to be back till 4 o’clock she goes to sleep,
which is how she pays back.
Although (as we noted above) there is no obvious currency in which one

type of assistance can be repaid by another, it seems clear that in this case
Rose was a net receiver of support from her relatives. This seemed to
present no apparent problems at this level of assistance within the kin
group as a whole. But if we compare that with another situation
concerning Caroline and Rose—which we discussed in the previous section
—some interesting contrasts emerge. In relation to negotiations over re-
covering Rose’s three piece suite, there was a danger that the pattern of
exchanges between two parties—Rose on the one hand, Caroline and her
husband on the other—would become notably imbalanced. It went beyond
the normal type of assistance which was exchanged and Rose was very
concerned about paying back and was quite precise about her calculations.
However, when it came to the normal pattern of exchanges within this
family, Rose’s position could easily be accommodated. It seemed to be
enough that she was willing to give as well as to receive and that she
actually did what she could. Apparently no one thought of her as ‘the kind
of person’ who tried to avoid giving or repaying, and this was very
important.
Linking this with our discussion of maintaining the balance of
dependence and independence, it could be argued that the normal pattern
of support within this kin group did not leave Rose in danger of appearing
to be ‘too dependent’ on any single individual. She received a small amount
of assistance from a number of people and thus was unlikely to
become over-indebted to any of them. The fact that she clearly received more
than she gave in relation to setting her up in a new flat, could be
accommodated quite easily. Moving house is something that happens to a
lot of people, and Rose could quite easily think of herself as on the
receiving end now, but likely to be one of the donors in the future. The family
was simply ‘rallying round’ to help someone who happened to need it at
this particular point in time.
So in these specific situations, in the minority of families where there is a
pattern of everyone ‘rallying round’ to give practical assistance when it is
needed, it seems that some imbalance of dependence and independence can
be tolerated quite readily. This seems to be characterised by a view that
everyone would do what they could for their family, even though they may
not be equally able to provide support at particular times. A crucial
difference between this situation and all the others which we have discussed
is that there is no single individual upon whom someone like Rose becomes
dependent. Therefore there is no one to whom she is in danger of becoming
subordinate. Unlike all the other cases which we have discussed, this form
of exchange, and the type of indebtedness which it creates, does not imply
putting yourself under someone else’s control.
CONCLUSION
We began this chapter by noting that kin relationships do seem to be an
important source of assistance in a range of situations where a person
needs some practical or financial help, though there is also considerable
variation in different people’s experience of this. We have shown that this
cannot be explained simply by the idea that people follow well understood
rules of obligation or duty towards their relatives.
We have explored the idea of reciprocity as one way of understanding
processes of exchange within kin groups—indeed the common way in
which academic writing has tried to address these issues. By looking at our
survey data, we found that reciprocity is a principle to which most people
clearly give assent at the level of publicly expressed norms and beliefs.
However, these data also show that, for most people, there are limits to
reciprocity—or at least there are limits to what can be expected as
repayment for favours done. When we look at what happens in practice in
family life, the principle of repayment also seems to be important, but it is
seldom straightforward to apply. There are some circumstances, we have
argued, where repayment can be direct and in the same currency. But in
most cases people are engaged in repaying one type of help with a different
type of help, so the question of what counts as appropriate repayment is
much more complex.
We have argued that the key to understanding the processes
which underlie these exchanges is that people try to achieve ‘a proper
balance’ between giving and receiving. It is clearly seen as an appropriate
part of kin relationships to give and receive help. It is also apparent that
this should be organised in ways which do not leave any individual in a
position of net receiver, especially not in a position of overall indebtedness
to another identifiable individual. It is for this reason that we have also
referred to this process as keeping a proper balance between dependence
and independence—it is important that no one should become ‘too
dependent’ on someone else’s assistance.
In trying to understand how people work out what ‘too dependent’ might
mean—especially in circumstances where the exchange cannot be direct—
we also need to beware of focusing too narrowly on the material value of
the goods, labour or time which is being exchanged. On many occasions
the negotiations seem to be less about balancing out the value of exchanges
on objectively identifiable criteria, and more concerned with establishing
how the nature of the exchange is to be understood and treated by the key
participants. The key question often seems to be: if this gift is accepted,
will it ‘count’ as something which unbalances the relationship significantly?
What is being negotiated over is not simply—perhaps even not principally—
the exchange of money, goods and labour. People are also negotiating
about their position within the network of kin relationships, and the form
that their specific relationships with each individual will take.
This discussion also makes it clear that issues of power and control are
closely intertwined with the negotiation of the balance between dependence
and independence. If a person’s position gets defined as imbalanced, so
that they are treated as ‘too dependent’ upon another relative, they end up
in a position of subordination to that person. The case example of Sarah
Allen’s relationship with her mother brings this out very clearly. It also
shows that to ‘take responsibility’ for helping a relative—which sounds
benign and altruistic—also puts you in a position of control over that
person. The basis of such control is the imbalance created by giving more
to someone than they can possibly return. The nature of that power was
very visible in the example of John Green’s relationship with his
grandchildren where he took responsibility for their financial future. This
example is unusual in that John was quite comfortable about
acknowledging and using the power which the imbalance in their
relationship gave to him. In other examples we have tended to see this from
the other side, with people worrying about the possibility of getting into a
subordinate position. Many people seem keenly aware of the potential
subordination which goes along with becoming ‘too dependent’ upon a
relative. The English language has a phrase which expresses this well: ‘I
don’t want to be beholden to him/her’. We have suggested that some
people are more sensitively attuned to this possibility than are others, and
that often it is women who are most keenly aware of it. But the idea of ‘not
becoming beholden’ seems to be a driving force behind the way in which
many people negotiate their relationships with kin.
Thus we find the concept of reciprocity useful in developing an analysis
of the processes which underlie structures of support in kin groups,
provided it is understood in the ways we have developed in this chapter. It
is a useful beginning but it is only a beginning. We have left a number of
ends untied in this chapter because our data raise questions which are not
wholly explained by the operation of reciprocity. We would highlight three
particular loose ends: the variation between one person and another in the
extent to which they get locked into a pattern of reciprocal kin exchanges;
that the material value of the goods and services exchanged is sometimes
less important than other considerations; that power and control operate in
complex ways in these exchanges, sometimes being exercised by people
who apparently are in powerless positions. The concept of reciprocity is of
limited value in understanding these empirical observations. The
perspectives which we develop in subsequent chapters help us to take each
of these further and fills out the picture which we have begun to delineate
here.
3
Negotiating commitments over time
INTRODUCTION: UNDERSTANDING THE

NEGOTIATION OF FAMILY RESPONSIBILITIES
Reciprocity is a process which helps considerably in understanding why
and how people become committed to giving help to relatives, but it does
not tell us the whole story. This was the argument of the previous chapter.
In this chapter we will explore our data through a different set of
analytical perspectives, in which the central concept is negotiation. We
have been using the concept of negotiation as if it were unproblematic until
now, but here we want to unravel what it really means in practice. It is a
concept which is central to our analysis and to our argument that
responsibilities between kin are not the straightforward products of rules
of obligation. They are, we shall argue, the products of negotiation.
We need to make clear at this point what we mean by negotiation. We
mean that the course of action which a person takes emerges out of his or
her interaction with other people. People’s behaviour cannot be explained
by saying that someone is following a set of pre-ordained social rules—as
for example, in the topic which we are discussing, moral rules about family
responsibilities. Nor is a person’s behaviour explained straightforwardly by
the position which he or she occupies in the social world—for example, the
idea that someone’s behaviour is predetermined by the fact that she is a
woman, a mother, and so on. Explanations which rely on the idea of
following rules, or on the idea that action is determined by structural
position in a rigid sense, leave little room for manoeuvre by individuals. By
contrast the concept of negotiation emphasises that individuals do have
some room for manoeuvre, though it is never entirely open-ended and
sometimes it can be quite tightly constrained. In this perspective, each
individual is seen as actively working out his or her own course of action,
and doing so with reference to other people. It is through human
interaction that people develop a common understanding of what a
particular course of action will mean: for example, if I offer financial help
to my mother in her old age, will it seem generous, or demeaning, or
whatever? We are drawing here on the classic symbolic interactionist use of

the concept of negotiation, and its relevance to theoretical ideas about
family obligations is discussed in more detail by Finch (1989:177–211).
Within this general definition, negotiation can take different forms. As a
starting point we will make the distinction between explicit and implicit
negotiations. By explicit negotiation we mean open, round-the-table
discussions prompted by specific needs and events. An obvious possible
occasion for explicit negotiations is when a crisis occurs in a family. A
young woman has left her husband following violence, and suddenly needs
somewhere to live with her children; an elderly person has a stroke and is
going to need care. In such circumstances an obvious possibility is that
family members consult with each other and discuss who could give what
kind of help. Explicit negotiations also can occur in anticipation of
situations which are likely to develop in the future, most obviously in
relation to the care of an elderly person. Their essence is that they involve
open discussion in which two or more parties seek to develop a common
understanding of where the balance of responsibility to give and receive
help should lie, in a specific set of circumstances.
Implicit negotiations contrast with this in a number of ways. What we
refer to here are situations where there is no open discussion, yet people do
find ways of communicating with each other about what kinds of
responsibility they regard as reasonable for themselves and for other
people. Such communication is likely to occur over a period of time, so
that sets of commitments develop gradually, incrementally and perhaps
almost unnoticed. As a consequence, when a specific need arises it seems
obvious who will help.
The idea that giving help in families arises from processes of negotiation
enables us to tackle some of the loose ends left at the end of the previous
chapter. In particular it helps us to make sense of our empirical observation
that there is wide individual variation in the extent to which people—even
within the same family—get involved in helping their relatives, and
acknowledge responsibilities towards them. We will argue that
understanding family responsibilities as arrived at through negotiation helps
us to account for this. However we can only use the concept of negotiation
to its fullest effect if we also build in the perspective of time. Negotiations
about who will acknowledge what responsibilities, and towards whom, take
place over long periods of time—in a sense over the whole life-time of the
relevant parties. We cannot understand fully how negotiations operate
without taking the long view.
Hence we use the idea of developing commitments as another
central theme in this chapter. We argue that people become committed to
accepting certain sorts of responsibilities, to particular individuals, over
time. In turn this enables us to tackle another important theme which
emerged in the first two chapters, and which is something of a paradox. On
NEGOTIATING COMMITMENTS OVER TIME 61
the one hand we have found that people do not clearly recognise or agree
upon defined responsibilities attached to particular genealogical
relationships. On the other hand it is clear that many people do
acknowledge specific responsibilities to members of their own kin group.
Our analysis in this chapter leads us to argue that a willingness to
acknowledge particular sets of responsibilities emerges as commitments
develop between individuals.
Because of the kind of processes which we are highlighting in this
chapter we shall mainly be using our interview data, since that is where we
asked people about negotiations in practice. Nevertheless, our survey data
gives an indication that people publicly accept the idea of negotiations at a
normative level. In Chapter 1, we noted a general tendency for there to be
a stronger consensus over procedure than over the substance of family
responsibilities. People are more likely to agree about factors which should
be taken into account in deciding on appropriate action, than about
precisely what that action should be. The very absence of a consensus over
substance implies that commitments should be sorted out in other ways. In
itself, this points towards an overall normative preference for negotiation
about kin support. Our respondents seem to be telling us that family
responsibilities should be sorted out in a process which takes various
factors and contingencies into account, rather than determined on the basis
of genealogical relationship or other fixed rules.
Our survey data also contain some indications that people recognise that
commitments develop over time, and that this is relevant to deciding on a
normatively appropriate course of action. Two of our survey vignettes
specifically built a time dimension into a scenario involving personal care
and practical support. Both vignettes asked at an early stage whether help
should be given then, at a later stage and in the light of changing
circumstances, whether it should be continued and increased. One of these
vignettes, concerning Jane and Ann Hill, was discussed in detail in
Chapter 2, where we saw that most people recognised the significance of
the development of commitments over time between the two women.
Respondents appeared to see this as an important factor which should be
taken into account in deciding whether to continue the pattern of mutual
aid, despite changing personal circumstances. The message is that taking on
commitments means that you become more likely to attract further
commitments in the future.
Our other vignette is rather different. This one concerns Jim and
Margaret Robertson, and we used part of this vignette in Chapter 1 to
show that people do not recognise substantive rules about what to do, even
in parent-child relationships. The first part of the vignette was worded in
this way:
Jim and Margaret Robertson are a married couple in their early

forties. Jim’s parents, who live several hundred miles away, have had
a serious car accident, and they need long-term daily care and help.
Jim is their only son. He and his wife work for the Electricity Board
and could both get tranfers so that they could work near his parents.
What should Jim and Margaret do?
Move to live near Jim’s parents?
Have Jim’s parents move to live with them?
Give money to help pay for daily care?
Let them make their own arrangements?
Other.
The responses were concentrated in the first three options given: 33 per cent
said Jim and Margaret should move, 24 per cent said Jim’s parents should
come to live with them, and 25 per cent said Jim and Margaret should
provide money for daily care. Taken together, this represents a clear
majority in favour of Jim and Margaret taking some responsibility (82 per
cent of responses, where the consensus baseline is 37.5 per cent). However,
opinion is divided on what that responsibility should involve in practice.
There is certainly no consensus in favour of them becoming deeply involved
in a long-term caring situation, which could be seen as the likely outcome
of having Jim’s parents move in with them. In the final part of the vignette,
respondents were asked to consider what should be done a year later, when
the circumstances had moved on:
Jim and Margaret do decide to go and live near Jim’s parents. A year
later Jim’s mother dies, and his father’s condition gets worse so that
he needs full-time care.
Should Jim or Margaret give up their job to take care of Jim’s father?
Yes, Jim should give up his job.
Yes, Margaret should give up her job.
No, neither should give up their job.
Don’t know/depends.
Only 22 per cent said that either Jim nor Margaret should give up their
jobs, and the majority view was that neither should, with 64 per cent of
respondents opting for that answer (consensus baseline 50 per cent). This
was the case even though respondents are given the message that Jim and
Margaret have already established a commitment to Jim’s parents by
moving near and embarking on a personally supportive relationship with
them. There is a strong message, nevertheless, that Jim and Margaret
should not get further entrenched and, by implication, that they should
prevent their commitment from becoming cumulative.
A comparison of the Jim and Margaret vignette with the Jane and Ann Hill
one seems to suggest that people will not see it as normatively appropriate
to continue and increase giving long-term practical support and personal
care even where a commitment has been established, unless the relationship
is obviously reciprocal and does not involve excessive personal cost for the
carer. These messages seem less directly about the problem of imbalance
between the parties, than about the danger of stepping into an apparently
inexorable process of accumulating commitment. In the context of
personal care then, people both recognise the force of commitments
developing over time, and also want the parties to retain some control over
the extent to which they accumulate.
EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT NEGOTIATIONS IN

PRACTICE
We move on now to an examination of our interview data, initially asking
the questions: what evidence is there that, in practice, family
responsibilities emerge from a process of negotiating? Are such
negotiations implicit or explicit? We shall consider these questions by
looking at our data set as a whole. We aim to give a picture of the type of
help which gets negotiated, and the range of kin who negotiate with each
other.
In the later part of the chapter we move directly to the question: what
evidence do we have about the way commitments develop over time, and
how does this part of the process work? We shall tackle that particularly
complex question by means of an extended case study. While we leave the
issue of developing commitments mainly to this case study, our
presentation of negotiations in other examples in our data set cannot—and
does not attempt to—keep the perspective of time wholly out of the picture.
People’s biographies, and the history of their family relationships, very
clearly are brought into negotiations and shape their course.
In looking across our data set for evidence of negotiations in practice, we
find that we have a large number of examples. Of itself this indicates the
importance of negotiation as a significant means through which family
responsibilities develop. Our examples range across the full spectrum from
the totally explicit to the entirely implicit. But it becomes clear that these
represent two ends of a spectrum, rather than alternative and mutually
exclusive methods of negotiating. In many examples there is an element
both of explicit and implicit negotiation. In presenting this range of
examples we have divided them into three categories: open discussions,
clear intentions, non-decisions. We should emphasise that we are not giving
these categories the status of a formal typology. They are categories created
to facilitate presentation and do not have watertight boundaries. Our
whole point is that there is a range of ways in which people can and do
negotiate with relatives, and these often contain both implicit and explicit
elements.
Open discussions
Our first category is open discussions about providing support. We can
identify around 136 such examples in our data set, coming from more than
three-quarters of our interviewees. In these examples people told us that
they or members of their family got together to discuss how to provide
assistance to a relative, the appropriate division of labour between relatives
and so on. The concept of a ‘family conference’ was used by a few people
and it epitomises this form of negotiation, although not all of the
interviewees were claiming that every potential family member actually got
involved in discussions. In fact, we could identify no cases whatsoever
where all relatives who were potentially affected by discussions were
involved in them. Nevertheless, for our interviewees the theme—if not the
reality—of ‘family conference’ or ‘all getting together to discuss it’
pervaded around half of the accounts, while the other half concerned open
discussions between two or more relatives at a time. Most of the examples
were first-hand accounts of negotiations which had taken place in the past.
However some were third party accounts (of events which had happened
elsewhere in the interviewee’s kin group) and others were expectations
about how particular forms of support would be arranged in the future,
should the need arise. The examples include accounts of the same set of
events from different members of kin groups.
Open discussions cover a wide range of types of support, and often more
than one type of support was being negotiated on a single occasion. There
is no straightforward relationship between the type of help being
negotiated and the likelihood of open discussion, although there is a
predominance of examples involving personal care of elderly or sick people
(between one-third and one-half of examples involved this type of
support). Various kinds of practical support were the next most likely
types of support under discussion (around one-third). Financial support,
and discussions about relatives providing accommodation, each emerged in
around one-fifth of the examples. There were also some examples of moral
support, such as generally talking things through. Negotiations were most
commonly about parent-child support, although a wider range of relatives
was often involved in discussions, and the full complement of parents and
children were not always included.
On the surface 136 examples from over three-quarters of our
interviewees is a substantial number. It suggests that open discussion is a
common way in which kin responsibilities get negotiated. However, we
think that conclusion could be a bit misleading for two main reasons.
First, and most importantly, the fact that people report that they talk to
each other—apparently openly—about their kin responsibilities, does not
automatically mean that this is the main mechanism through which kin
responsibilities get negotiated. As we have already suggested, we are not
equating negotiation with talk, but prefer to see talk—or its absence—as
just one element in a more complex process of negotiation. Actually, what
is important is to understand what the presence or absence of talk means in
the context of specific negotiations. We need to look a little closer at this
issue, and we will return to it shortly.
Second, and related to the question of the meaning of talk, there is a
clear sense in our data that interviewees wanted to report open discussions;
that they were rather proud of these examples. People seem actually rather
pleased to be able to say that, in their family, support is negotiated openly
—that they talk things through in a rational manner, to reach the best
solutions. In raising this issue we are not suggesting that people’s
enthusiasm for the idea of family negotiations got the better of them to
such an extent that they were not telling us the truth, although there may
have been some ‘over-reporting’, But again, it indicates that we need to
examine the meaning of talk in the negotiating process, rather than taking
at face value the idea that responsibilities are the straightforward products
of these discussions. Jane Ashton’s account of negotiations between her and
her teenaged children displays some of the enthusiasm to which we are
referring.
Jane It’s like Christmas, we have a system that, we don’t just buy anything.
We’ll say, ‘Well what do you want’, you know, like I’m having er, I
have daft things at Christmas. Like I said I have clothes, our Jenny’s
buying me, she wanted to buy me some trousers, but I’ve changed my
mind. So she said I can’t change my mind again. I’m going to have a
coat stand for the hall. You know, so that’s nice. Sally’s buying me, she
was going to buy me a picture, I wanted a picture at first, but now I’m
having new shoes.
Jane continued at length with her list of the exchange of presents between
her and her children, and concluded:
Jane I mean they seem daft really, but they’re useful things to me. You
know what I mean, they don’t go and buy loads of hankies or ladies
slippers or things like that. They ask first, which I think is better. Like
I’m buying our Julie a plant stand that she wants and giving Alan a
voucher for a record and tape cos that’s what he wants, you know….
But that’s how we do it, that’s how we go on.
In these extracts, and throughout her interviews with us, Jane is telling us
that she is proud of her family, and of her relationship with her children in
particular. She feels that they can and do discuss all sorts of things together,
and she attributes this to having been a lone parent, and supporting them
through ill-health and more than their fair share of traumatic experiences.
Talk between them seems an important emblem of Jane’s success as a
single parent. But Jane’s version of family pride is typical of many of our
interviewees. Just as we argued in Chapter 2 that showing that your family
‘works’ at the very least means showing that relatives ‘rally round’ in a
crisis, so the idea of being able to have discussions and negotiations is
obviously attractive too. Thus we think that people were very happy to
report open discussions to us, and found it easy to do so since there was
something concrete to describe. By contrast, examples of more implicit
forms of negotiation are more difficult to articulate. Nonetheless the large
number of examples of open discussions which we have shows that these
do take place quite widely, and that it is an accepted means through which
definitions of family responsibilities can emerge.
Nevertheless, describing this process as ‘open negotiation’ makes it all
sound clear-cut and simple, a straightforward way in which a family can
manage ‘its’ affairs. However when we look below the surface this form of
negotiation looks less of a purely rational process, and more complex to
manage, than it first appears. In particular, these open discussions do not
take place in a vacuum but within the context of a set of relationships
which already exists, and will continue into the future. Also the range of
possible outcomes is not totally open-ended but is limited by other
considerations which are important in family life—most obviously the need
to maintain the balance between dependence and independence (see
Chapter 2). Essentially, when we look at an example of open discussion,
what we are seeing is the tip of the iceberg.
Thus to understand the significance of an open discussion, we need to
look at the content and outcome of that discussion and also at its wider
context. Two connected ways of highlighting the importance of this are,
first, to focus on who is excluded from discussions as well as on who is
included, and second, to look at what is left unsaid as well as at what is
openly discussed. We can illustrate this by looking at some examples.
A good example of this concerns three sisters, and their respective
responsibilities for supporting their mother, who was becoming confused
and forgetful. The account of this was given to us by Shirley Blanchflower,
the daughter of one of these women. Shirley describes how her own
mother, and the youngest of her mother’s sisters, visit twice a week to
check that their mother is alright. These two sisters have explicitly
discussed the division of responsibilities. Shirley’s mother does shopping
while her younger sister does washing, and Shirley’s father looks after the
finances. All these members of the family live in the Greater Manchester
region. But there is an older sister who now lives away in Cumbria, and
who has not been involved in developing an agreed way of supporting their
mother.
Shirley There’s a little bit of a bone of contention really there, because

when she did live in the area for a while she got into, she went one
day a week and she used to start baking her cakes and everything,
so my Gran stopped baking and relied on my auntie taking stuff
round. And then of course she moved away so then it left the other
two to sort of carry on the situation.
What we have here is an example where responsibilities were agreed
through open discussion between two sisters, but the third sister had taken
a course of action without reference to them. Initially she became very
involved with her mother then, following her move out of the area,
excluded herself altogether. She does not seem to have discussed her
position with her sisters or her mother at either stage, and apparently her
sisters resent this. What is unspoken is the idea that the sister who left has
broken an implicit commitment she had developed to her mother, and had
been willing to discuss neither this, nor the arrangements needed to cover
for the dependency she had created. Again we get the message from Shirley
that open discussion is preferable in families. There is also more than a hint
that one sister is denying the opportunity to the others to exert some
pressure upon her to become committed to an agreed division of labour. We
might surmise (though we do not have direct evidence of this) that she is
adopting a ‘no discussion’ position in order to hold on to the initiative in
her relationship with her family.
In this example the undiscussed element of the situation comes from a
potential donor of help excluding herself from discussion, having been
primarily responsible for cultivating the need for help in the first place. But
the potential recipient can also be excluded, as the mother in this example
may have been. The thinking behind such exclusion can vary, and we will
consider some more examples to demonstrate this. Dorothy O’Malley had
been talking to her daughter Jill about options for helping Jill’s children
financially as they reached adult life. The issue had been highlighted for
Dorothy precisely because her eldest grand-daughter now was a young
adult—so in principle she could have been involved in the discussion. But
she was not. The issue had been discussed openly only by her mother and
her grandmother. Jill explained it like this:
Jill [My mother] wants to leave each of the children £10,000 [in her will]
and she’s talked about when to do it—what is the best age, um
should they just have it when she dies, when they die, or um should
there be an age. I mean she’d thought of 30, she’s thought of 20 odd…
and, oh we haven’t come to any decision about it, we don’t know. She’s
asked me what I think and I thought, well, you know, getting a house,
it would be such a leg up on your mortgage. Um [pause] when are they
going to get a house? Do you do it on marriage, or do—we don’t know.
We’re still thinking about that, I don’t know.
The reasoning behind the exclusion of the recipients in a case like this can
be understood in various ways. It is a major intervention in the financial
affairs of a young person, and perhaps it is being treated as an issue in
which older people have more experience. Alternatively, young people may
be seen as needing agents or advocates to negotiate on their behalf until
they are ‘old enough’. Certainly, several of our ‘open discussion’ examples
potentially affected the lives of children under 18 years old, yet in very few
instances were those children actively involved in discussions. Not all of
these involved financial assistance, but as we have already noted (see
Chapter 2 and Appendix C), financial assistance does usually flow down
the generations and excluding grandchildren from the discussion as in the
O’Malley case keeps the position of recipient and donor very separate and
very clear. It also preserves the control of the older generation over the
exchange. Dorothy, in effect, is retaining the right to take her own decision
about what she wants to do, in the light of advice from her daughter who
is not a party to the transaction, in that she is not going to get anything
herself from the particular pot of money being discussed.
In the O’Malley case, keeping control in the hands of the donor seems to
be an important rationale for excluding the potential recipients from the
discussion. We have other examples where potential recipients were
excluded from discussions about support precisely so that they would not
be perceived as having had to ask for help. Ironically, this seems more like
putting some control in the hands of recipients because, if they had had to
ask, this would have compromised their independence. Keith Pearson’s
negotiations with his siblings about providing their mother with a
telephone helps to illustrate this.
Keith We helped my mother out, you know with all the, we’ve had
her a telephone put in, then she could ring any of us up if she
wanted.
Interviewer Right. What, you all sort of got together and arranged that did
you?
Keith Yes, we had to arrange it, yes.
Interviewer Paid for it together?
Keith Yes, we paid for it yes. We pay for her rental and all when it
comes, yes, yes.
Interviewer How did that come about, did one of you decide that it was a
good idea or?
Keith Er, I don’t know really how it came about really. I think as she
got older, we had it put in you know, and then she could er, if
she ever got fed up or she were on her own, she could just ring
any of us up, yes.
However, when we asked Keith further about this, it emerged that this was
an idea cooked up between the siblings and then presented to their mother.
Keith added that:
Keith She didn’t really need us to pay for the telephone, but she let us do it
because we kept going on about it. And then she said, it was,
‘Alright, I’ll let you then.’ I mean she goes on holidays, she’s, she’s no
need for any of us to support her at the moment. If she needs it, she
only needs to ask and she’ll get it, but er, she doesn’t need it.
In this example, the fact that Keith’s mother ‘let’ them pay for her telephone,
only after they had ‘kept going on about it’, illustrates the point that her
exclusion from the initial discussions helped to maintain her independence
because it demonstrated that she had neither asked for the support, nor
even really needed it. In a sense, she is doing her children a favour by
allowing them to give her this support: at one level, at least, she is the
powerful one in this exchange.
There are other kinds of reasoning which lie behind the exclusion of
certain people from open discussions. In the following case, concerning
Mary Mycock’s mother-in-law, the message was clearly that excluding the
latter from the relevant discussion was seen as a protection for her. The
situation was like this. The health of Mary’s father-in-law had deteriorated
badly, and the issue was: should he continue to be looked after at home or
go into residental care? As Mary describes the situation, her husband and his
siblings entered into open discussion about this and chose residential care.
They deliberately excluded their mother from this discussion, on the
grounds that it would be too difficult for a wife to make such a decision. Her
exclusion in itself represented a significant form of support for her—they
took the responsibility of the decision away from her, thus reducing her
possible burden of guilt. Mary describes the situation this way:
Mary My husband was in this situation as with his mother and father
and in the end the four of them, the four brothers and sisters,
decided that he had to go into a hospital in, he actually went into
a private hospital, private nursing home, because his mother
just couldn’t cope, and they, they had to take the decision off
her, namely the decision he needed to go into a nursing home
and it, it was a private one, it was paid for, but my mother-in
[pause] my husband’s mother lived till she was 93, and his
father died in his early seventies.
Interviewer Oh I see, so she lived a lot longer than him?
Mary Yes, but they reckon if, if she’d carried on looking after him
she’d have gone before he did because it was taking too much
out of her, she just wasn’t physically capable [pause] and when
it’s one of each it’s you know husband and wife [pause] if the
children don’t live close enough they just can’t give enough
support, and it’s 24 hours a day and it’s too much.
Interviewer It’s interesting that in that case the children all got together and
talked about it, did they, and decided that that was…?
Mary They made the decision. Because she wouldn’t make the
decision—well she can’t, you can’t expect a husband and wife
to make that sort of decision. It has to be taken out of their
hands, I’d say, you know.
There is an analytical distinction between exclusions which are intended to
protect people, or to maintain an appropriate level of independence (by
removing the need for someone to participate in discussions, or to have to
ask for help), and those which are intended to disempower (by removing
the right to participate). However, the latter may sometimes become the
unintended consequence of the former, and in any case the interpretations
of the different parties to the same set of negotiatons may diverge on this
matter.
In considering our ‘open discussions’ category we have concentrated on
explaining the undiscussed elements in the negotiations which lie below the
‘tip of the iceberg’. In particular, we have examined the exclusion of certain
relevant individuals. We have seen that such exclusions can be quite
deliberate—whether exclusion of oneself or of other people. But being
deliberate does not necessarily mean that there is a malicious intent—
indeed it can be quite the reverse. In some examples such exclusions seem
to be a conscious strategy, in others it is much less clear that they are the
result of strategic thinking of that sort.
Thus looking at who is excluded, on what basis, and what is left unsaid,
helps us to fill out our understanding of what is happening in these open
discussions. We find in our examples of open discussions that explicit
negotiations are a well-established feature of family life, indeed that they
are valued as a sign of strong family relationships, but that there is a lot
more going on. This helps us to understand something about how family
responsibilities develop provided it is treated cautiously, we have argued.
However, this is by no means the only way in which kin negotiate with
each other about giving and receiving help.
Clear intentions
We have characterised our second category of methods of negotiating as
‘clear intentions’. These are examples where people have consciously
planned how to provide support, and sometimes implicitly got that
message over to other people involved, without actually bringing it out into
the open for discussion. We have around forty-five examples in our data
set of clear intentions which apparently did not involve any open
discussion. Again they cover a wide range of support, including practical

(12), accommodation (15), financial (12) personal care (12), household
organisation (3). The support being negotiated over was concentrated in
the parent-child range (16 parent-child where the support was to be
provided up the generations; 7 parent-child down the generations; 11
where direction was not clear or was being established through
negotiations; 11 other genealogical relationships).
If someone has formed a clear intention to give help, why is there no
open discussion? In some instances the reason for not speaking openly
about it was fairly clear, in others it was not. Where the reason was clear,
often it was similar to the logic governing the exclusion of certain people
from open discussions: that is, it was concerned with maintaining the
dependence-independence balance. Open discussion of the issue would, it
seems, disturb this more than the actual giving and receiving of help. For
example, in the following case, Sarah Yates talks about the help which her
mother has given to her in recent years, by doing the washing and ironing
for Sarah’s household every week. This is valuable practical assistance for
Sarah but it also represents emotional support for her mother, giving her a
way of adjusting to her widowhood. However, Sarah’s mother has recently
become ill, and Sarah is now facing a dilemma.
Sarah She’s developed angina. So now I’m going to have to be very careful
what I do with her, because (a) I don’t want her to think that she’s
an invalid because that’ll make her worse, er a lot of people her age
get angina, it’s not unusual, and (b) I’ve got to cut the washing down
or how she does it, down, um its been a bit heavy for the last six
weeks because with the school being off, my daughter tends to change
her clothes three times a day [laughs], which of course now she’s
realised is not so good, she’s prepared to not wear as many clothes,
but basically I’ve got to cut her down on some of either the washing
or the ironing and, but without her being hurt.
Sarah is saying that she has a clear intention to reduce the amount of help
which her mother gives her, but that to do so openly could compromise the
delicate balance of dependence and independence in their relationship. The
reasons for keeping quiet about a clearly formulated intention are easy to
see in this case, once one listens carefully to what is being said. Similar
reasoning is reflected in a number of other cases in our data set, though
sometimes not as clearly as it is here. It seems quite commonly to be a way
in which parents and children in particular manage their relationship, at
different points in their lives.
The dependence-independence balance was not the sole factor lying
behind cases where clear intentions were left publicly unstated, however. In
some cases the unspoken nature of the transaction seemed to be more a
way of ensuring that the potential recipient of help was not put in a
position where she or he had to ask for it, just as the exclusion of people—
like Keith Pearson’s mother—from open discussions could be interpreted in
a similar way. An example of this was given to us by Jean Crabtree, and
concerned a time several years previously when she had been a young,
single woman living with her widowed mother.
Jean Well, up until when my grandma got very ill, er she [mother] had
always sort of made the tea for me, done my washing, that type of
thing, er but once she started to look after my grandma more, what
happened was I used to er, do shopping for myself and get, buy my
own food, instead of giving her housekeeping money for food, I used
to buy my own food and do my own cooking for myself, and just give
her money for things like the, you know, towards the house, electricity
and the phone, that type of thing. So I would do my own washing and
ironing, so I became more independent then, because I was trying to
help her, knowing that she had so much work to do, you know,
helping my grandma and grandad [pause] I had to try and do
something, so that was my way, you know, of helping her.
The essence of Jean’s consideration here seems to have been to seize the
initiative, and to ensure that her mother was not embarrassed by having to
solicit her daughter’s help. The phenomenon of ‘not having to ask’ is an
important one in transactions between kin, and we explore it directly in
Chapter 5.
Some other examples of ‘clear intentions’ also emphasise seizing the
initiative, but in a different way. There are a few cases where discussion
was not entered into because the donor wanted no dispute about what was
to be done. By formulating a clear intention, then simply acting on it, this
person is stating that there should be no discussion. An example of this
comes from our interview with Avril King, a middle-aged woman who had
nursed her mother through a terminal illness several years previously, with
little help from her two brothers. In the following extract Avril describes
how her mother started giving her gifts of various household items.
Avril Funnily enough, my mother had started to give me things, now
my mother must have known she was ill [pause]. Er, well those days
they didn’t have duvets, they had you know the candlewick, such
gorgeous bedding, she kept giving me these. Not even out of the
packets, er, you know, Avril she said ‘Take that’ I said ‘No mum, I
don’t want it’ ‘I want you to have it now.’ My mum made sure I did
get some things, she kept giving me things over a period of time, and
I think she knew, that um, she was ill, and er I mean when I think
back. [Emphasis in original]
In this extract Avril’s mother is acting in a way which brooks no dissent. If
she had initiated open discussions, she would effectively have been
disempowering herself. She wants Avril specifically to get these items (‘I
want you to have it’) and in the circumstances Avril was in no position to
debate this. Significantly, the other people also unable to debate this as a
consequence were Avril’s brothers, and the full meaning of their mother’s
actions becomes clear elsewhere in Avril’s interview. After her mother died,
her brothers had the pick of her belongings, Avril told us, despite the fact
that they had contributed little to her care. What she is telling us in the
extract above is that her mother anticipated this possibility and took action
to ensure that Avril got a fair share. Open discussions may well have
precluded that possibility.
Thus this particular style of negotiating family obligations—formulating
clear intentions but not putting them up for open discussion—can occur
for a variety of reasons. In most cases the desire to avoid discussion seems
strategic, for reasons which are comprehensible when we know enough
about the relationships involved. In that sense, formulating clear intentions
should be considered part of the process of negotiating family obligations,
though implicit rather than explicit.
Non-decisions
Our final category of types of negotiation is entitled ‘non-decisions’. By
this we mean the process of reaching an understanding about family
responsibilities without either open discussion or any party having formed
a clear intention, in so far as we can tell. We include this category for
completeness, as it represents the end of the spectrum where negotiations
are most implicit. However, there is a sense in which many of the examples
which we use in other chapters also illustrate non-decisions. In very many
cases when people talk about how they (or someone else) came to accept
responsibility for helping a particular relative, they cannot reconstruct a
consciously formulated strategy, or identify a point in time when there was
an overt agreement. The arrangement just emerged. It became obvious that
a certain person would help. In the same way, many of the examples of
‘clear intention’ or ‘open discussion’ from this chapter have elements of
non-decisions within them. For example, sometimes—even when there was
open discussion about how support should be provided—the decision about
who should provide support had already ‘been taken’ implicitly, or had
become obvious over time. These are the themes which we encounter over
and over again in our interviews.
Nevertheless, we have been able to separate out a group of examples
which we might call ‘clear non-decisions’, where people told us that
definitely there was no discussion, that help was just given—or in a few
cases, that this is how matters will be conducted in their families in the
future. Forty-six of cur interviewees (i.e. just over half) gave us at least one
example of this kind. There may well be many more cases not reported to
us in this way, because implicit processes tend to be more difficult to

identify and recount than more concrete examples of open discussion.
A minority of cases in the non-decisions category seemed to be examples
of people making a statement about their families by reference to the
meaning of talk—and in this case its absence—in the negotiating process.
While some people may take pride in claiming that theirs is a family which
uses open discussion, rather ironically others may be proud of not having
to have discussions. We do not think this is contradictory, because in a
sense both versions involve taking pride in the same thing: that your family
‘works’ in the sense that everyone rallies round in a crisis (see Chapter 2
where this idea is first developed). One way of saying that may be to report
that members of your family discuss things openly; another may be to say
that rallying round takes place automatically, without discussion.
A typical example of pride in non-decision-making to illustrate these
points comes from the Jackson kin group. The following extract is from
Robert Jackson’s interview, where he gives a good example of a non-
decision—in this case anticipating a situation which may occur in the
future. He has been talking about his father’s ill-health, and goes on to
consider what he and his two brothers will do if his mother is widowed.
Robert Eventually, not looking too far in the future, there’s going to be
a lot of responsibility that we’ve got to, the three of us have got
to undertake.
Interviewer Have you discussed it between the three of you?
Robert No.
Interviewer You’ve not, it hasn’t been discussed, no.
Robert No, it’s something that doesn’t need discussing. We all know
that eventually it’s going to happen and we all know what each
is, what each is going to do.
Interviewer What, that one will do one sort of thing, and one will do
another, sort of?
Robert Well you see, again because I’ve been a policeman, all the
funeral side is down to me, because I’m hard. They always say
‘Oh you’re hard to it any way.’ So when it comes down to
arrangements and so on and so forth, I know exactly what has
to be done, so they won’t even consider doing anything like
that. Er, my first eldest’ll [brother] look after my mother,
because he’s the one round the corner, so he’ll be there all the
time. The other one will deal with all the relations, all the
relatives that need to know. He’ll deal with that side. We don’t
even need to talk about it, because we know that that’s how
it’s going to happen. It’s a strange inbuilt feeling that we’ve all
got you know. [Emphasis in original]
In his account, Robert rejects the whole idea of open discussion about
family responsibilities, and indicates that his family would proceed by non-
decision-making. We see Robert’s account as a version of the theme of ‘not
having to ask’ for help. The message he seems to be trying to convey is that
he and his brothers will not wait to be asked by anyone to help, but will
come forward and offer their contributions. As a way of demonstrating
this, he tells us that they already know—without need for discussion—
what those contributions will be. Whether or not this implicitly agreed
division of labour would actually be activated without discussion is not
certain, however. On the face of it our interview with one of Robert’s
brothers, McNeil, gives a different impression. McNeil does not share his
brother’s clear view of what their division of labour in this situation would
be. He says he does not know what they would do, and certainly does not
give the impression that they have implicitly worked this out between
them. Not least this is because he has not wanted to anticipate his father’s
death, even implicitly. However, although McNeil’s account diverges from
Robert’s in that he feels that discussion would be necessary to work out
what to do, the message they both make very clear is that they would want
to do all they could, and would not wait to be asked to make a
contribution. Both brothers share the view that theirs is a family that rallies
round in a crisis.
In this sense, pride in non-decision-making may not be that different
from pride in being able to discuss things openly: both may be versions of
the message that your family works, in the sense that everybody pulls
together when needed.
However, most of the examples of non-decisions involve only one or two
people taking responsibility, rather than a group effort as is suggested in
the Jackson case. In these cases, there is one striking way in which our non-
decisions category differs from the other two categories. Here we find that
the focus is principally on women, as the ‘obvious’ people to take
responsibility. Examples where there has been (or will be) no discussion
have a strong gendered dimension. The end result is most likely to be that
a woman accepts responsibility for providing assistance. By contrast,
examples of open discussion may result in either women or men taking
responsibility. As it happens, many of our examples of non-decisions are
about personal care, where the outcome is that a woman accepts
responsibility. Our qualitative data set as a whole does show a
preponderance of women over men providing personal care (around twice
as many, as documented in Appendix C), and it seems significant that they
are concentrated in this non-decisions category. By contrast, very few men
end up accepting responsibility for personal care through a process of non-
decisions. Where men provide such care, their responsibilities have usually
been negotiated through open discussions with other people.
Let us consider some examples to illustrate these points. Some were given
by women who seemed to regret that their own responsibilities were
obvious to everyone. Avril King provides an example of this:
Avril At home, you see, I’ve got two older brothers, you see I’m the
baby, and my mother took ill of cancer [pause] and um [pause]
I mean I was the one, um, that you know, did everything. I
mean I was working full-time at that particular time, I had a very
responsible job, but I had a very good boss, who said you
know, if I ever needed to, to go home, I could. But um, you
see, that all fell on me. I mean the lads didn’t do much at all
really.
Interviewer Was that because you were living nearby?
Avril Well I was here. Again, you see, they were just down the road
and um, but they, they’re, I mean, not miles away [laughs] you
know what I mean. They’re only in a place called Offerton
which isn’t, by car, is ten minutes, you know, my elder brother
doesn’t, they don’t have a car, but my other one does and, um,
but there again, that fell on me.
Interviewer Do you think that was, to do with, because you were the
daughter, or not?
Avril Don’t know really, but my sister-in-law, they never really
bothered [pause] you know, they never er, I mean. When
Miles’s [Avril’s husband] mother was only 58 we found her
dead in bed and um, I mean, right away, you know ‘you come
to our house for Sunday dinner, you do…’. ‘Well he [Miles’s
father] was working shifts at the time. ‘I’ll do all your washing
and ironing.’ It was automatic for me to do that, you know. But
my sister-in-laws, they never even came to see if they could help
in any way when my mum was ill [pause] you know. It was, I
mean I’ve got a very good husband, you know, who was very
good [pause] and er, but it all fell on me.
When Avril is asked whether she seemed the obvious person because of her
gender, she tells the story of her involvement with her husband’s parents
as a daughter-in-law, and reflects that her mother’s daughters-in-law did
not show a similar commitment. She clearly does not think that gender is a
straightforward explanation. But whatever the explanation, we get a
picture of Avril stepping in to help without discussion, and other people
assuming that she would, or taking for granted that she did.
Another example concerned a woman whom we did not interview, but
about whom we have several accounts from members of the Jones kin
group (see Appendix A for kin group details): from her sister, from her
niece and from her grand-niece. This woman perhaps fitted the classic
stereotype of the spinster-carer: she had lived with her parents until their
death, and had been involved not only in their care, but in the care of
several other relatives both before and after her parents’ death. The
accounts we have from her sister, her niece and her grand-niece, all
emphasise the extent to which everyone viewed her as the obvious family
carer. Her sister, Kathleen Snow, explains the situation like this:
Interviewer Do you think it’s because of the type of person she is that she’s
got involved like this, or because she was living, was sort of
handy, or…?
Kathleen Well, I think circumstances make you what you are don’t they,
because if she hadn’t had all these old people, if she had got
married when she was younger, and gone to live away, this
probably would never have cropped up. It just happens that
where you are at a certain time, doesn’t it?
Interviewer Yes, yes. Was she working, did she have a job?
Kathleen No she wasn’t working no, she had worked when she was
younger, but she wasn’t working then.
And finally, one of the rare examples where a man was seen at least by
some relatives as obvious carer. This example concerns the brother of one
of our interviewees, Eileen Simpson. Eileen has three brothers. Two are
married with children, and the other, in his fifties, is single, and lives with
Eileen’s 80-year-old widowed father who is still fairly fit and active. Her
brother has effectively never moved away from home, and is now
increasingly involved in looking after their father. In our interviews with
Eileen’s husband, and two of their young adult children, we get the idea
that the supportive relationship between her brother and father has evolved
fairly naturally, as a result of non-decisions ‘taken’ over time. Eileen’s
perception although similar in theme, is slightly different.
Eileen He [father] lives over in Birmingham, my brother lives with him. My
brother didn’t marry. I feel guilty about my brother more than I do
my father actually, funnily enough, because I feel he has [pause]
all the problems of it [pause] although my father at the moment is
still quite fit, he can still get out and about—he’s 80 in April—but he
still needs looking after if you like. He doesn’t get meals or anything
like that so that falls on my brother. And keeping the house clean
and everything falls on my brother, although they’ve got a home
help for two hours once a week. I mean what that does I mean is
nothing really. Um, since we’ve been working in the shop I feel
guilty because I haven’t been able to get over there. I used to go over,
because I’ve got the car, once a week at least just to see how he was
going, but there was nothing I could do. This is what I felt useless
at, because my brother, he’s very capable. I mean he always kept the
house clean. My father would never let me cook him a meal. He’d
always want a sandwich. [Emphasis in original]
In this example we do get a sense of the implicit negotiations and indeed

struggles that can go on around non-decisions. Eileen has not been
particularly comfortable with the idea that her brother is the obvious and
natural carer for their father.
Taken together, we think these data suggest that different negotiating
processes may apply to women and men, especially around the issues of
caring. These processes need to be understood as tied into women’s and
men’s biographies and the different ways in which these usually get woven
into commitments which develop over time. By this reckoning, Eileen
Simpson’s brother was ‘selected’ through a non-decision-making process
because of an unusual (for men) biography, which provided the conditions
for the development of commitment between him and his father
specifically. As a result, he came to be in a position where he could be seen
as an obvious carer, without discussion. The point really is that it is usually
women’s biographies which put them in a position where they can be
regarded as an obvious carer without the need for discussion. Men’s
biographies do not, except unusually.
This example demonstrates that the process of negotiation can only be
understood with reference to the biographies of the individuals involved
and the history of their relationships, as they have developed over time.
Biographies themselves are part of the negotiating process. Assumptions
about who will do what for whom, and in what way, are built upon
previous negotiations and the reputations people have established through
their conduct in those negotiations. Outcomes get carried forward and
expressed in continuing biographies, and in developing commitments. As we
have argued above, these also tend to inform the more explicit forms of
negotiation. We have no cases where the pattern and division of
responsibility emerged entirely out of discussions in a vacuum. However,
that does not mean that the outcomes of negotiations are predetermined.
FORMS OF NEGOTIATING PRACTICE

Our aim in this section has been to demonstrate the importance of
negotiation as a mechanism through which family responsibilities emerge.
The large number of examples in our data set underlines this. All types of
practical and financial assistance get negotiated in families. Any relevant
relatives may be involved. Though in the majority of our examples parents
and children predominate, this reflects our range of examples of kin
support more generally (see Appendix C) rather than telling us anything
specifically about negotiations. The preponderance of negotiations in the
parent-child range does, however, add weight to our argument that family
responsibilities are not the products of substantive rules pertaining to
genealogical relationships, even for parents and children. If there were clear
rules about what parents and children should do for each other, we would
expect to see many fewer examples of negotiation in practice.
Through discussion of examples of negotiation in three different
categories, we have tried to show the wide range of approaches which
people take to the business of negotiating family responsibilities. Both
explicit and implicit mechanisms are used widely, often together.
In general our interviewees endorse the virtue of open discussion in
families. Being able to discuss such matters openly, to arrive at an agreed
division of labour, is a sign that a family is working well in most people’s
eyes. It shows that everyone is prepared to acknowledge responsibilities
and to pull their weight (see Chapter 2, and also Finch and Mason, 1990b;
1991). If everyone pulling their weight in the division of responsibilities is
ideally what a family should express, then open discussion is a mechanism
through which this outcome can be seen to be achieved. Thus people were
pleased if they were able to report that open discussions did take place, and
conversely could show displeasure with a particular relative who did not
take part in them.
Interestingly, however, the logic of all this can work the other way
round. In a few cases, people were actually proud of the fact that their
family did not talk openly about who should do what. In these cases, the
logic seems to be that ‘we do not have to’ discuss what is going to happen—
people just get on and do it. In contrast with the other examples, in these
cases not having to discuss was taken as a sign that the family was working
well, in the sense that people all pulled their weight automatically.
Nevertheless, we do not think this indicates that people were operating
with kinship rules about who should do what, which made either
discussion or negotiation unnecessary. Instead, we interpret this as a
version of the theme of ‘not having to ask, or be asked’.
In a sense, in our non-decisions and open discussions categories we
seem to be picking up on two different versions of a theme we mentioned
in Chapter 2, that rallying round in a crisis is a way of showing that your
family ‘works’. For many people, rallying round means showing that you
are prepared to have a family conference and sort out what to do. For
others, though, it means showing that you will all come forward with
offers of help, rather than waiting to be asked.
We have also highlighted the importance of looking at what is not
discussed openly, and who is not included in explicit negotiations. Refusal
to enter discussion, or the exclusion of someone else from open discussion,
emerge as important phenomena in the negotiating process. These
mechanisms are not necessarily a way simply of avoiding taking on
responsibilities. Often they are quite the reverse—an integral part of the
process of giving help can be that it is not openly discussed. Given the fact
that, in general, open discussion is valued highly this may seem rather
curious. But exclusion of oneself or someone else from open discussion
becomes entirely understandable when one knows enough about the

context, and often seems to be a way of managing the relationships of
power and control inherent in these negotiations. Most clearly, we have
been able to show that staying out of open discussion enables a person to
retain more control over the situation, which may be very important if they
are someone who might give assistance to a relative. Staying out of open
discussion enables more control to remain in the hands of the donor. In
entering open discussion about a divison of labour between relatives, one
inevitably is relinquishing such control—though obviously others also may
be in the same position. The importance of ensuring that power remains in
the hands of the donor is a theme which we take up directly in Chapter 5.
In general therefore, our interview data support the view that negotiation
is a widespread phenomenon in relation to family responsibilities, and that
mechanisms for negotiation can take a variety of different forms. But
precisely how it all works, and especially how it develops over time, is
something which can only be fully understood by looking at the process in
greater detail. We move therefore to consideration of a single case, in order
to tease out these elements more effectively.
NEGOTIATING COMMITMENTS IN PRACTICE: A

CASE STUDY
For this case we have selected the Simpson kin group, where we are
capitalising on having interviewed several members of the family. It is
particularly useful to present data in this way on the topic of negotiation
because it enables us to build up a picture of how the commitments which
were developing appeared to different parties.
We have chosen the Simpson family, not because their experiences are
particularly typical or atypical, but because their relationships display all
the processes which we are trying to understand. They give us examples of
negotiations which have explicit as well as implicit elements, and also of
processes of gradually accumulating commitments. We are not going to
attempt to discuss all the rich data which we have on this family. We are
confining ourselves to negotiations and renegotiations about the position
of one member of the family, Doreen (the grandmother), and how other
people’s commitments to her developed over time. Some of the material we
use in this case study is of a sensitive nature, so we have used substitute
pseudonyms, and have changed certain details which do not affect the
analysis.
We interviewed four members of the Simpson family: Julie, her father
Stan, her mother Eileen and her sister Janet. Julie was interviewed first in
our survey, and then again twice in our qualitative study. Because she was
our key interviewee, the kin group is ‘hers’, in the sense that it is
constructed around those people she counted as her immediate family. At
the time of our qualitative interviews, Julie was 25 years old, single and
lived alone in her own flat in Manchester. She was a graduate, and was
working full-time as a computer programmer.
One of Julie’s sisters, Janet, was our second interviewee. She was 21
years old, single and lived alone in a rented flat near Leeds, a couple of
miles from their parents. She worked full-time as an insurance clerk, and
unlike Julie had not been to university. Stan and Eileen Simpson, their
parents, were our third and fourth interviewees. Aged 52 and 46 years
respectively, they lived in their own house in Leeds. Stan had worked for
the same company for over twenty years, originally in sales, and latterly in
management. In 1986 he was made redundant, and since then he and
Eileen have been running a grocery shop. Eileen’s employment career has
been less continuous and was broken for childbearing and rearing. She has
worked in a variety of jobs—technical, clerical and shop work. Running
the grocery shop is the first full-time job Eileen has had for many years.
We were unable to interview two other members of Julie’s ‘immediate’
kin group: her grandmother, Doreen, and her sister, Clare. Doreen is Stan’s
80-year-old mother. She has been living with Eileen and Stan since shortly
after she was widowed some eighteen years ago, and the household has
moved twice during that time. She has not been employed for many years.
Clare is one year younger than Julie. She is divorced and living with her
new partner in Essex. She works full-time, and like Janet has not had a
university education.
The initial issue: how to respond to Doreen’s widowhood?

We enter the lives of this family when, some eighteen years ago, Stan and
Eileen Simpson offered Doreen Simpson a home with them. At the time
Doreen was in her sixties and had recently been widowed. On the face of
it, there is no obvious reason why this particular course of action should
have been chosen, or why it was Stan and Eileen who initiated it. First of
all, Doreen was—and still is—fit and well. She did not need personal care
of the round-the-clock kind which might have prompted Stan and Eileen to
feel they needed to be in the same household as her. Second, the
arrangement was intended from the start to be a permanent one. It cannot
be explained as a temporary measure to give Doreen time to sort herself
out after the death of her husband. And third, Doreen had another son and
a daughter, both married, living no more than an hour’s journey away.
So the particular circumstances of this case do not immediately suggest a
reason for Stan and Eileen’s offering Doreen a home. Also this would not
have been seen as an ‘obvious’ move in the more general sense of its being
a common response to widowhood. In the white British community at
least, rather few elderly people live with their children—no more than 5
per cent according to national data (Arber et al., 1988; Wall, 1989). Our
own interview data reflect this position. Appendix C shows that we had
only four examples of elderly people living with their children on a
permanent basis at the time we conducted the interviews, of whom two in
fact were in households of Asian descent. In three of these four cases, the
adult child had always shared a home with their parent, bringing their own
spouse into this arrangement, rather than setting up the co-residence after a
period living in separate households. The fourth case is the Simpsons.
On the face of it, therefore, the Simpsons’ course of action is quite
puzzling. Why was Doreen offered a permanent home after being
widowed, and why did this offer come from Stan and Eileen rather than
anyone else? In order to understand this, we need to look at the process of
negotiation which went on around the time that the offer was made, and at
the way in which that process was rooted in a set of relationships which
had their own ongoing dynamics.
The four members of the Simpson family whom we interviewed all gave
remarkably similar versions of the reasoning behind the offer, and all of
their accounts depend for their logic on the assumption that Stan in
particular had already developed a strong sense of personal responsibility
for Doreen and her well-being, prior to her widowhood. The sudden death
of her husband from a heart attack, however, changed the nature of her
needs, and the question for Stan was how best could he continue to
support her. Eileen explains their reasoning in the following way:
Eileen Stan has always been very very fond of his mother, both his parents,
and certainly he was close to his mother, and she was on her own at
that time and he was worried about her. Also the fact, it was not all
one-sided. It was a little bit selfish on our part as well because she’d
got a big garden, that house. He was also picking her up every
weekend after his father died and bringing her over to us, which was
a bit of a bind. He used to pick her up on Friday evening and then
take her back on the Sunday evening, which tied every weekend we
had. You know, we hadn’t got any freedom if you like, but we felt
she shouldn’t be on her own for too long. Then also it was the fact of
keeping the house up if there were any jobs wanted to be done. You
know, that’s a problem, the gardening. So we thought about it and
we, we got on well and we decided if she would, it would be better
for her to come to us than for him to have that, you know, and she
was only 60 at the time so, as you know, it could have gone on for
years.
Eileen’s main concern at this stage was Stan’s well-being, rather than
anxiety about Doreen specifically. Stan already felt committed: it was not
an option to reduce his visiting time and practical support for Doreen. The
issue for them both became how to make it all manageable. Under these
circumstances the particular solution of sharing a household makes much
more sense. However, both Eileen and Stan knew that making this offer
would have implications for Eileen. It would draw her into a more direct
involvement with Doreen than she had experienced previously. Stan alludes
to this when he says:
Stan I was the one mother turned to [pause] and because in particular
Eileen and mother got on so well, um we eventually made the decision
that she come and live with us.
Stan knew he was beginning to involve Eileen actively in responsibility for
his mother, and needed her approval for doing that. The explicit element of
their negotiation focused around this, where both could anticipate a change
in the pattern of their relationships as a consequence of making their offer
to Doreen. Initially Stan and Eileen just discussed it together, drawing no
one else in. Like other examples given earlier they were excluding other
relevant parties from the discussion at this stage, and retaining control over
it themselves until they were ready to go more public. The process they
both describe is one of a reasoned, round-the-table discussion, exploring
options, agreeing what they would be prepared to do. Only once that
process had been finalised did they draw Doreen in, by offering her a
permanent home: an offer which they were by no means certain she would
accept but, as Stan put it, ‘We thought it was right that it should come from
us.’ There is more than a trace of searching for an appropriate balance
between dependence and independence here (see Chapter 2); of not putting
Doreen in a position where she had to ask for more support, and of
presenting the deal as one whereby all involved would benefit. Like many of
the respondents in our survey (see Chapter 1) they were as much concerned
with the procedural aspects of the negotiations (how they were conducted)
as with their substance (what the outcome would be).
These procedural aspects of the negotiations have had lasting
implications, as Stan implies when he says, ‘We asked her to come, which
she reminds us of on occasions [laughs]. We did ask her to come and live with
us.’ Doreen has evidently reminded Stan and Eileen on occasion that they
bear the responsibility for offering her a home. Eileen’s comments imply
that this was made clear in negotiations at the outset: ‘She did want to come
although she did advise us they were long livers in their family and, you
know, to think about it.’
A similar process is reflected in the involvement in the negotiations of
Stan’s siblings. Stan and Eileen informed the siblings of the offer they
intended to make, prior to approaching Doreen. They had not expected the
siblings to make a similar offer, since they already had less sustained
contact with Doreen, and had not developed such a strong commitment to
her. Therefore the siblings were not involved in the negotiations about what
to do, but were asked to respond to what Stan and Eileen proposed to do.
Their reactions were different: Stan’s sister advised that Stan and Eileen
should proceed with caution, saying ‘stop and think, don’t jump in or you
might regret it’. His brother, on the other hand, ‘thought it was a great
idea’. Although different, both reactions effectively re-emphasised Stan and
Eileen’s responsibility for their offer, rather than challenging it. Our
interviewees did not actually use the phrase ‘you’ve made your bed, you lie
on it’, but that seems to conjure up the precautionary message about the
future which was being conveyed.
At this stage the significance of the outcomes of negotiations was
therefore twofold. First, the decision taken would almost inevitably create
an unequal provision of material goods and services between Stan, Eileen
and Doreen on the one hand, and Doreen and her other children on the
other hand. Second, the division of responsibility was underlined
symbolically. Everybody knew what it meant. The meaning of the help
offered was being negotiated as well as the form it would take. There was
more at stake here than material issues concerning who did what for whom.
What was also taking place was the entrenching of moral commitments
and responsibilities within the kin group.
The continuing issue: developing commitments in the

Simpson family
Thus a pattern of commitments began to develop through the explicit
negotiations about sharing a household. Obviously this pattern was not
entirely new. Those negotiations were not conducted in a vacuum, but in
the context of pre-existing relationships and commitments which had
developed over time. Stan already felt a stronger responsibility to Doreen
than did his siblings, and his offer of a home was partly made because he
felt that, whatever needed to be done, it would be he and not his siblings
that would do it. During the eighteen years since that time, this pattern has
been consolidated. In a sense, we would expect that, given existing research
which demonstrates that people who provide within-household care and
support tend to become more, not less, responsible for continuing to do so
(Qureshi and Walker, 1989). But in the Simpsons’ case, we can trace the
actual processes through which this has happened. There are four distinct
strands.
First of all, over the years Doreen, Stan and Eileen have got involved in
everyday exchanges of practical support, which have helped to strengthen
the commitments between them, in comparison with the commitments
between Doreen and her other children. The opportunity to give and
receive help of all types was enhanced once Doreen was living in the
household. The dynamics of reciprocity have ensured a process of
consolidation. Stan put it like this:
Stan It’s not just been one way, even now, my mother’s in her eightieth
year, and in the last five weeks Eileen and I would hardly have had a
cooked meal if it hadn’t been for my mother. She’s been here so, and
Eileen’s very appreciative of that, you know [laughs]. And when we’ve
had illness like, thankfully not very often but, if its been Eileen then
there’s been mother and myself to look after her as well as the girls.
And a few times my mother’s been ill and we haven’t had to go
trekking backwards and forwards, she’s been here and we’ve been
able to look after her. OK it’s fallen mainly on Eileen because I’ve
been working.
As a result of sharing a household, Eileen in particular began to take on a
greater personal commitment to Doreen than she had previously. In Stan’s
words, ‘it’s fallen mainly on Eileen’, and in a sense we can see that the
conditions were right for a commitment to develop between the two
women: Eileen was initially at home looking after her children, and in later
years employed part-time, so she was there with Doreen more than Stan
could be because of his job. What is more, the types of help Doreen could
contribute, and also the support she needed, were mainly of a domestic
nature, and that meant negotiations with Eileen who held the primary
responsibility for the domestic sphere. Therefore although the division of
responsibility between Stan and Eileen on the one hand, and his siblings on
the other, has been consolidated, there has been a gradual and incremental
change in the division between Stan and Eileen from the days when Stan
was travelling to his mother’s house to give her practical help. But, if
Eileen’s more direct responsibility for helping Doreen has developed
gradually, it was not entirely unanticipated at the outset. Stan’s
precondition for sharing a household—that his mother and his wife could
get on well together—suggests that this was an implicit part of the bargain.
Second, the process of consolidation has had explicit as well as implicit
elements. All of our interviewees talked about one event which occurred
some ten years after Doreen had been sharing a household with the
Simpsons, which clearly they all saw as significant in the way relationships
developed. Basically this was an argument within the household about the
use of space and living rooms. Although Doreen had her own bedroom, up
until then she had shared living space with the rest of the family. The
conflict was resolved by marking out a living room for Doreen’s personal
use. The importance of this event for the division of responsibilities lies less
in its content, however, than in the way the siblings were drawn in. Eileen
alludes to this when she says, ‘We did have, er, a flare up, and she was
going to leave. But of course no one wanted her, which was very hurtful
for her obviously.’ In fact, during the conflict, Doreen said she would go
and live with one of her other children, but when this was put to them they
rejected the idea. This very clearly underscored the existing division of
responsibility in two ways: in material terms it eliminated one potential

alternative arrangement, and in moral terms it helped to establish that, as
Eileen put it later, the siblings ‘are not above refusing’.
It is apparent from this series of events that the process of developing
commitments between Stan, Eileen and Doreen continued to affect other
people, and other people’s actions continued to affect the course of the
developing relationship between these three. This is the third strand which
we can identify in the process of developing commitments in the Simpson
case—the web of relationships within the kin group. The way in which
other people positioned themselves constrained the options available to
Stan, Eileen and Doreen, Conversely their actions affected the options open
to others. This process is clearest in relation to the role of Stan’s siblings, to
which we have already referred. The fact that Stan and Eileen had taken
overall responsibility created conditions which were not conducive to the
siblings strengthening their commitments to Doreen. Partly, this is because,
as Stan puts it, ‘Over the years I think we felt they’d taken us for granted
because mother lived with us.’
Certainly, if the siblings were to stop helping altogether, it seems likely
that Stan and Eileen would carry on, but if the situation were reversed so
that Stan and Eileen were to stop, the siblings have already made it clear
that they would not take over. Janet, the youngest daughter, explains the
difference in their positions in the following way:
Janet My parents have always said they wouldn’t put my grandmother into
a home, there’s no way because they wouldn’t want to be put into a
home when they got older. So I mean by saying that, that means they
are putting it on to themselves because, it sounds horrible, but I’m
pretty sure the other two would say ‘Well she will have to go into a
home’ and that’s it. But my mum and dad won’t allow it, but because
they won’t allow it the other two are likely to turn round and say
‘Well if you won’t allow it, you’ll have to take the responsibility of
it.’ [Emphasis in original]
Janet is talking about the future, and what would be done in the event that
Doreen began to need personal care. But there is already evidence that the
siblings do not feel a responsibility to share commitments which flow from
Stan and Eileen’s decision to offer Doreen a home. For example, all of our
Simpson interviewees felt that the siblings had not helped Stan and Eileen
enough over the years, and particularly that they had not done enough to
give them some ‘privacy’. Julie puts it like this:
Julie Mum and Dad have a lot more to bear than the others do and I don’t
think they really pull their weight. There’s lots of things, little things
like the odd weekend saying ‘Come over to us for Sunday’ or
something which they don’t do and they could and it really wouldn’t
upset them so much. Whereas it would give Mum and Dad and break.
Some privacy really. Because that’s the main thing, I mean they just do
not have the house to themselves very often and they should have
that.
Julie is saying that her aunt and uncle, in her view, have an obligation to
help her parents because they have taken total responsibility for Doreen
and as a result do not get any free time. However, the help that her parents
need is directly related to the particular way in which they chose to give
support to Doreen. This is the key factor which makes the siblings much
less likely to see it as their responsibility to help; the needs flow from a
decision about helping Doreen which was not theirs.
Thus the conditions created by Stan and Eileen’s initial actions, when
they accepted the overall responsibility for Doreen’s welfare, militate
against any further strengthening of Stan’s siblings’ commitment to her.
They have, in short, set a course where Doreen’s relationships with all her
children were bound to be altered, and theirs with each other. These
conditions also have had an interesting effect upon the relationship
between Stan and Eileen and their own daughters. As the situation has
developed, Janet in particular has been drawn into helping ease the
burdens connected with supporting her grandmother. She sees this
explicitly as giving help to her parents, her mother in particular, rather
than to her grandmother. She is helping them to carry their responsibility—
the same logic that Julie had used when she said that her aunt and uncle
should be helping her parents, rather than that they should be helping her
grandmother. Janet explains her involvement like this:
Janet I took my grandmother shopping on Monday to get her Christmas
shopping because it was going to fall on my mum and with her
working full-time, they ‘re very busy in the shop trying to get things
organised and learning a lot of things, and my Mum just doesn’t get
enough time at the moment to do her own housework, or she doesn’t
know when she’s going to get her own Christmas shopping done.
And both my auntie and my uncle have made it quite clear that they
couldn’t possibly take my grandmother shopping so I took her
shopping in the end. It annoyed me in a little way that I had to do it
because she’d got another son and a daughter that could’ve done it if
they’d have put their mind to it, but I did it because it would have
fallen on my Mum if I hadn’t have done it. So yes I would do that to
help my parents out. I mean I’d do it for my grandmother but I’d do
it to help them out. [Emphasis in original]
Janet seems unequivocal that she is doing this for her mother, because her
mother is now in a position where she is unable to do as much for Doreen
as before, but that the proper thing would be for her aunt or uncle to
substitute in this way. It does not appear that Janet feels more obligated to
her grandmother in particular than do her sisters—although that could

perhaps change over time. What is being activated is her commitment to
her mother, and her availability to help. She lives near to her parents,
unlike her two sisters who live in other parts of the country.
The fourth way in which the overall pattern of commitments has been
consolidated is a procedural matter, about how negotiations are
conducted, and focuses upon Doreen’s own position in the family. As time
has passed, and the situation has developed, it has become more difficult
for Stan and Eileen to raise the issue of responsibility for Doreen in open
discussions. Although all our Simpson interviewees had obviously talked
together about the unequal contributions made to supporting Doreen, no
one had raised it with the siblings. Julie has her own explanations for this:
Julie I don’t think really Mum and Dad have pushed it as much as they
could do. If they really wanted to push it I think they could and, it
would be done very grudgingly [laugh] I think, but at least it would be
done. It’s rotten because, for my grandmother, I mean you have to
keep it from her that you’re having trouble getting people to look
after her obviously. But I think she knows really that they don’t really
pull their weight, its just she gets very protective if you start saying
that they should do this, this and this. I don’t really know what they
can do about it. To say to somebody ‘You’ You’ve got to have her
this weekend’ then she feels like she’s a parcel you’re passing around
which isn’t very fair. That’s part of the reason why Mum and Dad
haven’t really pushed it very much because they feel its rotten for her
to feel she’s a burden to anybody.
What Julie is saying—and this is reflected also in other people’s comments
—is that they have found it impossible to address openly the question of
the difficulties now arising, because Doreen’s feelings would be hurt.
Again her comments point to the likelihood that open discussion would
make Doreen feel too dependent (‘she feels she’s like a parcel you’re
passing around’). As we indicated in Chapter 2, maintaining the balance
between dependence and independence can be as much a matter of how
these issues are treated in negotiations, as the actual balance of losses and
gains in material terms. Open discussion of itself would make no difference
to the pattern of giving and receiving help. The problem with it is that it
would make it impossible for Doreen to sustain a view of herself as having
giving and receiving held roughly in balance. Open discussion would also
call into question the moral reputation of her other children—a matter of
considerable importance in family relationships, we shall argue in
Chapter 5. In examples like this it becomes clear why people sometimes do
not engage in open discussion, despite the fact that they value it as a way
of sorting things out. But the fact that they could not discuss the matter
openly also had the effect of limiting the room for manoeuvre which Stan
and Eileen had, and therefore shaped the way in which their actions
developed.
These then are the four strands which we can detect in the story of how
commitments had developed in the Simpson family over the past eighteen
years. They enable us to explain the pattern of family responsibilities
accepted by different parties at the time of our interviews. They enable us
to make sense, for example, of why it was becoming an important yet
apparently an unresolvable problem for Stan and Eileen to negotiate a
different division of responsibilities.
Negotiations about family responsibilities in the Simpson

case
What does the Simpson case tell us about our two key themes in this
chapter: negotiations and developing commitments?
First, in the Simpson family, the responsibilities accepted were clearly a
product of negotiation rather than of following rules of obligation. Stan’s
and Eileen’s commitment to Doreen cannot be explained by the rule-
following model. If Stan’s action in offering Doreen a home was a simple
expression of rules of filial obligation, then why did not the same rules
apply to his siblings? And if the development of Eileen’s own commitment
to Doreen expressed gendered rules of obligation which specify that women
should look after relatives, then why did that not apply first to Doreen’s
daughter?
Of course rules are not always followed—they can be acknowledged in
principle but broken in practice. But we do not think that this explanation
really fits our case. Certainly none of our interviewees talked in this way.
Rather we are arguing that the commitments, as well as the precise ways in
which these were fulfilled at different times, had been negotiated over time,
Implicit negotiations about commitments were taking place gradually,
between individuals, sometimes over many years, as well as more explicit
negotiations from time to time about how these should be fulfilled. Thus
by the time Doreen needed support following the death of her husband, it
had already become obvious to Stan that he, rather than his siblings, would
take the responsibility. But his commitment to Doreen had developed
through a relationship with her which had been negotiated implicitly
between them over many years, and over many exchanges of support.
Eileen’s commitment to Doreen began to develop once the conditions were
right; so too did Janet’s involvement with her grandmother, because of her
commitment to her parents. All these strands in the Simpsons’ story show
how responsibilities build up incrementally over time through quite
complex processes in exchange relationships. This seems less a ‘given’ of
specific genealogical relationships, than a product of negotiations within
certain social conditions.
Also we can see here that the products of negotiations—and in essence

what was being negotiated about—were not simply the exchanges of
material assistance, but also moral aspects of identities and responsibilities.
The siblings, Stan, Eileen and Doreen, all were gaining moral reputations in
each others’ eyes as well as moral responsibilities through the way they
negotiated and dealt with their relationships with each other. These in turn
informed the way negotiations continued. For example, Stan and Eileen
were influenced by their view of the siblings’ conduct in considering how
best to involve them in supporting Doreen. They were also constrained by
it from discussing the question openly. In that sense, even apparently moral
dimensions of the situation could have material as well as moral outcomes,
because they influenced the continuing pattern of material support.
Our second main point is about implicit and explicit negotiations. In the
Simpson case, where we have a great deal of detail, we can see that both
were used. Explicit negotiation is always easier to describe and certainly
they used it. Indeed the idea and practice of explicit negotiation comes
through as something valued highly by our Simpson interviewees—it is
particularly clear in Stan and Eileen’s relationship to their daughters, which
we have not discussed here. However, it is also clear that explicit
discussions about kin support were set within more implicit processes
which took place over time. So, although the Simpsons certainly did
negotiate explicitly about various types of support, that was only ever part
of the negotiating process.
There are a number of ways in which this can be demonstrated. As with
some other examples earlier in this chapter, open discussions did not
invariably include everyone relevant. To understand the role of such people
we need to be aware of more implicit negotiations. The most obvious
examples of people excluded in this way are the siblings and Doreen
herself. This might mean a number of things. For example, the positions
and responsibilities of people who do not participate may already have
been implicitly negotiated, so that ‘everybody knows’ about it, without
having to have a discussion. Certainly, on this basis Stan and Eileen have
not yet attempted to include his siblings in negotiations about helping
Doreen. A similar explanation, focusing on non-decision-making, could
account for a complete absence of discussion about what to do, or who
should do what. Alternatively, the exclusion of certain people may have
arisen because their inclusion would influence the moral outcomes of the
negotiation. Stan and Eileen, for example, felt that the offer of a home for
Doreen should come from them, so that she did not have to ask for help
and compromise her independence. On that basis, they excluded her from
discussions until the offer was made. Similarly, we have suggested, she was
excluded from subsequent discussion because again it would have been too
difficult to include her without overturning her position in the dependence-
independence balance.
There are other possibilities, but the general point about all of these
explanations is that explicit discussions at any one time are likely to be
only the tip of the iceberg of negotiations which have taken and are taking
place, and really only make analytical sense if we can see the implicit
negotiations simultaneously. Certainly, if we want to know about how
certain patterns of kinship responsibility come about, then focusing on
explicit discussions is not enough. This is not to deny the importance of
explicit negotiations, however. Indeed they carry their own distinctive
implications. We note, for example, that Stan’s siblings felt able to hold
Stan and Eileen responsible for the outcome of their decision to offer
Doreen a home, and felt themselves absolved of overall responsibility for
her, precisely because they had been openly consulted and had made their
views public.
Our third main point from the Simpson case is that it confirms the
importance of building the perspective of time into our analysis. The
processes through which negotiations occur, as well as their outcomes,
have lasting implications. Through negotiations people create sets of
material and moral baggage which get carried forward, and which help to
create the framework for future negotiations. Material baggage is perhaps
most easily recognised, as the actual exchanges of goods and services which
occur over time, and which help to constitute people’s material positions
vis-à-vis other kin. Moral baggage, on the other hand, is less tangible, but
involves the moral identities and reputations of the participants also
constructed through this process. Explicit negotiations in the Simpson
family did implicate people’s moral identities, for example Stan’s siblings
being ‘not above refusing’. In this sense moral identities were produced and
reshaped through negotiations, as well as giving shape to the form the
negotiations took.
We think that it is the accumulation of moral and material baggage
which is the key to understanding what negotiation means in practice—
whether or not it is explicit—and how commitments between kin are
forged. If we wish to understand the bargaining stances people can take in
negotiations about commitments to their kin we believe that it is vital to
take account of these moral dimensions of negotiations and of
commitments built up over time. It is not sufficient to focus simply on the
material value of exchanges which have taken place. We develop this view
in slightly different ways in Chapter 5.
THE CONCEPT OF COMMITMENT IN FAMILY

RESPONSIBILITIES
At this point in our discussion we want to focus our analysis on the
concept of commitment, which we have used extensively in this chapter.
We believe that it is a fruitful way of conceptualising family responsibilities.
The process of negotiating these responsibilities, we have argued, is one

through which commitments develop and emerge. Over time, one
individual becomes committed to giving certain forms of help to another,
or to responding positively to any such requests which may be made in the
future. In this sense commitments are the products of negotiations.
We find the concept of commitment a useful way of thinking about this
for various reasons. It enables us to emphasise that the exchanges of goods
and services are not reckoned purely in material terms, but also have moral
dimensions. It also enables us to emphasise the seriousness of the way in
which people approach these aspects of family relationships, and the
significance of the personal consequences which can flow from them. We
have argued against the idea that these are ‘rules of obligation’ which
people follow. But an absence of rules does not mean that these aspects of
family life are marginal or unimportant, or that people may lend a hand to
relatives from time to time but this has little effect on the rest of their lives.
Our use of the term commitment is meant to convey that much more is
going on than simply ‘doing the tasks’. But the idea of ‘rules’ is the wrong
way to look at it.
Commitments represent responsibilities accepted which have real and
lasting consequences. And commitments developed oneself through one’s
own negotiations with others are likely to feel much more powerful than
rules imposed from ‘outside’. The fact that someone is actively shaping the
course of their own relationships, rather than following externally imposed
rules, thus binds them in the more tightly. It is important therefore to
understand that people do see themselves as having choices about which
direction to go in, even if those choices are constrained at any point in time
by other choices which they have made in the past. When we talk about
commitments ‘accumulating’ over time we do not mean to imply that more
and more responsibilities build up in a process over which the individual
has no control. As we noted earlier in this chapter, respondents to our
survey did not approve of the characters in our vignette just taking on
more and more responsibility for elderly parents without considering other
factors in their lives. Our interview data bear out that, in practice, people
do see themselves as actively constructing their own commitments, in a
process over which they have some measure of control—albeit rather
limited in certain cases.
These points can be seen clearly in our case study of the Simpson family.
We are able to see Stan and Eileen’s actions over a period of nearly twenty
years. We see them taking a series of steps, each of which draws them in
more closely to a particular form of commitment to Stan’s mother. Each
step closed off certain options for the future and opened up others. The
steps which they took also affected the form of commitment which Stan’s
siblings developed for their mother. In turn, the path along which the
siblings moved affected what Stan and Eileen could do. By the time we
interviewed them, Stan and Eileen felt that their room for manoeuvre was
very limited, so firmly had they become set on a particular path. However,
another set of renegotiations was beginning to take place. We doubt that we
can ever say that a point has been reached where a set of commitments
becomes totally fixed, immovable, non-negotiable. But some people’s
situation comes fairly close to that, and can certainly feel like that—as did
Stan and Eileen’s.
In thinking about analysing our own data on these issues, and in
thinking about their wider significance, we have found Howard Becker’s
work on the concept of commitment very helpful (Becker, 1960). Although
he does not specifically discuss responsibilities of kinship, he does develop
the idea that commitments between people get consolidated over time. A
key element in understanding this process, he argues, is that commitments
get consolidated because it becomes too expensive for people to withdraw
from them. Becker argues that people make investments or ‘side bets’
which they would lose if they failed to continue on a committed path.
These side bets are often made implicitly through ‘a series of acts no one of
which is crucial but which, taken together, constitute for the actor a series
of side bets of such magnitude that he [sic] finds himself unwilling to lose
them’ (Becker, 1960:38). Thus commitments may develop gradually over
time, but equally may also get consolidated or shaped through explicit
renegotiations. The importance of this is that it emphasises the potential of
past actions and negotiations to become the context for future choices, or
indeed the very fabric of constraint and opportunity from which choices
are fashioned through negotiations. Negotiation, in that sense, is never
‘structure-less’ or free, but equally it is not determined by structure or by
fixed rules of conduct.
For us, one of the strengths of Becker’s analysis is his concept of
‘valuables’ created through this process of side-betting. These valuables can
be measured in both material and moral terms. Therefore, just as someone
may lose out materially by withdrawing from a relationship based on the
exchange of material resources, so too they may lose a valuable reputation
if they withdraw support and let someone down. And these moral
valuables need to be understood in their cultural context, so that what is
considered to constitute a good reputation for a woman in our society may
differ from the constituent parts of a good reputation for a man. Becker
uses the example of chastity to illustrate this. In relation to family
responsibilities, we are concerned with different types of reputation (as we
indicate in Chapter 5) but his argument certainly can be applied. The
important point is that, in order to understand whether or not someone is
‘committed’, we need to be sensitive to the full range of losses that person
feels they would make by withdrawing from a path on which they have
begun. These are the valuables which have the effect of locking someone
into a particular set of responsibilities, progressively over time.
CONCLUSION
In summary, the material in this chapter confirms both the importance of
negotiations as the way in which family responsibilities are developed, and
also the complexities of the processes involved in this. Not only do people
actually negotiate their family responsibilities in practice, but they also see
this as the proper way to proceed. Both in responding to survey questions,
and in their own relationships, negotiating is seen as entirely appropriate.
The fact that the responsibilities which people accept are negotiated—
rather than the consequence of following rules of obligation—clarifies why
there is such variation in practice. People in apparently similar positions
(even within the same family) come to accept very different levels and types
of responsibility precisely because these are negotiated individually.
However, the responsibilities which do develop in this way are real and
significant in people’s lives—and for those who develop extensive
responsibilities they can be extremely significant. We have argued that
the concept of ‘developing commitments’ is a helpful way of understanding
this. One’s gender, and one’s genealogical relationship to others, may be
relevant in the way that commitments develop. However, we do not think
that the idea that people follow rules based on categories of gender or
genealogy is particularly plausible as an explanation. Instead, we have
suggested that the social conditions under which gender and genealogy are
lived may help to create conditions which are conducive to the
development of certain kinds of commitments between individuals.
Ultimately, though, those commitments are created not ascribed.
We have been able to show that the actual process of negotiation takes
many forms. Implicit negotiation forms the backcloth, and in a sense is
proceeding all the time as people meet, talk and relate to each other.
Sometimes it is supplemented by explicit negotiations, sometimes not. The
process of weaving together different forms of negotiation is complex and
elaborate, but seems to be well understood by the participants. We have
suggested that this indicates that there may be guidelines about procedures
(that is, about how to negotiate, and what factors can be taken into account)
even if there are not discernible rules about the substance of
responsibilities. Certainly, people do make judgements about each others’
behaviour in negotiations, and form ideas about what is legitimate and
what is not. This issue is considered more fully in the next chapter.
4
Making legitimate excuses
INTRODUCTION: UNDERSTANDING LEGITIMATE

EXCUSES
In the last chapter we explored the concept of negotiation and looked at
the complex processes through which patterns of commitment had
developed over time in one kin group. We suggested that negotiations are
never sequences of completely separate events: both moral and material
elements are carried forward into subsequent negotiations. We argued that
the way people negotiate can have just as enduring a significance as the
material outcomes of negotiations. This occurs because, through the
process of negotiation, people construct social meanings which help
everyone to make sense of the past, present and future. In this chapter we
develop further our analysis of the way social meanings are constructed
and deployed. We do this by focusing on a particular set of ‘meanings’,
which we are calling ‘legitimate excuses’.
Our focus on ‘legitimate excuses’ enables us to understand dimensions of
the process of negotiating family responsibilities which were somewhat
muted in Chapter 3. We were concentrating then on the processes through
which people become committed to another person, and to providing
assistance when they need it. But we have also noted throughout this book
that there is great variation in the extent to which people provide help for
their kin, or feel that they ‘ought to’ do so. So it is just as important to
understand the processes involved in not becoming committed. The
concept of ‘legitimate excuses’ represents our main organising theme for
exploring this. In its crudest form, what we want to know is whether and
how some people can legitimately avoid becoming committed. Is non-
commitment sanctioned in some circumstances but not in others? Or for
some people but not for others? Do people ever consciously and actively
avoid becoming obligated? Although the term ‘excuses’ implies a kind of
illicit avoidance of obligation, we are using it in a wider and non-
judgemental sense to look at justificatory accounts which get deployed
within negotiations, and how legitimacy gets constructed within that

context.
In exploring this issue, we turn first to our survey data. At the level of
public norms, there is evidence that people recognise different types of
justificatory account. In general it seems that people accept more readily
that it is legitimate for someone to refuse help to a relative if they are
unable to provide assistance, rather than able but unwilling. This contrast
between ‘unable’ and ‘unwilling’ runs through answers to our survey
questions and is also reflected in our interview data. For example, in the
survey, in response to the question ‘Are there any circumstances in which it
is reasonable to refuse to provide personal help for a sick or elderly
relative?’, 58 per cent of our respondents answered yes, and 37 per cent
said no. This is not a clear consensus (our consensus baseline was 75 per
cent). However, the 58 per cent who had answered ‘yes’ to the first part of
the question were asked under what circumstances it would be reasonable
to refuse (an open-ended, post-coded question), and they gave answers
concentrated around the following themes: having other prior
commitments, not being available, not being able because of lack of skill,
physical incapacity or geographical distance (76 per cent of responses fell
into these categories taken as a whole). We had no evidence that different
categories of respondent were answering in different ways, except a slight
tendency for women to emphasise commitments to ‘one’s own family’, and
men to emphasise ‘employment’.
The concept of ability (or inability) to give help seems to be important at
the level of public norms, in constructing justificatory accounts of one’s own
actions or other people’s. But how does ability or inability get defined? If it
is so important to establish that you are unable rather than unwilling to
help, is it important to get that definition of the situation accepted by other
people? What are the limits to this? These are key questions which we try
to answer in this chapter.
An example from one of our kin groups helps to raise some of the
important issues which we are considering in this chapter. It concerns the
Mansfield family, and we are using material from our interview with Roger
Mansfield where he discusses some of the negotiations which took place
around the care of his father, who died some years previous to our
interviews (we have also discussed aspects of this case study in Finch and
Mason, 1990b). Although we interviewed other members of the Mansfield
family, we are simply using extracts from Roger’s interview to introduce
some of the important themes concerning legitimate excuses. Roger told us
that, initially, he and two of his sisters took most of the responsibility for
his father’s care. At the time, Roger was a mature student studying for a
degree, and was married with young children. He explained the
circumstances like this:
MAKING LEGITIMATE EXCUSES 97
Roger I was at University at the time so it was [laugh] it wasn’t too

bad, I could get the time.
Interviewer You were flexible?
Roger Yes, and my two sisters didn’t work so obviously they had,
although they had young families they could fit it in whereas,
the eldest two sisters, one was working full-time, the other one
owned a business, so it was much more difficult for them.
Although Roger was apparently ‘flexible’, it emerged later in his interview
that accommodating the care of his father was actually rather difficult,
because he had quite a heavy workload as a student, and was in the
process of taking university examinations. Roger explained that there was
a ‘certain resentment’ because not everybody got equally involved. Some
members of the family claimed they were unable to provide practical
support because of employment and business commitments. However, they
were not fully successful in getting this accepted by the rest of the family.
Since they felt unable to provide time and labour, they offered financial
support, but from Roger’s point of view, this was not an acceptable
alternative.
Roger Course they threw money at the problem you see, that was
another way. Because they own businesses sort of ‘Money’s no
object, take that’ [laugh] its, a sort of way of saying ‘Well I
can’t help but you know I’ll supply money for whatever’s
needed.’ They could have had anything they wanted [laugh],
Interviewer But that’s not quite the same you think?
Roger No. Well it was useless to anybody. He had money of his own
anyway. That wasn’t what he needed. It was care and attention
I suppose.
Nevertheless, both the resentment, and the feeling that the excuses were
illegitimate, were not made public to the whole family or voiced explicitly
to the ‘miscreants’. But there was a sense in which everybody knew.
Roger I don’t think anyone ever is really very confident to say ‘Hey, you
know, I think I’m getting the raw end of this deal.’ They tend to sort
of form little groups to [laugh] complain among themselves. I don’t
think it ever came out in the open, but there again I think everybody
knew you know [laugh].
However, as Roger’s father Vic’s condition became worse, and he was
hospitalised, a further complication emerged. Vic was unhappy in hospital,
and wanted to come home. This prompted a set of negotiations in which
the legitimacy of excuses did get openly discussed.
Roger He [father] wanted to stay in his own house but [pause] that would
mean somebody living with him. But we all had our own houses and
things. We were all married and all had our own houses, families
and all the rest of it [pause and sigh]. The only solution really was
that my mother went back.
Roger’s mother, Nan, was the only one without a legitimate excuse at that
time. When it actually came to taking Vic into one of their homes, the
sibling group appeared to accept that none of them were able to do this.
Nan did offer an excuse: she had been estranged from Vic for several years.
So why did her excuse look less credible? This is what Roger says:
Roger I explained the situation to her, I said ‘Well I think the only solution
is that you go back home’ so she hit the roof, went mad, told me I
didn’t know what I was talking about and all the rest of it and I said
‘Well Well having said all that, I still feel that its your responsibility.’
I said ‘We can’t do it, you know, for various reasons.’ I told her all
the reasons I felt we couldn’t do it and she said ‘No I won’t do it’ so
I said ‘Well as far as I’m concerned you should do it’, I said, ‘and
furthermore I think we’re all of the opinion that you should.’ You
see I know my mother and the only way was to put pressure on her
as, as a sort of group [laugh]. [Emphasis in original]
Taken as a whole, we think that what Roger Mansfield tells us raises a
number of important themes concerning legitimate excuses. First, it does
confirm that legitimacy hinged upon being able to claim inability rather
than unwillingness to provide support. Certain factors, for example being
at home with young children, or having the ‘flexibility’ of a student,
apparently made Roger and his sisters look available and able to help.
Second, however, the situation was not totally clear-cut. The ability or
inability of each relative to offer help had to be established. In the process
excuses clearly got deployed and accepted with varying degrees of success.
For example, the siblings with full-time employment and their own
businesses looked less available to help by comparison with the others, but
perhaps not so unavailable as to be able to provide no help at all. In that
sense, excuses really are meanings which are getting constructed and
deployed within negotiating processes. Certainly, when Nan was drawn
into the negotiations, Roger actively drew a distinction between the
legitimacy of the excuses of himself and his siblings in comparison with
hers. He based this very much on their inability to help, as compared with
her unwillingness. His account places emphasis on the words ‘we can’t’
‘you should’, and on the fact that he is able to claim that the sibling group
were all agreed on the illegitimacy of Nan’s position.
Third, as we might expect given our arguments about negotiations in the
previous chapter, excuses can be constructed and deployed implicitly as
well as explicitly, and their legitimacy can be contested or affirmed at both
levels too. Just as with the development of commitments, in many instances
excuses and their legitimacy may be unspoken, having developed over

time, and may be taken for granted by, or known to, all participants.
Fourth, the ability to get an excuse accepted as legitimate clearly did not
depend straightforwardly on what the excuse was, or on who was offering
it, although both of these factors were relevant. What comes across as
more important in the Mansfield case is the set of circumstances under
which excuses were getting mobilised by the various participants. For
example, initially—when the issue under negotiation was the short-term
care of Vic—some of Roger’s siblings’ excuses were not entirely accepted
as legitimate. But later on, once the circumstances changed and the issue
became one of what to do on a more permanent basis, it was Nan’s excuse
which came into focus, and lost its earlier legitimacy. At that stage, the
sibling group mobilised the idea that Nan had a stronger responsibility
than they did to care for her ex-husband.
However, there are two reasons why we think it would be wrong to
suggest that the Mansfield case is an example of the operation of a
genealogical or gender hierarchy according to which excuses will be
accepted or rejected (see Finch and Mason, 1990b). First, if it was always
the case that a wife’s excuse was less likely than a son or daughter’s to be
accepted as legitimate, then why was Nan not put on the spot at an earlier
stage? Similarly, if sisters’ excuses are always less legitimate than those of
their brothers, then why did Roger’s full-time student status not
legitimately excuse him from helping in the early stages? The idea of a
genealogical or gender hierarchy does not directly account for what
happened in the Mansfield example. Our second point is less concerned
with whether empirical outcomes actually match up to the supposed
hierarchical ordering of obligations, and more with the way in which the
hierarchy is thought to influence the negotiating process. We do think the
idea of a genealogical hierarchy had some relevance in the Mansfield
negotiations. However, we see the process as one whereby meanings—
which at certain times included meanings about a hierarchical ordering of
obligations—were constituted and deployed in negotiations. Looked at in
this way, it is not so much that a hierarchy was followed, but more that the
idea of a hierarchy was constituted and deployed by some members of the
family (that is, Roger and his siblings) as a lever in negotiations which were
about the legitimacy of excuses.
Finally, the examples hint at a rather complex relationship between
deploying an excuse that is legitimate, and deploying an excuse that works
or has efficacy. For example, Roger’s siblings deployed excuses about
employment and other commitments which, by Roger’s account, were not
accepted as wholly legitimate. However, the excuses did work in the
sense that they enabled those people to absent themselves from providing
practical support without having too much overt pressure put on them. In
strictly material terms then, the excuses worked, and the siblings escaped
involvement in these particular transactions of practical support, even

though their excuses were not accepted fully. This raises the question of
whether legitimacy matters: as long as you have an excuse, does it really
matter whether or not you can get it widely accepted that it is a legitimate
one? We think that legitimacy does matter, and that people strive for it in
their negotiations, because of its association with moral worth and
identity.
EXCUSES AND THEIR USES

These then are the kinds of themes we are going to explore in this chapter.
We are going to reject the position that the legitimacy of an excuse is a
straightforward outcome either of what the excuse is, or of who is making
the excuse. Although both of these factors are relevant, they do not
determine outcomes straightforwardly. We are going to begin with a
discussion of the range and types of excuses we discovered, drawing on
both our qualitative and survey data sets. Following that, we will go on to
examine the processes through which excuses get constituted as legitimate
or otherwise, and the implications of this.
We have suggested that you will improve your chances of an excuse
being regarded as legitimate if you can get it accepted as widely as possible
that you are unable to help, rather than unwilling. The Mansfield case is an
illustration of that. But, more generally, how can someone establish
successfully that they are ‘unable’ to help? What grounds are likely to be
accepted as good reasons for this inability?
Our interview data suggest that there is quite a wide variety of grounds
on which someone can establish that they are unable to help. In this section
we are going to give an overview of this variation. In effect, we are
documenting the principles which people used in the processes of
negotiating commitments and responsibilities in their own families. But we
are leaving specific discussion of these processes until the following section.
We can link the principles to our survey material too, to see how far these
are factors which commend themselves to a statistically representative
sample as constituting grounds for being unable to help a relative.
Employment
We begin with employment as a possible reason for being unable to help a
relative. In our survey, we included three questions which asked directly
about whether a person should give up a job to provide personal care for
a relative. A consensus that people should not give up their jobs in these
circumstances would suggest that, at the level of publicly expressed views,
employment is seen as a legitimate excuse for inability to provide personal
care. In fact, the pattern of responses we received does point in that

direction, but is not straightforward or unequivocal.
In each of these examples, the question about giving up employment was
part of a sequence of events and choices set out in our vignettes about Jim
and Margaret Robertson (see Chapter 3), Jane and Ann Hill (see
Chapter 2), and Valerie and Mary Harper (see also Chapter 2, and to be
discussed more fully in Chapter 5). At some point in each vignette we made
one or more characters face the choice of giving up paid work. Our survey
respondents were asked to say if they should do so or not. The frequencies
are set out in Table 4.1. None of the examples gives us a clear consensus
(in terms of our consensus baseline) that it is absolutely legitimate to put a
job before personal care of a relative, but the implication is that this may
be legitimate. The impression is that the particular circumstances of each
case govern how far employment would be widely accepted as a legitimate
excuse. It is least widely accepted in the case of Jane Hill who (as we
showed in Chapter 2) was locked into an ongoing relationship of practical
material aid with Ann, and had substantial past assistance to reciprocate.
However, reciprocating for past help—of a different kind—was not
apparently such a significant factor in the pattern of responses in the
Harper vignette. In that vignette, respondents had already been told that
the grandmother had paid for a house deposit for her grand-daughter,
when they were asked to decide whether the grand-daughter should give up
her job. In this case people may have been swayed by the fact that it was a
much younger woman who would be giving up a job—employment may be
more readily accepted as a legitimate excuse for the young than for the
middle-aged, especially women.
Our main point in comparing these examples is not to discuss the details
of each vignette, but to illustrate that specific circumstances do seem to be
crucial in determining whether employment is acceptable as a legitimate
excuse. They also seem to override any consideration of genealogical
‘closeness’. The person who, in the judgements of our survey respondents,
will have most difficulty in getting this excuse accepted is Jane Hill, in
respect of her former mother-in-law: a relationship which is tenuous, at
best, in genealogical terms.
Turning now to our interview data, we can ask: to what extent in
practice do people use employment as an ‘excuse’ for being unable to
provide support? Does it only apply to personal care, or can the excuse of
employment be used more widely? In fact, employment is the most
common reason given for being unable to provide support in our
qualitative data set. We have at least seventy accounts where employment,
or less commonly full-time study, were put forward as factors which
influence the ability to provide assistance. Our examples cover several
types of support, but the demands of one’s job was most commonly cited
as a reason for being unable to provide labour or time-intensive types of
Table 4.1 Giving up employment to provide personal care
(Consensus baseline: 75%)
support. This included general practical help, child care and babysitting,
and personal care. It was also commonly used to explain a failure to visit
relatives very often, or to maintain general contact with them by telephone
or letter. In all these cases people said that their job left them insufficient
time to provide help, so it is not surprising that the support in question is
clustered in the labour-intensive forms,
In considering the way in which employment ‘works’ as an excuse, it is
important to recognise that it is not a factor whose effects are fixed or
unambiguous. There is room for variation in whether someone sees a job,
even a full-time job, as presenting an insurmountable barrier to spending
time in helping a relative. We saw this to an extent in the example of the
Mansfields. It also comes through clearly in the following example from
Jean Crabtree, a woman in her twenties. In the following extract, Jean was
telling us about the organisation of personal care for her maternal
grandparents, which had taken place several years before:
Interviewer Did you children get enlisted in any of that?
Jean To some extent yes. I mean obviously we couldn’t do as much
because we were working and my sister had the family to look
after, but we did visit them regularly and we did go and help,
you know when we had the opportunity to, but it was my mum
who did most of the work helping them. And then her brother
helped as well to some extent let’s say. He was working, so
obviously he couldn’t do as much.
Interviewer And your mother was working part-time then was she, or…?
Jean When my grandma and grandad were ill, she did give up work
for some time to go and look after them, yeah. She didn’t
actually stay with them, but she went in the daytime and she
also was the one responsible for, she went round social services
organising home help and Meals on Wheels.
Jean’s account shows a difference in the extent to which employment was
viewed as prohibiting the provision of help. Although full-time
employment prevented some of them from helping, her mother moulded
the caring around her employment, and eventually gave up her job for a
time. In that sense, she made herself available, or manipulated her own
ability to provide support, rather than viewing inability as insurmountable.
We have many examples of people—unlike Jean’s mother—viewing
employment unproblematically as a factor preventing involvement in
responsibilities to kin. Here is one where the young man involved
(coincidentally he is Jean Crabtree’s partner) has operated with this kind of
reasoning, and has become rather isolated from the regular exchange of
practical and financial support, and the family business, which characterise
his large family of origin (see Appendix A—the Crabtree kin group—for
details). It is interesting that he begins to reflect on the legitimacy of his
position in the interview.
David Waterworth It would be very difficult, well it would be very difficult
to actually get involved because I’ve got other
commitments.
Interviewer I’m sure, of course I can see that. But it’s quite
interesting, because you’re the eldest child, in fact
you’re the eldest son, and some people would say in a
family business, the eldest son really is the one who
should sort of be involved in and take responsibility for
[pause] there’s never been any of those ideas around?
[laugh] No?
David No, none whatsoever, because the career that I’m in
takes up all my time and more besides, and I’m very
devoted to that. So, er, its very much, I don’t know, in
some ways I feel guilty that I don’t put as much time
and effort, and help them out as I should do, because I
feel my responsibilities you see. I have morals [laugh].
But whether the opportunity’s actually arisen for me to,
or whether I should make those opportunities arise and
say ‘Look what can I do to help?’, maybe I should do
that.
Other family commitments

The next ‘excuse’ which we shall consider is ‘other family commitments’.
The clearest part of our survey which posed a choice between one set of
family commitments and another was in the vignette about Jim and
Margaret Robertson. At one point respondents were asked whether Jim
and Margaret should move to live near Jim’s parents even though this
might have a bad effect on their teenage children’s education. We got a
clear consensus that Jim and Margaret should stay where they were: 78 per
cent said stay, 20 per cent said move (consensus baseline 75 per cent). This
is not the same as saying that Jim and Margaret should give Jim’s parents
no help at all, but it is a fairly clear message that it is legitimate for them to
put their children first over the question of whether or not to move.
In our qualitative data set, there are at least twenty-seven examples
where people’s other family commitments are brought in as a factor
relevant to working out whether they are available to assist a relative.
Sometimes it is deployed as a reason for not helping. But it can also work
the other way round. In Jean Crabtree’s example cited above, the fact that
her sister had young children was used as a reason why she could not get
heavily involved in giving personal care to her grandparents. Yet in Roger
Mansfield’s example, given at the beginning of the chapter, the fact that
two of his sisters were at home with young children made them look more,
rather than less, available to care for their father. This is the more common
pattern, and it does tend to differentiate men and women since it is usually
women who are in the position of being at home with young children.
In general, the most common circumstances under which commitments
to one’s ‘own family’ emerge as an excuse in our data set are, as with
employment, when there is a need for personal care or practical support. It
can also be relevant to the responsibility to visit relatives or just to keep in
contact. However, the following extract demonstrates that the idea of
commitments to ‘one’s own family’ can also be used as a convincing
demonstration of inability to provide financial help to other relatives.
Sara Anwar Nobody helps financially in my family, I know that. Nobody
can afford to help another person financially because
everybody’s got their own family, they’ve got their own
children, their wife or whatever.
Interviewer But would they help, for example, mothers to daughters, or
fathers to sons, or…
Sara Um [pause] a son might if he can afford it, help his mother
financially. It depends how much he earns. It’s on the earning
actually, I think if I earned about £200 or £300 per week,
surely I can afford to support my parents financially. But I don’t,
I only earn £50 a week so [laugh]…
In cases like this, people are activating the idea that they have finite
resources—be it time, money or labour—and that it is appropriate to use
the principle of putting one’s ‘own family’ first to prioritise claims made on
them.
Competence
Other ways in which people explain their inability to provide help to
relatives revolve around the issue of competence. We did not have one
specific survey question which addressed the issue of competence directly
and exclusively, but in many of the questions it was one of a number of
considerations. As we argued in Chapter 1, when the survey questions are
taken together, a strong message which emerges is that people are more
likely to accord responsibility to relatives when the assistance needed is fairly
limited in terms of skill. Where a high level of skill is demanded—for
example in questions implying that the person needs nursing care—more
people said that state services were preferable to relatives. This implies
that, at the level of public norms, people may consider a lack of
competence or skill as a legitimate excuse for not helping relatives.
In our qualitative data set there were forty-two examples invoking a lack
of a variety of competences as reasons why help could not be provided, or
had to be limited. These included the lack of: expertise or experience,
physical capacity, good health, ‘natural’ aptitude. These examples most
commonly involved practical and personal help. We also had a few
examples suggesting the existence of taboos about the giving and receiving
of this kind of help.
As with employment, and with other family commitments, there is room
for a great deal of variation in how far people see lack of competence as
insurmountable and straightforwardly ruling out the provision of support.
Similarly, there is variation in what degree of competence people feel is
necessary for support to be provided adequately. Some people, like
Lawrence Gardner in the following extract, push their ability to help rather
a long way. Others more readily cite the possibility that helping may cause
ill-health, or their lack of other competence as a reason for not taking on
the responsibility in the first place.
Lawrence I’m just speaking now because it’s just happened to us lately you
see because I’ve just lost my dad you see. That, that was you
know, I stayed with him. I lived with him [while he was ill]. I
lived with him you see until it was affecting my health you see,
so then we had to get him away you see, that’s why we turned to
the state [pause]. We did do what we could until it was too much
you see. I mean my sister is in ill-health herself you see, she’s got
angina, she couldn’t you see, so, and she lives away. So it was
falling on me and Caroline [wife] you see, so er, they brought
him here, and we took him home, and I stayed with him, and
lived with him you see. It were only just over a month or so, but
we couldn’t do no more you see.
There is a gender dimension involved in the issue of competence. We had

some examples where both men and women suggested that women were
particularly good at certain kinds of family responsibilities—most notably
acting as a family ‘lynchpin’ or ‘kinkeeper’, or providing personal care or
emotional support. The Arkright kin group provides one such example (see
Appendix A for kin group details). Our interviewees from this family
included three brothers, and two sisters—all young adults. Interestingly, all
the brothers suggested that women tended to be better at ‘being caring’, or
‘motherly’ as one of them, Oskar, put it. In particular though, when asked
to anticipate what would happen if their parents (who were at the time fit
and healthy) needed personal care, the brothers all felt that one or all of
their sisters would take the lead role. Here is Eric Arkright’s version:
Eric It’s usually women that do that sort of thing. Don’t mean to be
sexist of course [laugh]. But if it was up to me I’d help if I
could. But I mean you’d probably find that men aren’t very
good at um, looking after people. Well I wouldn’t be any good
at it anyway…
Interviewer Can you see someone, a member of the family, who would
probably take most responsibility [in that kind of situation]?
Eric Yes, yes. Probably Simone, I imagine. Simone or Selina. I know
I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t know where to start and, I mean I’d
help as much as I possibly can, but I don’t think I could look
after them all day.
Certainly, Eric’s comment that ‘It is usually women who do that sort of
thing’ holds for our qualitative data set. Appendix C shows that we have
twice as many examples of women providing personal care as men. Simone,
one of Eric’s sisters, also recognised this to be the common pattern and,
like her brothers, she saw women as more caring than men. However, she
clearly viewed these skills as acquired through experience and practice,
rather than seeing their absence as insurmountable. Her interview gives a
sense that she feels both irritation that men do not cultivate the skills
needed for personal care, but also a sense of inevitability that that is the
way it is.
Geographical distance
Geographical distance is one of the most obvious possible excuses at a
common-sense level for not helping a relative. If you live a long distance
away, you can hardly be seen as available to give practical or personal help
can you?
In our view, it is nothing like as simple as that. People’s perception of the
significance of distance can and does vary. In the survey, we asked what our
respondents thought would be the longest reasonable time for someone to
travel one-way each day to care for a sick or elderly relative. The responses
were as follows:
Less than 15 minutes 12%

16–30 minutes 55%
31–45 minutes 8%
46–60 minutes 18%
Over one hour 6%
There is clearly no consensus here, although a majority of people specified

a fairly short period of time. The clearest message we get from this is that it
is very rare for people to see it as appropriate to spend over one hour
travelling to provide care. Does this correspond with messages we get from
our qualitative data set?
The answer to that question is a qualified yes. Certainly, geographical
distance is very commonly used to explain the inability to provide support,
or to visit relatives. We have fifty-two examples of this. Sometimes the
distances involved can be quite short, whether measured in miles or in the
amount of time or effort it takes to travel them. However, we also have a
few examples of people travelling very long distances, or following
complicated journeys, in order to fulfil responsibilities to relatives. Indeed,
we cited one of these examples—Maureen Vickers and her mother—in the
introductory pages of this book. Here are some examples to illustrate the
range. The first involves a fairly typical and unremarkable case. Sally
Brown is explaining why she, rather than her sister who lives some 30
miles away, has consistently been more involved in providing personal care
and practical support for their parents.
Sally She is very tied up in her own, her sons [pause] of course her family is
spread out over so many years as well. And she has a little business. And
she is very tied physically to Crewe.
In a fairly matter of fact way, Sally is listing a number of potential excuses
for her sister, including geographical distance. Anna Yates in the following
extract is explaining her own behaviour, and feels slightly more
uncomfortable about it than did Sally about her sister’s. She is talking
about her relationship with her grandmother. Anna is fond of her
grandmother, and has recently moved near to her since leaving her parents’
home.
Anna I wouldn’t like to say I wish I could see more of her because that’s an
excuse. Before I was far away and I’ve moved here and don’t see
any more of her, you know, which is a shame, I know I should. She’s
dying to come here again you know, but it’s just getting round to
invite her, and with not having a car it makes everything that bit
more awkward, but we do have my husband’s mum’s car every
weekend, so it’s not a really very good excuse [laugh]. But with not
driving myself…. (Emphasis in original)
Anna is clearly searching for more excuses, because geographical distance
can no longer be offered as a convincing explanation of her limited contact
with her grandmother.
A final example comes from Simone Arkright. She is talking about the
extent to which her sister, who lives in Canada, continues to provide
support for their parents despite the number of miles between them. Her
sister has a lot of telephone contact with her parents, but also, as Simone
explains:
Interviewer Your older sister, presumably there would be limits on what
she could do as she’s in Canada?
Simone Yes, yes, yes. But when she does come over she does spend the
whole two weeks cleaning. Does the house top to bottom.
Geographical distance is perhaps one of the best ways to demonstrate that
excuses are not objective ‘things’. Some people will view 10 or 20 miles as
prohibitive, while others will travel more than 200 miles to provide or
rotate the provision of personal care. These differences cannot be explained
solely in terms of relative access to private transport, since we have
examples of people making complicated bus or train journeys and covering
a larger number of miles that others—who have access to a car—view as
prohibitive. Geographical distance is also a good example of a ‘variable’
which is certainly not an ‘independent variable’. It is not straightforwardly
‘out there’ and insurmountable in everyone’s reckoning. People can and do
manipulate the distance at which they live from their kin. Our argument
here is parallel with employment. Just as there is room for variation in how
far people see time as a prohibiting factor, so there is similar variation in
judgements about distance.
Lack of resources
Finally, we want to consider lack of resources as a potential excuse. As we
have shown, this does actually run behind most of the others so that, for
example, people may well be thinking about lack of time, or money, or
access to private transport and so on when raising other issues. Again, we
did not have a survey question which addressed this exclusively. However,
as we noted in Chapter 1, in general we do get a message from our survey
that people see it as relevant to consider whether the assistance
required represents a necessity, or a luxury, in deciding whether relatives
should help. People generally see it as perfectly legitimate for relatives to
refuse to give assistance for luxury items, especially where this may result
in hardship for the person helping. This suggests there is public recognition
that the relative distribution of resources in a family is a relevant

consideration in deciding the legitimacy of a refusal to give help.
In our qualitative data set we identified fifty-five examples where people
were putting forward a lack of resources specifically as an explanation of
inability to provide support. However, as with the other excuses, we
cannot identify an objective level of resources which people agree is needed
in order to provide support, and below which people will agree that this is
not possible. On the contrary, there is a wide range across which people’s
views about the connection between resources and ability are cast. The lack
of financial resources is commonly cited as an excuse, often in a very
matter of fact way. For example, Zaki Jones makes the following
comparison between his two grandmothers:
Zaki My grandmother gave me £500 for my twenty-first birthday,
which paid for my fare to the States.
Interviewer That’s nice, which grandmother?
Zaki My mother’s mother. That paid for the fare. She seems to have
lots of shares and things which she occasionally sells [laugh]…
Interviewer Does she sort of spend money on you regularly? I mean that
was obviously a special kind of thing.
Zaki Oh yes, she does. She frequently gives me a bit of money.
Interviewer So that’s not like a loan? You wouldn’t ask her for a loan?
She’s just a bit generous to you?
Zaki Yes, yes. Although she did say that if I did get an offer for a
course next year at University, and didn’t have a grant, then
she would be prepared to partly finance it [laugh].
And later in the interview:
Interviewer How about your other grandmother, does she…
Zaki Well she can’t afford to really. I mean she doesn’t really have
too much money to throw around.
Appendix C shows that Zaki’s potential experience of receiving financial
support from a grandmother for education would be a rare one in our data
set. Out of fifteen examples of financial help for education, eleven were
concentrated in the parent-child range. However, for Zaki, it was normal
and reasonable that his wealthy grandmother should help in this way, and
in general that one of his grandmothers was more able to provide financial
help than the other.
In general, of course we cannot know where people draw a line between
being able to afford to provide support, and not doing so, but we do have
examples where we are certain that providing support involved financial or
other hardship, yet people did not use this as a way of avoiding helping.
Also, we have examples where people manipulated the resources they had
to make it more possible to provide support, in situations where it may
have been perfectly reasonable to claim inability. This could take the form,
for example, of building a house extension to accommodate the support of
a relative.
Taken together, employment, other family commitments, competence,
geography and resources were the main excuses recounted to us by our
interviewees for some people’s inability to provide assistance in certain
circumstances. There is much variation in types of excuse and in their use,
both within and between the categories we have identified, and we have
used examples to give a sense of the range covered. Now we are going to
turn the focus on to the processes through which people try to get their
excuses accepted as legitimate.
MAKING EXCUSES AND CONSTRUCTING

MEANINGS
The previous section described a series of broad principles which people in
our study used to determine whether it was possible to give help to a
relative, and how their time, money and labour should be prioritised.
However, we showed that what those principles mean when translated into
practice is remarkably variable. In the remainder of this chapter we are
going to focus directly on the processes through which ‘excuses’ get
constructed and deployed, and how they come to be recognised as
legitimate or illegitimate. We want to move our readers away from seeing
excuses as straightforward principles for application, or things. The
position we are rejecting is that rules of obligation determine whether an
excuse is accepted as legitimate or not: for example, a son can use the
reason ‘I live too far away’ as a legitimate excuse for not visiting his
parents regularly, in a way that a sister could not, because different rules of
obligation apply to daughters and sons. We are say ing that this is not how
legitimate excuses work. It is not as simple as that, as our data show.
Instead, we are suggesting that excuses and their legitimacy only make
sense if we see them as products of the negotiating processes in which they
are located. Negotiations provide the ‘mechanisms’ through which they are
constructed, and the ‘locations’ in which they operate.
Our perspective throws the focus away from the content of an excuse,
and on to the question of ‘getting your excuse accepted’ which we raised
earlier in the chapter, Specifically, we can address a number of questions
about getting excuses accepted. Through what processes do people get
their excuses accepted as legitimate (or fail to do so)? Does the ability to
get excuses accepted as legitimate vary according to genealogical position,
or according to gender? For example, do women have more difficulty than
men in getting certain actions accepted as legtimate? Does legitimacy itself
actually matter? We are going to consider each of these questions in turn.
Through what processes do people get their excuses

accepted as legitimate?
In order to tease out processes through which people try to get excuses
accepted as legitimate, we shall discuss data on four cases in turn, then
draw out some general points. Our discussion also draws on the analysis
presented in Chapter 3, about the processes through which commitments
develop.
Example 1:
the Mansfields
For our first example we return to the Mansfield case, discussed at the
beginning of this chapter. We looked earlier at Roger Mansfield’s account
of the care of his elderly father, Vic, and saw there that the use of
employment as a legitimate excuse was a point of conflict in this family.
We got a slightly different version of events from another member of the
sibling group—Lesley Trafford—one of the three who had their own
businesses and who used employment as an ‘excuse’.
Interviewer When your father was ill before he died, the family, different
members of the family helped to look after him in various
ways. Did you get involved in that?
Lesley No, not at all. Not that I didn’t want to. I think I would have
liked to have done but [pause] there seemed to be so many of
us trying to do so much. It seemed silly. And they always know
that I’m here all the time, I’m never away from this place [her
business premises]. I never have chance to get away from it.
But, but I think if I’d been at home all day, or had a part-time
job or something, then definitely I would have got, I would
very much have liked to get involved.
In her account, not only is Lesley stressing that she was unable, not
unwilling, to help, but also that ‘they always know’ that she is constantly
at her business. For her, ‘they’ provide the audience which ratifies or
confers the legitimacy of her excuse, so ‘they’ are important people to
convince. It is through the audience that the excuse can become legitimate.
Convincing them depends upon a mixture of getting herself accepted as
someone who does not avoid obligations (‘I would very much have liked to
get involved’), and getting into a position where she does not actually
assist. This mixture is one which evolves as a consequence of negotiations
which take place over time, and this particular set of negotiations was part
of that process.
Roger Some members of the family thought that, you know, the businesses
should take second place during that time, er, obviously they
thought that it couldn’t and you get conflicts built up in that way,
but it, it was as though it was pushed on some more than others
[pause] you know. But there again, I would imagine that’s true of
any family, there are people more able at a given time to help than
others.
Although Roger is saying that legitimacy was disputed in this case, he is
also saying that he accepts—at least in part, or on one level, or at some
times—that such excuses can be valid and a ‘normal’ part of family life.
These uncertainties add weight to the idea that the very issue of legitimacy
was—and still is—being negotiated by members of this family. So when we
observe that legitimacy is disputed, this potentially means two things. It can
mean that legitimacy of a person’s position is a matter of dispute between
different individuals. It can also denote that the actions of an individual
may seem to have legitimate and illegitimate elements, in the eyes of their
kin. She or he is offering a range of explanations, the legitimacy of which
may be more or less plausible at different times, or in different contexts.
Attempts to establish legitimacy take different forms at different times and
to different audiences. What both versions of disputed legitimacy have in
common is that they demonstrate that legitimacy itself is not a fixed and
immutable quality of specific actions, explanations or even people.
Example 2:
the Gardners
Tim Gardner’s account of negotiations about the care of his dying
grandfather gives another example of excuses whose legitimacy is disputed.
His paternal grandfather had recently been ill, and hospitalised, and this
had prompted a set of explicit discussions between Tim’s parents, and his
aunt and uncle, about where he should live once he was discharged from
hospital. In fact, members of neither household wanted Tim’s grandfather
to move in with them, primarily because Tim’s uncle on the one hand, and
Tim’s mother on the other (that is, his children-in-law) did not get on well
with him. Eventually, it was agreed that Tim’s parents would take him in,
and convert their garage to provide the space to do so, even though Tim’s
aunt and uncle had plenty of room in their large house. In fact, the issue only
ever remained a hypothetical one, because Tim’s grandfather died in
hospital—but not before certain excuses had been aired.
Tim My auntie and uncle’s house, it’s turned out since [pause] they’ve gone
on for years saying ‘Oh no we’re not going to have him.’ They used to
say this with my gran as well, um when she was like in her wheelchair
and so on. The house they’ve got has got six bedrooms, they had two
children who are both now married and moved away. So they’re on
their own in a six-bedroomed house, but it’s, well as my auntie put it,
it’s not owned by them, it’s the company owns it. Well my uncle’s a
Director of this company and the company bought it for him to live in
years and years ago. They said, um, you know ‘It’s just you and your
children, no one else.’ So it’s all hush-hush and so on from their point
of view, so we don’t know too much about it. But that seems the basic
reason, plus the fact that my uncle did not want him in the house.
Tim makes it rather clear that he regards his uncle as offering a flimsy excuse.
If his parents, who also ‘did not want him in the house’, were able to make
room for his grandfather, his aunt and uncle could have done something
similar, especially since his uncle is a Director of the company which owns
their house. Elsewhere his account gives a picture of his parents looking for
ways to make it possible for them to provide accommodation and care. He
presents them as people who do not avoid responsibilities, and this is
rather in contrast with his aunt and uncle whom he views as having
developed a history of avoiding responsibilities—first to his grandmother,
then to his grandfather. It is this reputation, accumulated over some years,
which throws into question the legitimacy of their excuse, and jeopardises
‘public’ acceptance (that is, acceptance by Tim and his parents) of their
claim to be primarily unable rather than unwilling to help. For Tim, their
position is not improved by the slightly suspect veil of secrecy drawn over
the ‘hush-hush’ arrangements involving the ownership and use of their
house.
Example 3:
the MacIntyres
Our next example concerns the relationship of one of the young adults in
our study with his widowed father. Thomas MacIntyre was a single man in
his mid-twenties. He lived alone in a rented flat in a different part of
Manchester to his father, although very near one of his sisters. His story
concerns the legitimacy of offering a different kind of support to the one
which is really needed or wanted. This is a variation on a theme highlighted
in the Mansfield case earlier, where Roger Mansfield was critical of his
brother and sister for failing to provide care or practical support for their
father and instead ‘throwing money at the problem’. We get a similar
message from Thomas—that doing something else will not count in the
legitimacy stakes.
Interviewer Has your father got involved with giving any of you [that is,
Thomas and his siblings] any kind of support perhaps…
Thomas Um, not really, no.
Interviewer Financial or practical?
Thomas Well he’s, he’s the sort of, he will financially [pause] you’ll
have to be my agony aunt for the next three or four minutes. He
will financially [pause] um but when it comes to any resource,
time or effort, he’s um, I think he thinks that ‘I’ve done all I
can over the last 25–30 years, its up to them now’ [pause]
which I can understand but he [pause] if it’s money involved,
all it takes is to write a cheque or, you know, get the old visit
to the bank and he’s quite amenable to that. But if it means you
know, setting aside some time, or putting some effort into
something, he’s not so keen.
Thomas is obviously disappointed in what he perceives to be his father’s
use of money as an excuse not to provide other—more valued by Thomas—
forms of support. Yet in the next few minutes of his interview, Thomas
went on to spell out some explanations on behalf of his father—we might
even call this making excuses for him—as to why his time was limited:
Thomas Getting away from the money, he’s um, he’s got a partner himself
now [pause] and um he spends quite a lot of time with her when
he’s not working [pause] so [pause] his, like his time is a bit more
limited. He’s not that mobile, he doesn’t have a car, um, so again
that’s another limitation.
There is a sense in which Thomas cannot quite decide, or has competing
ideas, about whether or not to accept the legitimacy of his father’s excuses,
and this is similar to the meanings-under-construction message we got from
the Mansfields. He understands his father’s predicament, but he would
probably be more satisifed if his father made a ‘publicly’ recognisable
attempt—one which would be recognisable in negotiations that is—to
overcome some of the obstacles. In a sense, Thomas wants his father to
show himself as the kind of father who will expend time and effort if he
can. Developing that kind of family reputation seems actually to be more
important than whether or not material support does regularly pass
between them.
Example 4:
the Crabtrees
This example draws primarily on the account of one of our young adults,
Jean Crabtree, of the involvement of her mother and uncle in the care of
their elderly parents. We introduced this case earlier, as an example of the
use of employment as an excuse. Jean’s mother took overall responsibility
for the care of her parents, while Jean’s uncle did a lot less. At first, Jean
explains the discrepancy as a consequence of employment: her uncle got
less involved because he had a job. However, later we learn that Jean’s
mother also had a job, which she gave up for a brief period, so that she
could care for her parents. Employment status alone did not explain the
difference. Jean discussed in some detail the comparison between the
assistance given by her mother and her uncle, We asked whether she
thought her uncle was ‘trying to get out of’ the responsibility to his
parents, or whether there was a different explanation.
Jean I think partly, because with his first wife he had an awful lot of
trouble for years and years. They didn’t get on at all and she was a bit
um, mentally disturbed in a lot of ways, so he did have a lot on his
plate in that respect, you know sort of trying to cope with his wife and
such a large family, and the home. So he did have a lot of other things
to consider as well as my grandma and grandad. And I don’t, in a way,
I don’t really think he thought he was capable of helping for some
reason. He, I mean, he used to go and visit them that type of thing,
but he never seemed to take it much further. He didn’t seem to feel
that he was able to for some reason. He’d not really had a lot of close
contact with them, for a long time, mainly while he was with his first
wife. He used to visit them, I don’t even think it was once a week,
occasionally he’d visit them and take one or other of the grandchildren
to see them, but so up until he left his wife, you know, he had little
contact with them. [Emphasis in original]
This example shows very clearly that getting an excuse accepted as
legitimate can depend upon a long sequence of events set in motion before
the specific need arises, or the specific excuse is aired. For Jean’s uncle and
mother, the different patterns of each of their contact and support over
many years with their parents helped to put Jean’s mother in a position
where she felt a commitment to assist them, and Jean’s uncle in a position
where he felt unable to help. It is not entirely clear if his position was
accepted as legitimate by other members of the family. Probably it was up
to a point, as Jean indicates when she refers to his various prior
commitments. She certainly seems to feel more comfortable viewing him as
a person who lacked confidence in his own ability to help, rather than one
trying to evade his responsibilities.
We can see from this example that it is vital to take account of how
people are locked into and out of sets of commitments which have
developed over time if we are to grasp the ways in which apparently
straightforward excuses—like the initial use of employment in this case—
get deployed and gain legitimacy.
These four examples show that people gain or seek the stamp of
legitimacy for their excuses through processes of negotiation with their
relations (negotiation, that is, in its fullest sense, as described in
Chapter 3). When we talk about people making excuses, we literally do
mean making them, and it takes more than one person to make a legitimate
excuse. An excuse is not inherently legitimate or illegitimate, and achieving

legitimacy seems to rest on two main principles.
First, it is important to get it accepted through negotiations that you
have prior claims on your time or resources. This means that there should
be some ‘public’ form of acceptance, that is, the relevant audience must
agree that they are convinced. However, this kind of ‘going public’ does
not necessarily mean that excuses must be articulated and discussed,
because implicit negotiation may do just as well as long as everybody knows
about it. But it does mean that your reasons must be open to scrutiny in
some way: that way may just as likely be that they have been obvious, and
everyone has known and accepted them for some time, as that you spell
them out verbally at any one time. Of course this may not always work:
Lesley Trafford (of the Mansfield family) told us that her relatives all knew
that she was constantly tied up with her work, but Roger Mansfield tells us
that he and his siblings were not entirely convinced that this was good
enough to excuse her from participating in her father’s care. Tim Gardner’s
aunt and uncle had always maintained that they were unable to use their
home to provide support for relatives other than their own children, yet
again other relatives saw this as unconvincing. In that example, the fact
that the deal was ‘hush-hush’ and not open to scrutiny by the relevant
audience, made it less likely that the excuse would be accepted by them as
legitimate. The important point to be taken from these examples is that it
is the audience which holds the power to grant or withhold legitimacy.
Second, you need to get yourself accepted as someone who does not
wilfully avoid responsibilities. If you have a ‘good’ reputation, then
inability to provide support will more readily be sanctioned as legitimate
and genuine. Again, this is a process which must take place over time,
through sequences of negotiation about a variety of issues and the
concomitant development of moral identities. It was clearly relevant in the
Mansfield and Gardner examples; for example, Tim Gardner made a direct
comparison between his parents—as people who do not avoid
responsibilities—and his aunt and uncle, as people who do. Lesley Trafford
emphasised that she would have loved to have helped out with her father’s
care, if she possibly could. Perhaps the most clear example of this, however,
is in Thomas MacIntyre’s comments about his father. Essentially, Thomas
is saying that he would accept his father’s excuses as legitimate if only he
had proved himself as the kind of father who did not avoid putting time
and effort into his responsibilities to his children. This is not the same as
saying that Thomas wants his father to do more: he wants to be able to
recognise him as the kind of father who would do more.
Obviously there is a relationship between the support people give or
receive and the reputations they develop in the eyes of their relatives, but it
is not one of direct equivalence (we discuss this further in Chapter 5).
Nevertheless, for some of those who acquire good reputations through the
development of commitments to members of their family (see Chapter 3),

the expense of withdrawing from commitments may be a much more potent
factor in the range of responsibilities they develop, than is their capacity to
establish legitimate excuses should the need arise. In other words they get
into a situation—as did Stan and Eileen Simpson in Chapter 3—where
their own ability to make a legitimate excuse no longer has much relevance
to how they work out what to do in practice.
Both of the broad principles outlined above are concerned with
meanings and reputations which may be—and often are—contested and
disputed by kin members. Added to that, individual people themselves can
hold apparently contradictory views about legitimacy. The issue that
remains is not whether an excuse really is legitimate (that would wrongly
imply that legitimacy is an objective property of particular kinds of excuse)
but what meaning it is given in negotiations by the people who matter. But
how far does gender, or genealogical relationship, influence this process? We
will now address these questions.
Does the ability to get excuses accepted as legitimate vary

by gender, or genealogical relationship?
The answer to both of these questions is a qualified yes. It is a ‘yes’ because
there is a tendency in our data for women on the one hand, and people
within the parent-child range on the other, to have excuses accepted less
readily than men, or than more genealogically distant kin, respectively. As
far as gender is concerned, this trend seems most prominent in relation to
labour or time-intensive types of support. However, the ‘yes’ is qualified
because these are tendencies, but not hard and fast rules. For example, we
saw at the beginning of the chapter in the Mansfield kin group example
that the idea of a gendered or genealogical hierarchy according to which
excuses would be accepted would neither have predicted what happened in
practice, nor pinpointed the kinds of processes that were occurring.
Empirically in our data set we have many variations on such a view of
hierarchy, and conceptually it does not help to explain the ways in which
legitimate excuses are constructed and deployed. Instead of supposing that
the likely acceptance of excuses can be read off straightforwardly from the
genders or genealogical relationships of the members of a family, we think
it is important to delve deeper, and to establish what it is about gender or
genealogy that we are reading when we observe such patterns. This will
help us to make sense both of the gendered or genealogical patterns, and
also the apparent variations on these. The position we are rejecting
therefore is that genealogy or gender determine whose excuses will be
accepted as legitimate in any straightforward sense.
So what is the relevance of gender, or of genealogy, in the making of
legitimate excuses? We are going to focus more on gender than genealogy
here, partly because we have already discussed the latter in relation to the
Mansfield example, but also because the analytical arguments in many
ways are similar in both cases and we want to concentrate on drawing
parallels between them.
We think it is important to understand the ways in which people get
locked into developing commitments, and how these vary for men and
women. As we argued in the previous section, some people manage to
avoid developing commitments to their relatives, and therefore when a
specific need arises they are more likely to be able to argue successfully that
they are unable to help (although ironically the legitimacy of their position
may depend on their maintaining a reputation as someone who does not
flagrantly evade responsibilities). But precisely who gets locked into sets of
commitments over time does have a gendered (as well as a genealogical)
component, as we argued in Chapter 3. We think it is at this level that we
should look for gender differences in the process of getting excuses
accepted as legitimate. For example, if women are more likely than men to
develop commitments to relatives, it follows that they may find it more
difficult than men to establish that they are ‘unable’ to help by virtue of
their employment, their lack of skill, their other commitments, or
whatever. What this means is that when it comes to a specific need, and the
possible range of excuses, men and women may have access to a different
repertoire. This may have the result that they actually make different
excuses (because the same excuses would not make sense in relation to
their relative biographies and contexts), or that they make the same kinds
of excuses but under different conditions. But either way, when we are
comparing men’s and women’s excuses in these situations, we are not
comparing like with like.
The example of Jane Smith and her brothers helps to illustrate these
points. Jane was a member of another of our kin groups—the Frosts (see
Appendix A). She was in her early thirties when we interviewed her, and
married with two young children. In total we interviewed six people from
this kin group, including Jane’s parents, Francis and June, and her two
brothers: Andrew Frost, in his twenties and married, and Jack Frost, in
his mid-thirties and married with a baby. The example we want to use is the
relationships that Jane, and her brothers, have with their parents.
Our Frost interviewees gave us various examples of assistance passing
between members of their kin group, but the most prominent channel of
support was between Jane and her mother, June. June—who has her own
investment income—regularly helped Jane financially, and also with
various forms of practical support. Jane, for her part, gave her mother, and
to a slightly lesser extent her father, practical help when needed. In fact,
Jane’s parents had not needed much help, except for a short spell when
they were both (coincidentally) in hospital at the same time, but Jane has
frequent contact with them—by telephone, and visiting. Jane characterised

her relationship with her mother in particular as very close.
Jane’s brothers, Andrew and Jack, have been less involved with their
parents, in terms of emotional closeness, contact and regular practical
support. When Francis and June were both hospitalised, Jane was to the
fore in helping them on a daily basis, although Jack did also get involved.
June explained it like this:
June There was an occasion when we were both in hospital together, and
then I was in a month all told [which was longer than Francis]. And
he [Francis] is absolutely hopeless at looking after himself, absolutely
hopeless. And Jane was coming over two or three times a week,
bringing cake and food and things for him, coming to see me, and
bringing Rosie [Jane’s daughter] with her. And you know, looking
after him, doing his washing, doing my washing.
Should Francis and June need practical support or personal care at any
stage in the future, it seems generally agreed among our interviewees that
Jane will be the key provider of help.
How far does the idea of legitimate excuses shed light on the negotiation
of support between parents and adult children in this kin group? We can
identify both themes outlined above: the making of different excuses by
men and women, and the making of the same kinds of excuses but under
different conditions.
For example, employment is an area which differentiates Jane from her
brothers in terms of excuses. The two Frost sons have ‘done well’ in their
occupations—one as an accountant, one as a company secretary—and the
demands of their employment are seen as an important priority in the
family as a whole. Jane, who was a teacher but is now unemployed/looking
after her young children, obviously sees her brothers as less available than
herself if her parents need help. This is a view which her parents and
brothers clearly share. For example, Andrew told us:
Andrew When my parents have been unwell, you know, they’ve just, things
have got to go on so er [pause] especially my sister I suppose
because she’s nearest and, maybe has more time because not being,
not working, she helps out.
The point is that Jane does not have the excuse of employment in her
repertoire, and although at some stage in the future she may return to
employment, she is unlikely to achieve the high professional status of her
brothers, in the eyes of the rest of her family. Although the Frosts are a
‘middle-class’ family, this distinction in employment status—in particular
to accommodate child care—is common in our data set, as it is in national
survey statistics (Martin and Roberts, 1984; Finch and Mason, 1990d).
Another area in which the biographies of Jane Smith and her brothers
help to give them access to a different repertoire of excuses concerns
questions of competence and skill. There seemed little doubt in the minds of
our Frost interviewees that Jane was better than her brothers at certain
domestic and caring tasks. For example, June explained what happened
following her hospitalisation:
June When I did come out of hospital Jack did come up two
weekends and look after us over the weekends, you know,
cook for us and everything. You know, they have given a lot of
support…. But, er, yes Jane’s very good, if I’m not well, she’ll
always come and look after me.
Interviewer In what way do you think she is, I mean, you said earlier she’s
more caring than the other two, in what way is that so?
June She seems to know what wants doing, and do it. I mean Jack
would come over and cook a meal and bring the food with him.
But he hasn’t much sense of reality as to what sort of meal you
want [laugh], He fancies himself as a cook, I mean, he came
over and brought a huge joint of meat, you know, a big joint
of beef and things to cook it with, all the trimmings and things.
Well, when you’ve not been very well that isn’t what you want.
What do you do with all the meat that’s left? You know, and
sort of not thinking. Whereas Jane would think what you’d
like, and she’s perhaps taken more note over the years as to the
sort of things I would eat and like. [Emphasis in original]
It is perhaps not surprising that Jane is better at this kind of caring work,
because her life experiences have allowed her to develop the necessary
skills. But it does mean that it would be very difficult for Jane to argue that
she was unable to provide practical or personal support because of a lack of
competence. The process is therefore likely to be cumulative: Jane’s caring
skills, among other things, help to involve her in sets of developing
commitments through which she increasingly builds up those kinds of
skills. There is a parallel here with our earlier comments about gender and
skill, and the examples we used there, especially the Arkrights.
As well as showing that men and women can develop access to a different
repertoire of excuses, the Frost example also helps to illustrate the
operation of what seem to be similar excuses, but under different conditions
for men and women. For example, aside from not having a job, a reason
put forward as to why Jane had given most help to June and Francis when
needed, and built up over time a more regularly supportive relationship
with them, was that it was easier for her to get there because she did not
live so far away. In fact, Jack lived about 160 miles away, Andrew about
60 miles, and Jane herself lived 40 miles away. While it is true that Jane
lived the nearest, it is also the case that she did not actually live locally. It is
not clear on the face of it why geography should not have functioned as a
legitimate excuse for her too. In fact, it is only when geographical distance
is seen in the context of the rest of her life, as compared to her brothers,
that it starts to make sense as an excuse for them and not for her. It is
significant that employment and geography, and their relative legitimacies,
were tied up together here. For example, for the sons it was seen as an
inevitable part of their careers that they might live at a distance from their
parents. Furthermore, Andrew saw geographical distance from his parents
as an important part of his claim to independence from them, and
implicitly perhaps as a way of avoiding extensive commitments to assist
kin. Jane had not seen distance from parents as an inevitable part of a
career plan, and decisions about how near or far to live from them had
very clearly been informed by the demands of the commitments which were
developing between them. Jane was tending to treat responsibilities to kin
as prior, and seeing distance as a barrier to be overcome. She was not even
trying to use geography as an excuse. For her brothers it seems to have
been treated more straightforwardly as preventing them from taking on
commitments to their kin.
Understanding geographical distance in this kin group involves
recognising that it is seen to mean something different in the context of
different biographies and life experiences. Similar points can be made
about how far commitments to ‘one’s own family’ represent potentially the
same excuse for men and women, but can actually mean very different
things in practice. For Jane Smith, there is little doubt that the fact that she
was looking after two young children at home made her look more rather
than less available to take on regular practical and personal support of her
parents. We saw this too in the Mansfield example earlier in this chapter,
and in the case of Eileen Simpson in Chapter 3. Yet Jane Smith was seen in
this way despite the fact that she lived 40 miles away from her parents, and
her youngest child had an illness which demanded a great deal of care and
attention. For her brothers, Jack and Andrew, the birth of a baby on the
one hand, and the illness of his wife on the other, were both put forward as
reasons why they were unable either to help their parents at particular
times, or maintain such regular contact with them. For example, when June
and Francis were in hospital:
June Poor Andrew, he’d got his wife in hospital with meningitis at
the same time. So he couldn’t do a thing, you know, he
couldn’t do anything but…
Interviewer No, he had to stay at home?
June I mean, she was more important, I mean there was nobody to
look after her.
Some members of Andrew’s wife’s family of origin did come to stay and
help during that period, but the point really is that June sees it as entirely
legitimate that Andrew should prioritise his wife over his parents in this
situation, rather than attempt to help all of them simultaneously.
We think we are picking up on a distinction here which is reflected in
our data set as a whole: between the commitments of women who are
looking after young children at home (generally not seen as a legitimate
excuse for support which can in some senses complement it, even though
that might be very difficult in practice), and other forms of commitment to
one’s ‘immediate’ family. It certainly seems to be the case that you can be
more legitimately excused from fulfilling a commitment to a relative if you
can claim successfully that it would mean putting that before the needs of
your ‘own family’ (which is not the same as saying that there is a
straightforward set of genealogical priorities). But gendered biographies
can mean that women—unlike men—are seen as being in a position which
makes them able to juggle various commitments simultaneously without
the need to prioritise one over another. This is partly because women with
young children at home are thought to live in conditions conducive to
taking on other commitments (whether or not they really do), and also
because those conditions are thought to help to generate the skills needed
to juggle commitments.
As a result of these kinds of processes, women like Jane Smith do not
have easy access to a range of excuses which they can successfully deploy in
negotiations to claim that they are unable to help. In a situation like this
one, where Jane’s brothers do appear to have legitimate excuses, it is
unsurprising that Jane and her family begin to view this particular
developing commitment as her own personal responsibility.
There is a final point to make which applies not only to the Frosts, but
more generally in our data set. Put quite simply, people are not always
equally concerned with trying to get excuses accepted. For example, we
noted earlier that Jane Smith did not really ever try to get her geographical
distance from her parents accepted as an excuse for not helping them.
Our understanding of Jane’s behaviour here probably depends less on
examining her repertoire of excuses vis-à-vis those of her kin, and more on
the contours of her involvement in this particular commitment. In other
words, by the time this particular need arose, Jane was not really in the
business of trying to get excuses accepted as legitimate. In more general
terms, this relates to our argument in Chapter 3 that women’s biographies
tend to put them in a position where they are particularly likely to develop
commitments to relatives, and as a consequence to be regarded as an
‘obvious’ carer without need for discussion. Although we are not arguing
that excuses are always made explicitly in discussions, the allocation of
responsibility via a process of non-decision-making is often achieved
without the person who ends up taking responsibility having tried to get
excuses accepted as legitimate.
In conclusion to this section, we think that there is no straightforward

relationship between gender and the ability to get an excuse accepted as
legitimate, but there is a relationship. The arguments concerning genealogy
are similar. In both cases, it is much more to do with understanding how
commitments and reputations developed over time, and how women and
men, or different categories of kin, are likely to be differentially positioned
in this process. Their positioning is not determined by gender or genealogy,
although it is influenced by them. What really matters is the influence of
this positioning in relation to individual commitments in one’s own family
(not gender or genealogy per se), on one’s opportunity to deploy and claim
meanings in negotiations.
Does legitimacy matter?

The final question we are going to consider is whether or not it really
matters that an excuse is accepted as legitimate, We think the answer to
this question is yes it does matter, because there is a strong message in our
data that people do seem to want their relatives to accept their excuses as
legitimate. Although people sometimes fail in this, or are only partially
successful, we cannot find any examples where people seem happy to have
their relatives interpret their actions as illegitimate. It is also true that
people may want their relatives’ excuses to be legitimate. For example, we
saw that Thomas MacIntyre wanted his father to be legitimately unable to
help him and his siblings.
Asking whether legitimacy matters throws the focus very much on to the
moral aspects of negotiations and responsibilities. For example, how far
does an excuse need to have the moral approval of others in order to ‘work’?
Or to put in another way, what relationship does legitimacy have to
whether or not an excuse works? If you end up not providing help, does it
really matter if your position is not accepted as a legitimate one? This is
another way of looking at whether or not legitimacy matters, and we think
in practice there are at least three ways in which legitimacy and efficacy
may be related. First, your excuse may be said to work if the result is that
you do not provide the help in question, and everyone involved accepts this
as a legitimate position. There are two different levels of efficacy involved
here: whether or not you actually provide the help (if not, your excuse
works at this level), and whether or not your position is accepted as
legitimate (if so, your excuse works at this level). This combination
represents the best possible form of excuse.
The second possibility is that no one accepts your position as legitimate,
but you still do not provide support. In this version, the excuse is only
working at one level, although people may try to persuade you to help even
though they cannot make you do so. Our data suggest that people view
this as the worst possible way of avoiding responsibilities, because they

strive to have their actions seen in a different light.
The third variation is that you do not provide help, and your excuse is
only partly accepted as legitimate, either because people are not wholly
convinced, or because some are and others are not. Again, this form of
excuse only works at one level, although the partial acceptance of
legitimacy may mean that people do not actively put pressure on you to
help.
In practice, what happens is often a combination of these variations, or
aspects of them. Legitimacy matters, it seems, because without it people
may run a number of risks. For example, if relatives perceive your position
to be illegitimate they may actually put pressure on you to help. We saw
this in the Mansfield example, where the sibling group successfully
pressurised their mother to look after her estranged husband.
Another risk is that using illegitimate excuses may jeopardise your
reputation, or personal identity, in your kin group. You may come to be
known as someone who wilfully avoids responsibilities to kin. The effects
of this may be quite pervasive and difficult to assess in advance, and we
deal fully with this kind of question in the following chapter. Certainly
though, as we have shown, having a reputation as someone who avoids
responsibilities is not only an outcome of making excuses which are seen to
be illegitimate, but also a factor which makes it more likely that excuses
will be interpreted in that way in future.
A final example, which helps to bring out some of these points in a
strong way, comes from Susan Mansfield’s account of her father’s response
to the illness and eventual death of her mother. Susan, aged 39 when we
interviewed her, begins her story by explaining why she did not go to
school after the age of 14:
Susan My mother was ill, she was at home and I had two
younger brothers and my father was working, so I was more or
less off school to look after my mum until they took her to
hospital. And after that I never went back, but they did know all
about it.
Interviewer That must have been quite difficult for you at that age?
Susan That was terrible because, um up until then I was the only girl
to my dad, he was my hero, you know, and at the time my
mother, well she got cancer and um, he took it badly. When I
say he took, I didn’t realise at the time but he couldn’t cope
and of course he didn’t come home you know, he’d stay out
and then come home later on and, er that had a very bad effect
on me. And for many years after I couldn’t, I couldn’t
understand why, why he could do that, because to me, it
wasn’t for me and my brothers it was for my mum. You know,
I mean, now I’m older, it must be terrible to be in that

position. What would I do if somebody said how would I
cope, would I run away from it, what would I do? I don’t
know…. Oh it was strange really, as I say, my Dad, she’d been
ill two years earlier, she’d been in hospital, had an operation,
and my Dad told me what was wrong with her. I would only
be about 12 at the time. Thinking that I’ve always been sort of
steady I suppose, he thought well I could cope [laugh], and I
couldn’t. But he couldn’t cope either so, from then on she got
better, and then she went back into decline. And he never
[pause] he never, the thing that hurt was he never had a day off
work to look after her. And as, I mean, it sort of sounds awful,
but I was only a child and I thought that was wicked to do
that, and I used to say to him well ‘What’s going to happen you
know, what’s going to happen?’ ‘Don’t worry, I’ll look after
you’, but it wasn’t me I was asking for, and he didn’t
understand. [Emphasis in original]
Legitimacy matters terribly in this account. We cannot know how Susan’s
mother interpreted the situation, but we can surmise that for Susan’s father
the legitimacy of his own position mattered. By Susan’s account he risked his
continuing relationships with his family in general, and Susan in particular.
One imagines it probably mattered very much to him personally, in terms
of his own morality and personal identity. And it matters to Susan, who
told us that although she can now understand her father’s actions, she
could not forgive him in his life-time, and still cannot after his death. She
desperately wanted to be able to believe his excuses had been legitimate.
CONCLUSION
In this chapter we have begun to move the focus more directly on to
aspects of negotiations between kin which are to do with the construction
of meanings, and the interpretation of explanations and actions. We have
used the concept of legitimate excuses to try to understand one dimension
of this, and have focused both on the range of excuses we found in our
data set, and the processes through which people try to get them accepted
by their relatives as legitimate. We have argued that the ability to get an
excuse accepted as legitimate is not just a straightforward product of who a
person is (in terms of their gender or genealogical relationship to others
involved), nor of what the excuse is.
Our exploration of the process of constructing an excuse, and getting it
accepted, has led us to open up questions about the ‘moral’ aspects of
negotiations between kin. In particular, we have suggested that moral
reputations and identities are implicated in the process of constructing
legitimacy. In the following chapter we turn the focus directly on to these

moral aspects, and develop our analysis of their role in the negotiation of
responsibilities between kin.
5
Reputations and moral identities in the
negotiation of family responsibilities
INTRODUCTION: THE MORAL DIMENSIONS OF

RESPONSIBILITIES TO KIN
In this chapter we will turn the spotlight explicitly on to what we are
calling the ‘moral dimensions’ of negotiations about responsibilities in
families. The importance of the moral dimension comes through in earlier
chapters. For example, in Chapter 2 in our discussion of the balance
between dependence and independence, it was clear there that people are
not simply negotiating about the relative ‘price’ of the goods and services
which they exchange, as weighed in material terms. In that sense the
material value of the exchange is only one part of the picture. People are
also negotiating about the boundaries of their relationships and about
people’s personal identities as ‘dependent’ or ‘independent’. In Chapter 3,
we noted the importance of ‘moral and material baggage’ which gets
carried forward and reshaped through sequences of negotiations about
support between kin. And in Chapter 4, we emphasised the relationship
between the making of legitimate excuses and the construction of moral
identities or reputations in kin groups. We are using the term ‘moral
dimensions’ to cover these important facets of family responsibilities and
the processes through which they are negotiated. We should underline that
we do not mean ‘moral rules’ about responsibilities, but are using the term
to refer to the non-material aspects of negotiations.
In focusing on the moral dimensions of relationships between kin, we are
emphasing the ‘how’ rather than the ‘what’ of family life. We are
suggesting that the way in which one individual interacts with another is
just as important—and can be more important—than the substance of the
goods and services which they exchange. Thus people try to present their
actions in ‘a good light’. We have seen this in previous chapters, both in
our discussion of negotiating processes in Chapter 3 and in our discussion
of legitimate excuses in Chapter 4. We are going to argue now that having
one’s actions seen in a good light is of general relevance for understanding
relationships within kin groups. The way in which you conduct yourself in
any negotiation with relatives can be taken to say something about you as
a person. It can be remembered and used in the future—quite possibly long
after the value of the goods and services exchanged has ceased to have any
significance.
In talking about ‘the how’ of negotiations with relatives, we find it
useful to employ the concept of demeanour, drawing on the work of
Goffman (1967). Goffman uses the term to refer to the way in which a
person conducts him or herself in face-to-face interactions. He argues that
gestures, bearing and words all serve to convey a message that this person
possesses certain attributes or qualities. The examples which he uses are
qualities such as self-control, modesty and sincerity. We are more
concerned with different qualities and attributes such as independence,
reliability and generosity—but the argument still holds. No one can
successfully establish that they possess these attributes simply by claiming
that they do. It requires also that other people accept these claims in
practice. This means that, in the course of social interactions, people make
interpretations of how an individual handles him or herself, and attribute
to that individual certain qualities on the basis of those interpretations. As
Goffman summarises it, using only the male pronoun but presumably
intending to include women as well as men in his analysis, ‘Through
demeanour an individual creates an image of himself, but properly
speaking this is not an image that is meant for his own eyes’ (1967: 78).
The concept of demeanour, understood in this way, shows why it is
important to look at the ways in which people conduct themselves, and
also emphasises that we are not simply talking about matters of surface
etiquette. In focusing on issues of demeanour we are making visible the
means through which the moral identities of individuals are constructed.
As a preliminary example of what we mean, the case of Jane Jones
highlights a number of important features. Jane was an elderly woman, one
of the Jones kin group (see Appendix A) and the mother-in-law of Isobel
Jones who was our initial contact in that family. Jane talked about the fact
that she had lent £350 to her younger son (not Isobel’s husband, who was
dead) and had never been repaid despite having explicitly given the money
as a loan.
Jane He came and he wanted to borrow money. And I’m a bit wary
because he’s a different type to my eldest son, he’s a bit dodgy. So I
says,‘Have you spent that money I gave you, that £350?’ ‘No, no.’ But
I think it would have gone definitely. So I says,’Well I’ll lend you
another £350 but I want it back’ [pause]. I’m still waiting. It’s never
been mentioned and I won’t mention it. [Emphasis in original]
Other relatives had urged her to ask him for the money but she said that
she would not do so. Her comment was, ‘I wouldn’t lower myself, that’s
just the difference you see.’
REPUTATIONS AND MORAL IDENTITIES 129
In this example we see that the key to understanding Jane’s behaviour is

demeanour. Indeed if we look just at her material interests in this situation
her behaviour is puzzling. Why doesn’t she ask for the money back? After
all she made it clear before she gave it that it was a loan not a gift, and her
son apparently agreed to this. The reason, as she presents it, is that it
would reflect badly on herself. Her use of the phrase ‘I wouldn’t lower
myself carries a powerful message in this context. Despite the fact that, in
the eyes of other people, she was a victim of her son’s selfishness and
completely entitled get her money back, actually to ask for something from
a relative would have significantly damaged her moral identity. We also see
that other members of the kin group form an audience for these
transactions—it is not just a private matter between Jane and her son. She
talks with other relatives about it, and they observe what she actually does.
Both her son’s reputation and hers are at stake.
Lying behind this issue specifically concerned with the loan, and
complicating the transactions further, is the fact that Jane is the mother of
the person she is criticising. Though we have quoted examples in other
chapters (and we shall give more in this chapter) of people who make it
pretty clear that they do not really like one of their parents, or a sibling, or
some other relative, we have no direct examples in our data set of someone
saying that they dislike one of their children. Jane Jones, in the incident
which we have quoted, in fact is the person who comes the nearest to it. But
elsewhere in her interviews she makes it clear that she is fond of him,
appreciates his contact with her and still would be prepared to help him in
other ways. Her feelings towards him no doubt are complex and
categorising them as like or dislike is far too crude. But that is not our main
point. What is striking is that neither she—nor any other parent—portrays
herself as disliking a child. This in itself reinforces our point about
demeanour. There is a sense in which for a parent (perhaps particularly a
mother) to show that her overall feeling is dislike would reflect badly upon
herself, as the person who brought up that child.
These points which we have drawn out of the Jane Jones example are
ones which we will develop in the course of this chapter: the importance of
demeanour; the ways in which moral identities are at stake; the kin group
as ‘audience’ for negotiations between individuals. In the second half of the
chapter we bring these themes together through an exploration of the
concept of reputation as it applies to the negotiation of kin
responsibilities.
ASKING AND OFFERING

We begin with a feature which is well recognised as part of the process of
negotiating assistance within families: asking and offering. Do you ask for
the help which you need, or do you wait for it to be offered? The
distinction turns on whether the initiative is taken by the potential recipient

or the potential donor. On first view this may seem very much a matter of
surface etiquette, but in fact people commonly act as if much more is at
stake, as is apparent in the case of Jane Jones.
From the Jane Jones case we might expect to find that the principle of
‘not asking’ is the dominant one. Indeed we do have many other cases in
our interview data which demonstrate that this is important in the way
that people conduct their relationships in practice. Nevertheless we have
others which imply a more complex message. However, we will look first at
our survey data, where we included several questions which enable us to
probe asking and offering directly at the level of publicly expressed norms.
The most elaborate of these is one of our longer vignettes concerning a man
called John Highfield. The vignette concerns John’s relationship with his
parents over a financial matter. As part of this vignette, we built in
questions which would distinguish between asking and offering. The
relevant parts of the question read like this:
John Highfield is a married man in his early thirties. He has a wife

and two young children. John is unemployed but has a chance to
start his own business. He can get various grants to help him get
started, and the bank will lend most of the money he needs. But he
still needs about £1500.
a. If he thought his parents could afford to help, should he ask them
for the money?
b. (If yes) Should he ask for a gift or a loan?
c. He does not like to ask his parents for the money, but should
they offer it?
In response to the first part of this question, there is clear agreement among
our survey respondents that John Highfield should ask his parents to help
him financially: 88 per cent said that he should and only 8 per cent said
that he should not (consensus baseline 75 per cent on this part of the
question). In their responses to this question our survey respondents are
clearly approving of someone asking a relative for help. However, we need
to look beyond this.
In order to decide how to interpret this response we can compare it with
another question, in which the principle of asking is not endorsed. This
was a question about an elderly couple who need some money to
redecorate their home (see Appendix B). Initially we asked whether
relatives should offer money and we obtained a split pattern of answers,
with 55 per cent saying that they should and 35 per cent that they should
not (consensus baseline 75 per cent). To probe the issue of whether asking
for help is appropriate in these circumstances, we asked those 342
respondents who had said that relatives should ‘not offer’ whether the
elderly couple should ask relatives for help and 70 per cent said that they
should not, with 20 per cent saying that they should. This does not quite
reach our consensus baseline of 75 per cent, but contrasts sharply with the
pattern of answers to the John Highfield question.
What are the features of these two questions which might account for
the different messages about ‘asking’? First there are differences in the
circumstances of the people needing help. The circumstances of John
Highfield’s situation were particularly conducive to the response that he
should receive assistance. He was a good ‘deserving case’—a man with a
young family, doing his best to establish himself economically. As we
indicated in Chapter 1, in general our survey population were most inclined
to approve of assistance from relatives where they were deserving cases, of
which this is one. Also we proposed that the help might come from his
parents specifically. Again we noted in Chapter 1 that parents’ continuing
assistance towards their children is the situation in which people are most
likely to endorse help from relatives. By contrast, in the case of the elderly
couple needing money for decorating, the help would have to pass from the
younger to the older generation and, in addition, their need may have been
perceived as less urgent and therefore their circumstances as less deserving.
Also we should note that the respondents who answered the question
about whether the elderly couple ‘should ask’ were the group least
favourable to the idea of the help coming from relatives.
So it is understandable that our survey respondents approved of John’s
parents assisting him financially. But are they straightforwardly endorsing
the principle of asking? Are they saying that, provided the case is a
deserving one and that relatives are the most suitable source of help, it is
perfectly acceptable for the potential recipient to take the initiative? We
think that it is a bit more complex than this. In the second part of the John
Highfield question we asked the 862 respondents who said that John
should ask his parents for financial help whether he should ask for a gift or
a loan and 98 per cent said a loan. This is the highest level of agreement
for any question in our survey and easily exceeds our consensus baseline of
75 per cent. It suggests that, when people said that John should ask his
parents for money, they also had in mind that he should do this in a
particular kind of way. It is acceptable for him to take the initiative and
ask, but what he should be asking for is a loan not a gift. In a sense this
reinforces the point about deservingness. In asking for a loan not a gift,
John would be showing that he was not seeking to become ‘too dependent’
on his parents (see Chapter 2). But also, asking for a loan implies that his
parents can retain some control over the situation by setting the terms, and
that ultimately they will not be financially disadvantaged.
The implication of this vignette is that people do not consider that asking
for help is unacceptable in all circumstances. Indeed in some circumstances
it may be very appropriate. What matters is what you are asking for and
how you ask. It is clear that John should not ask for a gift. At the same
time evidence from the vignette also supports the view that being in a
position where you ‘have to ask’ is undesirable and that, in such a situation,
the potential donor has some responsibility to avert the difficulties by
taking the initiative to make an offer.
We get this from the third part of the vignette, where we posed the
problem that John might not like to ask his parents, especially if he
thought that lending him money would cause them some financial
hardship. In these circumstances there was a notable measure of agreement
among our respondents that the parents have a responsibility to offer the
assistance needed: 78 per cent said that they should offer and 11 per cent
said that they should not (consensus baseline 75 per cent). The same
applies in another of our shorter survey questions, about a 19-year-old
woman with a baby, where the issue is whether she should return to her
parents’ home to live (see Chapter 1 and Appendix B). Our respondents
strongly favoured her going back to her parents’ home: 79 per cent said
that she should and 14 per cent said that she should not (consensus
baseline 75 per cent). Given that this is another question about parents
helping a young adult child, it is not surprising that our survey population
favours help being given. However, as with the question about the elderly
couple needing money to decorate their home, we then asked those who
said she should not go back whether the parents should offer their
daughter a home. There were 200 people in this group and 77 percent of
them said yes (consensus baseline 75 percent). Thus even where
respondents thought that parental support was not a desirable outcome,
they still felt that the parents had a responsibility to offer it.
This endorsement of the donor’s ‘responsibility to offer’ underlines our
basic point that, at the level of publicly expressed norms as well as in
practice, it is definitely preferable for a potential donor to take the
initiative. A donor sensitive to the moral as well as the material dimensions
of these exchanges should ensure that an offer is made before the
prospective recipient is placed in a position where he or she ‘has to ask’. If
she has to ask, it is difficult for her actions to be cast in a good light, and
her moral identity is thus at risk. This was the main thing which Jane Jones
held against her son (in the example discussed earlier in this chapter). It
was not so much that he had broken his promise to repay the money lent
by his mother. It was that he had put her moral identity at risk by placing
her in a position where she ‘had to ask’ him to repay.
We will explore the dynamics of asking/not asking in practice by
discussing whether and how these principles are reflected in the rest of our
interview data. But before we do that, we need to introduce a related
principle: ‘expecting’ or ‘not expecting’ to receive help.
NOT EXPECTING
In a straightforward sense ‘expecting’ help is different from ‘asking’ for it
because expecting refers to the way someone thinks about the possibility of
getting support, while asking refers to what he or she does about this
possibility. We shall argue that in reality the two overlap, but initially in
our analysis we will maintain the distinction between them and focus on
the issue of ‘expecting’.
There is a certain logic in the view that a responsibility to give help does
imply a corresponding right to expect it. However, this view is not reflected
in our data. Indeed we get strong messages that the majority of our
respondents see it as wrong to expect assistance from relatives in time of
need, even to expect recompense for assistance given previously, in the
sense of assuming it will automatically be given. These messages come from
both our survey and our interview data. It seems to be the idea of
‘expecting’ which lies at the heart of this, and which people reject.
We will look first at our survey data, where we asked some questions
which were concerned with expecting recompense for assistance given to a
relative. We can see that people reject the idea of ‘expecting’, at the level of
publicly expressed norms about family life. The most straightforward
survey question which addresses this issue runs like this:
Should a person who is caring for a sick or elderly relative expect to

get something, however small, from that relative in return, or should
relatives expect to give their time for nothing?
Of our respondents 83 per cent said that a person should expect to give their
time for nothing and only 13 per cent said that they should expect
something in return (consensus baseline 75 per cent). In interpreting the
answers to this question, we need to consider whether respondents were
disapproving principally of the idea that someone should expect to receive
a reward, rather than of the idea that recompense itself is inappropriate.
The wording of this question runs the two issues together. It may well be
that the strength of the response to this question turns on the idea that
someone should expect to get something in return when they do a favour
for a relative, though simply on the basis of answers to this question we
cannot be sure.
The same issue arises in one of our longer vignettes, where we can take
our interpretation a bit further. The story told in this vignette concerns a
mother, daughter and grand-daughter and the question of what
responsibilities they should acknowledge to each other, in the context of
the particular set of relationships which they have built up over time. We
are concentrating here mainly on the relationship between mother and
daughter. (We have discussed the relationship between grandmother and
grand-daughter in Chapters 2 and 4, and also in Finch and Mason,

1990d.) The wording for the relevant part of this vignette is as follows:
This situation is about Mary Harper, an elderly woman who has one
widowed daughter, Valerie. She has quarrelled with Valerie and cut
her out of her will. So Valerie knows that she will not inherit her
mother’s house. Her mother is too frail to live alone any more and
does not want to go into a home. The daughter, Valerie, is not sure
what to do. On the one hand she has enough space for her mother. On
the other hand they have never got on well together.
a. What should Valerie do?
Offer her mother a home.
Arrange for her mother to go into a nursing home.
Something else (specify).
b. If Valerie did offer her mother a home would it be reasonable to
say that her mother must change her will and leave her the house; or
should Valerie offer her mother a home without any conditions?
On the main question of whether Valerie should offer her elderly mother a
home despite the history of their very poor relationship, our respondents
are divided: 37 per cent say that she should offer her mother a home and
51 per cent say that she should arrange for her mother to go into a nursing
home. Neither of these responses reaches our consensus baseline of 75 per
cent. However, on the second part of the question the pattern is much
clearer and reflects the answers given to our other question on expecting
recompense: 82 per cent of our respondents said that, if Valerie did offer
her mother a home, that offer should be made without any conditions; only
13 per cent said that Valerie should ask her mother to change her will
(consensus baseline 75 per cent).
Although this is not surprising in the light of our other question about
expecting recompense, it underlines the clarity of the message that, for
most people, it is wrong even under the most trying of circumstances to
make explicit that you expect a relative to repay the help that you are
giving to them. In this vignette the daughter has a longstanding poor
relationship with her mother. Her mother has expressed her negative view
of her only daughter by taking the rather unusual step of excluding her
from her will. Valerie nonetheless is still prepared to contemplate taking
her mother to live with her in her old age. Yet our respondents seem to be
saying that, even in these circumstances, she should not take the initiative
to ensure that her apparently rather generous actions get rewarded in some
way.
The responses to the vignette are capable of two possible interpretations.
One is that respondents reject the whole idea of ‘expecting’, implying that
the idea of recompense should not even enter Valerie’s head. The other is
that what is inside Valerie’s head is not really the issue. Respondents’
disapproval is actually focused on the fact that Valerie acts in a way which
implies that she expects something in return. To put it in Goffman’s
language, her demeanour conveys the message that she expects
recompense, and this is the important factor in shaping our respondents’
judgements. It is at this point that we begin to see the overlap between
expecting help and asking for help. The two are linked through the concept
of demeanour. We would suggest that our data on asking and offering need
to be seen in this light. It is not so much that asking as such is disapproved
of. It is what asking implies. If someone asks for help there is a danger that
other people will perceive their actions as implying that they expect to
receive it. And—at least at the level of publicly endorsed beliefs
—‘expecting’ is strongly rejected. Thus from this vignette question we
would conclude that, at the level of what would be endorsed publicly as the
proper way to behave, most people say that it is wrong to act as if you
expect repayment.
If these interpretations which focus on demeanour are correct, this
suggests that it is more important to know how a person’s actions are
presented to and interpreted by other people, than it is to try to understand
what they ‘really expect’, or perhaps more generally what they ‘really think’.
Our survey data can take us no further than hinting at the importance of
this. Our interview data enable us to explore more about the process of
negotiating, and how far these principles are reflected in our interviewees’
own experiences and in their thinking about relationships with their own
kin.
In our interview data, we can identify some examples where it is implied
that expecting help from relatives is acceptable, and others where it is not.
We will consider these in turn. In total we have identified forty-four
examples where an interviewee is telling us that showing you expect help is
acceptable. Usually this also involves taking the initiative to ask for it.
Most examples concern incidents which have happened in the past, but
some refer to an interviewee’s view of what they would do in the future if
they needed a particular type of help. About one third of these examples,
where asking seems acceptable, are about young adults asking for help
from parents (or in one or two cases, another older relative). This is
consistent with the pattern which we have identifed elsewhere, and which
suggests that help from parents to children in adult life is regarded
differently from other types of assistance in families. Our data on ‘asking’
suggest that children can ask their parents for help in ways which do not
apply in other relationships.
In our other examples, it seems that there are circumstances which may
make asking acceptable, for instance if the assistance would clearly be part
of a reciprocal exchange. A typical example of this would be Jean
Crabtree, talking about what she does when she needs emotional or moral
support:
Jean Emotional support—I would say, yes. We talk our problems out
among each other. You know, perhaps I’ll go and see my sister and
talk to my mum—and vice versa. We do usually talk a lot, if we have
a problem. I’d, you know, go and see one of them.
Jean is saying that she is quite happy to approach her mother or her sister
if she needs to talk over a problem because she knows that they will come
to her when they need the same sort of help. ‘Asking’ does not, in a case
like this, disturb the dependence-independence balance. In a sense the
underlying logic here is rather like John Highfield asking for a loan: it
implies that there will not be a net gain for the person who asks. In fact
several examples from our interview data where asking was acceptable did
entail asking for loans. This lends weight to our argument that one
circumstance in which asking may be acceptable is where ultimately there
will be no net material gain, and where the balance of dependence and
independence will be undisturbed in the long run.
These kinds of examples are rather far removed from the idea of a ‘right
to expect’ help. We really have only one example in our data set where an
interviewee makes it explicit that he sees himself as having the right to
expect (almost to demand) assistance. This is the case of John Green and
his relationship to his grandchildren, which we discussed in Chapter 2.
John had helped his grandchildren financially in various ways and had
made them beneficiaries in his will. He felt that therefore he did have a
right to expect their practical assistance with tasks in the house and
garden, now that he was getting older. He put it like this:
John That’s the sort of help I would expect [pause]. And I would. I would
expect to get it too. I wouldn’t think they were doing me any favours
because I’ve done the same things for them. I’ve helped them
financially and I’ve done jobs, all that sort of thing. So I reckon I’m
entitled to expect the same sort of assistance from them. [Emphasis in
original]
We should emphasise that this is our only example which implies a strong
concept of the ‘right to expect’ and which presents it, in effect, as a
straightforward corollary of the ‘obligation to give’ assistance. In other
examples in our interview data people explicitly reject the notion that there
is anything approaching a right to expect, even between parents and
children. In total we have identified thirty-six examples which carry the
message that expecting help is not acceptable. We shall use a detailed
exploration of one of these examples as the framework for discussing this
issue of not expecting.
We have chosen this example because it brings out the issue of

demeanour explicitly. Interestingly it comes from our interview with Teresa
Green, John’s wife, though it involves a different aspect of their family
relationships. It concerns their negotiations, at the time of their marriage
ten years previously, around having Teresa’s mother to live with them. She
had previously shared a house with Teresa for many years. Teresa was in
her early fifties when she married John. She had not been married
previously and she worked in a professional, high-status job in the welfare
field. John and Teresa both told us that they realised that the question of
whether to offer a home to Teresa’s mother had significant implications for
them, and both were agreed that the decisive initiative had come from John.
It is Teresa’s account which we are going to quote here, because she recounts
the process of making the decision in a way which emphasises the
importance of how it was done.
Interviewer We are interested in who suggested what to who. Do you
remember how it was actually…
Teresa How my mother came here?
Interviewer Well yes. How did it develop?
Teresa Well my husband suggested it. I wouldn’t have because I don’t
think I have any right to suggest [pause]. I knew perfectly well
that my mother would be totally dependent as soon as she
stepped over this threshold [pause]. I wouldn’t have suggested
it, you know. And didn’t in fact [pause].
Interviewer So then you put it to her did you?
Teresa Oh well, she was just waiting to be asked [pause]. In fact she
hadn’t thought there was an alternative solution, I don’t think.
In Teresa’s account both she and her mother apparently acted as if it would
be wrong of them to expect an invitation for the latter to live with Teresa
and John after their marriage. Both treated John as the person who had to
take the initiative, the one who had the power ultimately to give or
withhold the invitation, on the grounds that the implications were greatest
for him, as the new husband. This has some parallels with the Simpson
case (discussed in Chapter 3) where Stan wanted Eileen to approve actively
of inviting his mother to live with them. In both cases the child-in-law is
treated as someone who should properly be accorded the right of veto.
However, in the Green case, Teresa makes it clear that her mother
actually did expect to move in with them (‘she was just waiting to be
asked. She hadn’t thought that there was an alternative solution’). Though
it is not entirely clear from what Teresa says, the implication is that her
mother ‘hinted’ that she might come to live with them. In some other
examples in our data set, hinting is a mechanism identified explicitly. For
example Ann Jones and her brother Zaki, both young single adults,
described how they had received various types of financial help from their
mother and one grandmother through processes which seemed usually to

entail hinting. Ann confirmed this when she described her family generally
as ‘great hinters’. Hinting is a process which enables someone to make
their needs known, while at the same time preserving the principle that you
should not ask for help directly, and not show that you expect to get it.
To return to Teresa Green, it seems that her mother did expect to move
in with Teresa and John. But Teresa herself seems not actually to have
envisaged an alternative either. On one level, the behaviour of the two
women in this scenario seems to be a matter of etiquette—showing that
they understand it is polite to wait to be asked. But at another level Teresa
makes it clear that to have spoken or acted as if she expected her mother to
live with them would have transgressed more than etiquette. She says, ‘I
don’t think I have any right to suggest’ and reinforces this by saying later ‘I
wouldn’t have suggested it and I didn’t in fact’.
Why does Teresa express herself strongly on the point that she had ‘no
right to suggest’ her mother’s living in her home? We will draw out three
points here, each of which can be supported with other examples in our
data set. First, we would argue that the reason why she had ‘no right’ to
suggest this move is that she would have been claiming for herself the
rights that all of them agreed implicitly should rest with her husband—the
person whose life would be changed most significantly if her mother moved
in with them, since Teresa and her mother had shared a home for many
years. To make the suggestion that her mother should live with them after
their marriage would put pressure on John and would have taken away his
ability to offer assistance freely, or to decide to withhold it. We have several
other examples which parallel this quite closely.
The principle which lies behind this can be expressed in general terms.
Showing that you expect a favour is unacceptable because it alters the
balance in a set of relationships. In particular it takes away some of the
rights which should properly be left with the donor (defined as John
Green, in this case). It is for this reason that the ‘obligation to give’ does not
imply the ‘right to expect’. It may well be that an endorsement of this
principle lies behind the responses we got from our survey respondents to
the Harper vignette, at least in part. In our qualitative data set, about one-
third of the examples which indicate that expecting is wrong imply clearly
this issue of taking away the donor’s rights. One example is the case of
Jane Smith, which we discussed in Chapter 2, who objected to her mother-
in-law and her sister-in-law making demands on the use of her car. Very
clearly in this case, Jane was not being left the freedom to take a decision
about whether she would use her own resources to the benefit of relatives.
There are various mechanisms available which appear to get round this
problem to an extent, and which get used in families. We have already
noted that ‘hinting’ rather than asking is one. Another is asking for
something less than you actually need, leaving the donor the flexibility of
deciding whether to offer more. An example of this comes from Sara Anwar,
a young woman of Asian descent who was living rent-free in her parent’s
house when we interviewed her. She and her young son had moved in when
her husband went to work abroad. Sara described how she had offered to
pay her mother rent, but the offer was refused. In asking for her parents to
provide accommodation, but offering to pay them for it, she had been
making a request which was less than she needed (because her salary as a
community worker was low), but which left her parents in the position of
taking the final decision about precisely what they would offer to her.
The second point which we want to draw from Teresa Green’s comment
that she had ‘no right to suggest’ is that it highlights the significance of
demeanour. It is showing that you expect an offer to be made which puts
on the pressure, not the private thoughts which you keep to yourself. Again
this is reflected in other interviews in our qualitative data set—about one-
third of our examples which emphasise ‘not expecting’ have this feature.
For example Jean Crabtree, a woman in her early twenties, told us about
the close relationship which she had with her mother Ellen and how,
though Ellen was perfectly fit and healthy, Jean and her boyfriend
frequently helped her with domestic tasks like decorating. However, Jean
emphasised that the initiative never came from her mother, ‘she wouldn’t
ask any of us to do it [pause]. She doesn’t expect us to.’ In formulating it
this way, Jean implies that the key sign that her mother ‘doesn’t expect’ is
that she wouldn’t ask. She reinforced this by linking it with her own future
relationship with any children she might have, showing that she sees
assistance from children to parents as something which should be
experienced as given freely, rather than under pressure of ‘being expected’.
Jean I wouldn’t expect them to be always helping me [pause]. I don’t think
you bring children into the world for your own old age thinking, you
know, they’ll be able to come and help me [pause]. If they want to
help you that’s fine, but I wouldn’t like to pressure anyone into
helping me.
The idea of ‘putting pressure’ on the potential donor clarifies further why
asking for help is problematic. Asking is suspect because it implies that you
‘expect’ help, we have already argued. We can now also see that
anything which shows that you expect help—or perhaps more importantly
is perceived as showing this—reflects badly on you because you seem to be
usurping the right of the donor to offer or withhold assistance. It implies
that you are the kind of person who does not respect the rights of others,
selfishly attempting to let your own needs override these.
Third, the example of Teresa Green suggests that the process of ‘showing
that you expect’ an offer of assistance not only affects the position of the
donor, but also reflects badly upon yourself. When she says, ‘I wouldn’t
have suggested it, and I didn’t in fact’ she is making claims about the kind
of person she is—someone who would not act in this way. Her personal
moral identity was bound up in the way in which this situation was
handled, and she is telling us that she came out of it well. Similarly Jean
Crabtree indicates that she does not wish to be seen as the kind of person
who would ‘pressure anyone into helping me’.
About two-thirds of our examples of ‘not expecting’ suggest that moral
identity is implicated. Quite commonly, it is the identity of ‘being
independent’ which, as we showed in Chapter 2, is an important
consideration for both young and old. For example Alfred King, an elderly
man living alone when we interviewed him, stressed that he had ‘never
asked’ for help from his family, and linked that explicitly with the fact that
he was ‘very independent’. Similarly Sophia Ellis described her Asian
grandparents as being unwilling to ask relatives for help because it would
damage ‘their own dignity and self-respect’. At the opposite end of the age
range, Jim Turner, a man in his twenties with four children who had been
unemployed for several years, told us that he tried hard to avoid asking
relatives for help because ‘the older you get the less you want to depend on
anyone else’. In all these cases, the identity of each individual as an
independent adult was bound up with ‘not asking’ and ‘not expecting’.
Other examples focus on different facets of identity, for example being
unselfish or being generous (which we consider in the next section).
Before concluding our discussion of expecting and not expecting, we
need to note a gender dimension to all this. The thirty-six examples which
emphasise that it is wrong to expect assistance were given to us by twenty-
six individuals, sixteen women and ten men. The forty-four examples
which indicated that expecting is acceptable came from thirty-seven
individuals, twelve women and fifteen men. Though the differences are not
absolute, there is a varying gender balance in each set of examples. Men,
who formed slightly less than half our study population (see Appendix A)
gave us more examples than women of situations where it is acceptable to
expect help from a relative. Women however were the larger group when it
came to examples where the message was that expecting help is not
acceptable. Numerically the differences are relatively small. But when we
look at what people say about these issues, the people who talk most
extensively about ‘not expecting’, and especially those who emphasise
matters of demeanour, are all women. Our only example of a man who
started to talk in these terms is interesting, because in a sense it reinforces
our point about gender differences. Alf Smith made the following
comments, while considering the issue of what would happen if his parents
were to need substantial help in old age:
Interviewer So you know that they would expect you to help them?
Alf Well [pause] I wouldn’t say expect. I don’t know. I mean it’s
hard to define really isn’t it? You say they don’t expect it and
yet if you don’t offer it, they’re going to be really hurt like. So
really, deeper down, they must ruddy well expect it in the first
place, you know [laughs].
Alf shows, in this extract, that he finds it difficult to disentangle the issue
of what people ‘really expect’ from what they say, showing in effect that he
does not have the same grasp of the complexities of these processes as do
some of the women—for example Teresa Green or Jean Crabtree, whom
we have quoted in this section.
In general the impression from our interview data is that women tend to
be more finely attuned to these processes. Though obviously it is not
possible for us to make broad generalisations about women and men on
the basis of these data, it seems important to note this difference. Certainly
one can suggest explanations of why it might be more important for
women than for men to develop a finely tuned sense of the importance of
‘not expecting’ assistance from relatives. That explanation would centre on
the different importance which relationships with relatives generally have
for women and men, and on the greater likelihood that women will need to
rely on kin for assistance at various points throughout their adult lives—
therefore they need to bother more about the way in which their own
reputations are constructed in the process of negotiating assistance.
In conclusion we would argue that this discussion of ‘not expecting’
shows the importance of demeanour—of the way in which negotiations
between relatives are conducted—and indicates that its importance is
linked to the construction of the moral identities of individuals.
Demeanour is more than etiquette because it implies moral attributes and
qualities. We have isolated the processes around asking, offering and
expecting as a key to understanding the significance of this. Though there
are circumstances in which asking for, and even expecting to receive, help
is acceptable there is a strong theme in our data that the rights of the donor
to offer or withhold assistance must be respected and protected. In turn it
is reflected in a general wariness about asking for help. But that also leaves
open the possibility that asking is perfectly acceptable, provided it can be
done in a way which does not usurp the rights of the donor.
In a sense this underlines the points that we have made, in different ways,
in earlier chapters, that family responsibilities are not a matter of fixed
rules of obligation, attached to specific genealogical positions. Offering
help to a relative is much more like a process of gift-giving. There is a
small but interesting body of social science literature on gift-giving
beginning with the classic work of Marcel Mauss (1954), which
emphasises that giving gifts is not just an exchange of material
commodities but is also a moral transaction, which creates and
consolidates social relationships and moral obligations (see also Cheal,
1987, 1988; Corrigan, 1989). Our analysis of family responsibilities
certainly fits with that view, as our discussion in Chapter 2 makes clear
when we outline the importance of reciprocating. However, we would
emphasise that we are talking about a gift-giving of a particular type, one
which sees each individual potentially with a considerable degree of
freedom to choose whether a gift will be given, and what type of gift it will
be. In the next section we develop this notion of ‘giving’ in a different way
by looking at the process of being generous.
BEING GENEROUS
The concept of generosity in family relationships in a sense is the polar
opposite of ‘expecting’. By definition generosity means that assistance is
given well beyond anything which the recipient could have a ‘right to
expect’. It apparently represents a clear case where the donor is under no
pressure from the expectations of the recipient. We are going to look at
examples of generosity in our interview data, from the perspective of the
key themes which we are developing in this chapter. In what circumstances
do actions get defined as ‘being generous’? What is the interplay between
the moral and material dimensions of the interaction in these instances?
How are moral identities implicated in such transactions? How important
is it to conduct ‘generous’ transactions in the right way?
We have various cases in our data set where people told us about
examples of assistance between kin which were defined as ‘generosity’. On
some occasions, these involved the kind of assistance which makes a very
significant difference to the life of the person receiving it. We take a key
example here from the Archer kin group (see Appendix A for details). It is
the example in our interview data set which represents the largest single
sum of money mentioned by any of our interviewees as a gift or loan
between relatives. In that sense it is not typical. However, it does enable us
to see very clearly some of the processes at work when a gift is defined as
generous within families. Those same processes are reflected in other
examples where the gift is less valuable in material terms, as we shall show.
We refer to the gift from John and Dorothy O’Malley of £10,000
(at 1970s prices) to Phil Archer their son-in-law, to enable him to buy a
partnership in a veterinary practice. Though it would be possible for this to
be treated as a business investment rather than a gift, all parties to the
transaction (all of whom we interviewed) presented it as a gift from parents
to children, an example of family assistance not of a business arrangement.
The agreement was that the capital sum was to be treated as a gift, in effect
as an advance on the parents’ estate which would pass to their daughter Jill
and her family in any case on the parents’ death. However, Phil was to pay
his parents-in-law the equivalent of the interest which they would have
earned on this capital, as they relied on it to supplement their income in
retirement. All the members of the family whom we interviewed cited this
as an example of the kind of assistance which characterised their

relationships, which were clearly very warm. Those at the receiving end
presented it as a prime example of the parent’s generosity, as is apparent in
this extract from Jill’s interview, ‘My parents are totally generous. They
even feel guilty about the interest that they take and we insist, we’ve had to
twist their arm to take it.’ The essence of this arrangement is that it was
seen by the participants as going well beyond the types of exchanges which
normally pass between parents and children. In that sense the whole point
of it is that it is not characteristic of support within families. Yet in another
sense it is an arrangement characteristic of family life. As John O’Malley
put it, ‘We wouldn’t do it for anyone else. You wouldn’t think about it.
But you do it for your own.’
In commenting upon this as an example of generosity, we will make
three points. First, on the surface it seems that this gift was characterised as
‘generous’ because it went well beyond what children have a ‘right to
expect’. However, in another sense it was tied into a set of expectations
about how parents and children should behave towards each other, which
everyone understood. It was seen as entirely appropriate that parents act in
this way towards their children (‘We wouldn’t do it for anyone else but you
do it for your own’). Being generous to your children is what parents do,
yet if children expect their parents to make large gifts to them, this robs
them of the right to have their actions defined as generosity. At the same
time, it is this sense of appropriateness which made it possible for the
children to accept the gift.
Second, it is clear in this example that demeanour is extremely
important. The children’s moral identities were at stake and it was
important for them to show that they did ‘not expect’ the gift. When they
get it, they must receive it in the right way. Dorothy O’Malley said that Jill
and Phil had been ‘very grateful’ and John emphasised that they had paid
back the interest ‘regularly and religiously’ despite the fact that they had
been told that this did not really matter. To have acted in any other way of
course would have called into question the definition of the gift as
generous and would have turned it into something over which the children
were claiming some rights. They needed to go on treating it as generous
and to demonstrate this through their actions. The parents’ moral identities
as well as the children’s were implicated here. Following Goffman’s
argument, we could say that they could only establish their identities as
‘generous parents’ if their children treated them as such.
Third, this example of being generous did have implications for the
balance of the relationship between the generations. Until the money was
repaid, Jill and Phil would always be the recipients of a gift which they had
no right to expect. We can see here how being the donor of a generous gift
can put you in a powerful position vis-à-vis the receiver of the gift. This is
similar to Mauss’s analysis of gift giving and suggests that there is a fine line
between receiving a generous gift and becoming ‘beholden to’ the giver
(Mauss, 1954). In Jill and Phil Archer’s case, being beneficiaries of parents’
generosity created a further set of responsibilities—at least of a generalised
if not a direct kind. Jill Archer told us that she feels an impulse to be
generous with financial assistance to her own children, linking this
explicitly to the way in which her parents have treated her. Indeed we used
Jill in Chapter 2 as one of our examples of indirect repayment across
generations.
Thus acts of generosity both fall outside the normal scope of reciprocal
responsibilities and also are part of them. They are part of them precisely
because they are constructed in a way which makes them appear separate
from any structure of obligation yet, at another level, they are a
characteristic part of family life because you would ‘do it for your own’
but not for other people. The effect of the generous gift in the Archer
family had not only been to assist Phil in his career but also to bind the family
together in a different way, both financially and morally.
The recognition that generosity has this effect may perhaps lead people
to reject generous gifts, or at least to try to repay them so that they then
become part of the more usual process of exchange. One case where this
apparently had happened is in the Jackson family (see Appendix A for
details) where Robert, at an earlier stage in his life, had received money
from his parents to cover his basic financial needs at a time when he was
out of work. Robert described this to us as a generous gift, an example that
showed how his parents ‘were only too willing to give us every penny they
had’. It was also clear that it was intended to be a gift not a loan: ‘they did
it without thought of repayment’. However, Robert felt that he did not
want to accept money from his parents on these terms, describing himself as
a person who will not accept anything without at least a verbal promise of
repayment. As far as we can tell, the parents did not argue with him at that
point. Presumably they accepted it as appropriate in the circumstances that
Robert was promising to repay—a sign that Robert was treating the gift as
something which he did not have the right to expect. However, when he
was more financially secure, Robert not only wanted to pay back the
amount which his parents had given, but also to give them substantially
more, because he knew that they were dependent upon a small pension. By
this action he was, in effect, reversing the balance of generosity. This was
strongly resisted by Mary and Richard Jackson, as Robert describes:
Robert It was a case of writing a cheque out and saying ‘Thank you very
much for everything. You’ve helped me so much.’ My mother
turned round and said ‘Well you didn’t borrow this off us. It
wouldn’t come to anywhere near this amount what we gave you—
not lent you, but gave you.’ And er, I mean she gave me the cheque
back three times and said ‘I don’t want it.’ And I said ‘Well whether
you want it or not, if you give me your bank book, I’ll go and put it
in myself.’ And she was very reluctant to accept it.
The negotiations being conducted here are clearly about very much more
than the need of the respective parties for money. At one level, they can be
interpreted as an example of the processes which we discussed in Chapter 2
—restoring the dependence-independence balance between Robert and his
parents. In accepting money from his mother and father to supply his basic
needs and those of his household, Robert had called into question his own
independence. In a sense he had put himself in a position where they had
authority over him in a way more reminiscent of childhood than adulthood.
Whether or not they chose to exercise this it was important for Robert to
restore the balance, it can be argued.
But the issues also go beyond this. They touch upon the moral identities
of both Robert and his parents, around the theme of generosity. Robert is
establishing his own identity not only as someone who repays debts but
also as someone who himself is generous to others. At the same time his
actions call into question the definition of his parents’ original gift as
‘generous’. He is treating it as a loan to be paid back, not as a gift which
stands outside the normal expectations of reciprocal responsibilities. Thus
although we are told that in material terms the parents could certainly use
the money (this is confirmed in various ways in interviews with this family)
the moral dimensions weighed more heavily with Mary and she was ‘very
reluctant to accept it’. It is the importance of the moral dimension which
gives Robert’s account of this interaction with his mother something of a
ritual flavour. It seems to have been important both for Robert to offer the
money and also for Mary to resist it. The process of going through these
negotiations may be more important in the end than whether any money
actually changes hands, precisely because what they are really negotiating
about is their respective moral identities. Having established herself firmly
as someone who resists the repayment of generosity, Mary finally is able to
accept money from her son.
Most examples of actions which our interviewees defined as ‘generous’
were on a much smaller scale than in the case of the Jacksons or the
Archers. Indeed some of these instances involved fairly minor examples of
assistance but these were important nonetheless in shaping the character of
the relationship between the individuals involved. One such example comes
from our interview with Ethel Phillips, a woman in her sixties and living
alone but in fairly good health. Ethel described how her daughter-in-law
took regular care of her welfare. She would often ring her at weekends and
ask her down for tea so that Ethel would not have to be on her own; she
frequently sent one of her children to their grandmother’s house with small
gifts for their grandmother (a pint of milk was given as an example); and
she was in the habit of telephoning Ethel every night to make sure that she
was alright. Ethel clearly saw this as going well beyond what one could
expect a daughter-in-law to do, ‘She’s a good girl you know [pause]. I
mean to say, there’s not many daughters-in-law like that.’ Although the
word ‘generosity’ may imply gifts of money, the example of Ethel Phillips
makes it clear that actions as well as goods can be defined as generous in
families. They meet the criterion that the parties define them as going well
beyond what anyone has a right to expect, and that they stand outside the
normal expectations that a gift will be matched with a counter-gift. In
Ethel Phillips’ case, making daily telephone calls was a key element in the
construction of her daughter-in-law as generous.
In conclusion, we would underline that actions which get defined as
‘generous’ on one level stand outside the normal processes of giving and
receiving, of paying back, of balancing dependence and independence. At
another level they are part of the same processes through which assistance
gets negotiated in families. They have implications for the balance of
relationships, and for the moral identities of all the parties, as well as
possibly being valuable in material terms. Bringing together our discussion
of ‘expecting’ and ‘generosity’, we would underline that the processes
involved here are very complex to understand—far more complex than we
see if we look only at the material dimensions of assistance within kin
groups, and focus upon the objective value of the goods and services which
are given. The interweaving of the material and the moral dimensions of
exchanges comes through very clearly here and, in many instances, the
moral seems more prominent than the material. It is far from easy to get
your actions accepted and understood in a way which reflects well upon
yourself. Yet at times people seem to treat this as more important than
anything else. To understand more fully why this is so, we turn now to
look at the concept of reputation within family relationships.
REPUTATION IN THE KIN GROUP

In this chapter we have discussed the ‘moral identities’ of individuals and we
have argued that giving and receiving assistance in families involves not
only the exchange of money, goods and services, but also negotiations
about the identities of individuals. We shall go on now to develop this
theme by linking this discussion of moral identities with the concept of
‘reputation’. We shall argue that individuals do build up specific
reputations within their families and that these are both a product of past
negotiations with kin and a component of future negotiations. These ideas
emerged in our discussions of negotiations in Chapter 3, and of legitimate
excuses in Chapter 4. We are going to develop them fully here.
By introducing the concept of reputation at this point we want to
emphasise the importance of looking at the way relationships develop over
time. Reputations, we shall argue, are the means by which the moral
identity of each individual gets built up, consolidated and modified over
time, and gets ‘carried’ from one situation to another. Given that our focus
is centrally on processes within families we shall use only our interview
data. However, it is interesting to recall that in the survey, respondents’
judgements were guided quite significantly by their assessment of whether a
case was ‘deserving’ or not (see Chapter 1). It may well be that imputed
reputation feeds into people’s judgements about who counts as deserving.
When we speak about reputations in this context, we are making three
important claims. First, that there is a shared image of each individual within
a kin group. Second, that this shared image is stable over time. Third, we
are suggesting that these shared images matter, in the sense that they affect
how people behave towards each other. In this section we explore how far
our evidence supports this view of reputation, and how such reputations
affect interactions between kin. We begin first by asking: do we have
evidence for the existence of reputations, in the sense that there are
common images of individuals shared between different kin groups
members? By definition, it is impossible to answer this question on the
basis of an interview with one person alone. So at this point we are going
to draw our examples from kin groups where we have more than one view.
This gets us further than single interviews but there is still a limitation.
Because of the way in which we selected kin for interview (see Appendix A)
we cannot determine how far a shared image might extend within the
network of available kin. Having selected our initial contact within each
family, we then concentrated upon interviewing those people whom she or
he regarded as close kin.
We begin with the example of Mary Jackson, whose situation we
considered briefly in our discussion of generosity. The example given there
—of gifts of money and goods to keep her son’s household while he was
out of work—was characteristic of Mary, as she was portrayed to us by
members of her family. The following comment is from McNeil, one of her
sons:
McNeil I thank the Lord for my mum and dad every day. The amount of
times that my mum and dad’s helped me out, you know. Especially
to have someone like my mum to lean on. I don’t know how I’d feel
—I mean obviously at some time in the future she’s going to die.
And I don’t know how I’ll take it.
McNeil articulates his mother’s reputation in a striking way, but the image
is one which was present in our interviews with all the other members of
the Jackson family. Mary herself also had a clear sense of her own
reputation. She saw herself as a person who would always turn out to help
a relative in practical ways, and who was prepared to give assistance to her
closest kin under any circumstances, whatever the personal cost. This was
something more than rather vaguely ‘hoping’ that she was seen as a person
like that. Mary was able to cite the comments of other people which
confirmed this as a commonly held image of herself. She reported that one
of her cousins had once said to her, when she had stepped in in a crisis, ‘Oh
Mary, you’re always there when you’re needed.’ A comment like this not
only confirms that this image of Mary was shared widely in the family. It
also indicates that it was important to Mary herself to have confirmation
of it.
Reputations can, of course, be less complimentary than was Mary
Jackson’s. Another of our kin groups provides us with evidence of a shared
image of one member which was less positive, although not seriously
damaging. In the Arkright family (see Appendix A for details) the view was
widely shared that Oskar was bad at managing money, with a hint that he
tended to be rather profligate. As he was a young, single man in his
twenties, living in his parents’ home at the time we interviewed him, both his
parents and his adult siblings seemed inclined to see this as a flaw, but not
a serious one for the moment. This view of Oskar was presented to us, in
very similar terms, by several interviewees in this family, including Oskar
himself. His mother described him thus:
Barbara He’s not very good at coping with his monies and, er we had on a
couple of occasions just to see him through some bad patches
[pause]. He’s like that. He’s just made like that.
Oskar’s father said of him, ‘He’s always borrowing. He’s the world’s
worst.’ His youngest sister described how she seldom borrowed money
from her siblings because she did not have any to lend in return—but that
Oskar had even had to come and borrow from her on a couple of
occasions. All three of them laughed when they talked about Oskar’s lack
of financial acumen: it clearly had achieved the status of a ‘family joke’.
Though we can cite evidence like this which supports our argument that
reputations do get constructed within kin groups, we also have evidence
that images of each individual are not consistent in every case. In an
interview situation, we can have two people conveying images of another
relative which seem, at least on the surface, to be at variance. Further, we
also have evidence that, in some situations, reputations are directly
contested in families. The Simpson case study (see Chapter 3) provides
examples of reputations being contested, in the different images of Stan’s
siblings portrayed by Stan, his wife and his children on the one hand, and
his mother Doreen on the other.
However, the clearest example in our data set of the process of
contesting reputations comes from a different kin group. Because of the
sensitivity of the material here we are using substitute pseudonyms to
preserve anonymity. The case concerns the reputation of a man whom we
are calling Ken Wilson, as seen especially through the eyes of his sister,
Joyce Miller. Joyce’s own image of her brother was very uncomplimentary.
This stemmed crucially from an incident around the time of their father’s
death several years previously, when Joyce felt that Ken had given their
mother inadequate support. She particularly held it against him that he had
not been prepared, as she saw it, to stay with their mother while their
father was dying. She told the story like this:
Joyce When my father was actually dying, the morning he was dying,
he [Ken] took my mother up to the hospital, left her there,
went home, phoned me. I went up to the hospital which was
right. My father died of cancer by the way. It wasn’t a very
nice death because it was lung cancer. And I can understand
him not wanting to be there when my father actually died.
That I can understand in people. But when I tried to phone him
he’d actually gone out, I got no answer. So I took my mother
home and I went back to his house and the neighbours told me
he’d gone shopping. And it wasn’t local shopping either. He’d
gone miles away and it upset me. I couldn’t understand him
not wanting to be at the hospital. To go 50 miles shopping, you
know, it’s not on.
Interviewer You felt that he should have been giving you more support?
Joyce Well my mother needed him. Because she is closer to him than
she is to me. But he wasn’t there [pause]. She needed our kid
but he wasn’t there. And he was out a number of hours. And
I’ve never forgiven him. I don’t find that I can forgive him.
[Emphasis in original.]
As a result Joyce describes herself ‘not friends’ with her brother any more,
though she kept up appearances of friendly contact especially when her
mother was present.
Joyce acknowledges that she is talking here about specific difficulties
in her relationship with her brother—at that level it is an example of
conflict between two individuals rather than of the construction of
reputations. However, it is an issue which did go beyond the two of them.
Joyce presents herself as angry ‘on behalf of’ her mother, who had received
less support from Ken than she deserved. The implication is that the poor
image of Ken is shared at least by her mother Betty, and probably also
more widely. Our evidence about whether this image actually was shared is
somewhat ambiguous. Betty Wilson actually gave us no hint of that in her
interview, despite some careful if gentle probing. It is quite possible that
she did indeed hold an uncomplimentary view of him, but was not
prepared to reveal that in an interview. Like Jane Jones in our example at
the beginning of this chapter, it may be that she felt it would reflect badly
on herself as a mother to acknowledge that her son had behaved
inappropriately at a crucial time in the life of this family. We simply cannot
be sure on the basis of the data which we have. What we feel more certain
about is that Ken himself was not aware of having a negative reputation
within his family. He gave no sign at all that he was conscious of this
image of himself, nor even that his sister specifically was holding something
against him. Thus the evidence for the existence of a shared reputation is
much weaker in this case than it is for Mary Jackson.
On the other hand, the case of Ken Wilson does underline the
importance of reputations in a rather different way. In our interview with
Joyce’s daughter Kate, we learned about the process through which Ken’s
reputation was being challenged and modified. When she was asked to
identify whom she would count as ‘immediate family’ Kate initially left out
her mother’s brother and then added:
Kate I’ve got an uncle, the nearest uncle, closest is my uncle Ken, my
mum’s brother and his wife. Now my mum doesn’t get on with them
[pause]. I suppose in some ways you can be brainwashed by what
your mother says [pause]. I’m sure it’s six of them and half a dozen of
my mother as well—I know what my mum’s like.
As is clear from this extract, Kate’s view of her uncle is coloured by the
reputation which her mother has tried actively to establish for him within
the family. It is the first thing which Kate mentions when she talks about
him. Although she is sceptical about where the blame lies for the rift
between her mother and her uncle, this still shapes both her image of him
and her actions towards him. She says that she is happy to ‘give him the
benefit of the doubt’ but that actually she never goes to see him, adding,
‘I’d feel I was going behind my mother’s back. Don’t want any more aggro
[laughs].’
What Kate’s account shows above all else is that the image of Ken
Wilson among his kin matters. It matters to Joyce that other people’s view
of him should be modified as a result of his actions. It is not sufficient that
her own image is changed. His reputation also matters in the sense that it
affects the way in which other family members relate to him. What we seem
to have in this example is a case which demonstrates that reputations of
individuals can be contested in families. When we talk about shared
images, we are therefore not implying that there is always a clear consensus
which is easily arrived at. But the pressure does seem to be for individuals
to try to produce a common view and a shared image within that group of
people which they see functioning as ‘their family’.
We move on now to look at the other key element in the concept of
reputation—the idea that images are stable over time. By this we do not
mean to imply that they are fixed in early life and never get changed. The
example of Joyce Miller and Ken Wilson shows family members in the
process of modifying their shared image of one member. But we would
argue that the process of change is relatively slow and builds upon the
reputation which went before. Reputations are not transitory—depending
for example on the last contact with that person—but are stable over quite
long periods of time.
The key example which we shall use here comes from our interview with
Thomas MacIntyre, a single man in his early twenties at the time of the
interview. Though we do not have interviews with other members of his
family, we are using this example because Thomas is unusually clear in his
account of family reputation and its effects over time. However, we do
have to be aware that, in this particular case, we have only one view.
Thomas talked with feeling and at length about his relationship with his
father’s extensive kin group, who all lived in Glasgow and whom he visited
about once a year. His relationship with them was coloured by his
perception that his own father was regarded as the ‘black sheep’ of this family
—a classic expression for a particular type of negative reputation. This
reputation dated, so far as Thomas could discern, from over thirty years
previously when his father had left Glasgow and moved to England.
Thomas He’s seen as the maverick, he’s seen as the black sheep wanting,
wanting to leave Scotland in the first place. That’s in 1953, 1954.
He’s the only one of my—he’s got like seven sisters—they all
stayed in Scotland, he was the only one who left. And I’m sure he’s
not been forgiven for wanting to leave this haven. He went down
to London initially.
Though we cannot confirm that Thomas’s aunts did hold this view of his
father, since we did not interview them, Thomas certainly treated it as well
established and indicated that it was well understood among his own
immediate kin—his father and his sisters. Further, it affected his own
relationship with them since he felt pressured to demonstrate an
adherence to the Roman Catholic faith, which his father had explicitly
rejected when he left Scotland. He described the pressure thus:
Thomas I’m a fallen Catholic, so when I go there it’s questions as to, you
know ‘What have you been doing with your spiritual life young
Thomas?’ You know, ‘Have you been going to Mass?’ I mean, talk
about peer group pressure.
In this case, not only had his father’s reputation persisted over thirty years,
but it had discernible effects on relationships in the next generation. We
have other examples of a similar nature, in which both negative and
positive reputations had remained stable over long periods of time. Mary
Jackson, whom we discussed earlier, would certainly be one example of the
latter.
On the basis of this evidence we would argue that individuals do acquire
reputations in families and that these reputations are constructed in moral
terms. What our data set does not allow us to say, of course? is how
commonly such reputations occur within kin groups, since we were not
attempting to study a representative sample of families at the qualitative

stage of our research. In principle it is possible to envisage kin groups
where images are not shared. There may be families, for example, in which
interactions take place between different ‘pairs’ in a way which is relatively
isolated from other kin, or where widely differing images persist over long
periods of time. In such families, the concept of ‘reputation’ would not
make much sense. On the basis of our data, we must hold open the
possibility that some families are indeed like that. However, we have little
indication of it among the families whom we did study, especially among
our eleven ‘kin groups’ where our data give us the most rounded picture.
The weight of our evidence from these groups points to shared, rather than
individualised, imagery of other kin, though—as we have already shown—
sometimes this can be contested. But even where there is disagreement
about someone’s reputation, there is an important sense in which that
knowledge is still shared—people know what the competing images are,
and they share information which serves to confirm or refute them.
Having established that ‘reputations’ do exist within kin groups and seem
to have some importance, we move now to consider the questions: how do
such reputations get constructed and maintained? what are the elements
which go into this process? Our discussions of ‘not expecting’ and of
‘generosity’ have given us some indication of what is involved as did our
analysis of legitimate excuses in Chapter 4. It would seem that reputations
are not generated simply as ‘ideas’ about a person, but are grounded in
specific events and interactions which are then accorded a particular
significance in contributing to the construction of a person’s moral
identity. In the course of negotiating assistance, we have argued,
reputations are also being constructed. At this point we shall explore the
processes involved more directly, looking first at the ways in which
reputations get constructed or modified in families. We shall then consider
how such reputations get sustained over time.
Data on how reputations get constructed initially are inherently difficult
to interpret, since the whole point about reputations is that they are part of
a family’s history and not normally inspected explicitly. The origins of a
‘good’ reputation are particularly difficult to pin down in a research study
like this: people may simply have no idea how one relative came to be
identified as ‘generous to everyone’, ‘always ready to help’ or whatever. In
our data set, interviewees who themselves hold this kind of reputation tend
to trace it to childhood and say that they based their own approach to
family life on the observed behaviour of a parent. We have two particularly
clear cases of this—Mary Jackson, to whom we referred above, and Tilly
Trotter. Both of them had the reputation of being people who were hard-
working and would always step in and help in a practical way, and both
linked this explicitly with the fact that their mothers had occupied the same
place in the family in the previous generation.
We do not really know how far these two women’s understanding of the
origin of their reputation is shared within their kin groups. But it is
interesting to speculate on the possibility that some daughters or sons are
marked out from childhood, as it were, as the bearers of a particular
reputation across generations. The idea that reputations can be transmitted
across generations is also suggested by the example of Thomas MacIntyre,
whose relationship with his father’s sisters we discussed above. There is a
sense in which he was regarded as rather suspect by his aunts precisely
because he was his father’s son and therefore subject to his influence.
Thomas was put under pressure to accept the religious values which his
father had rejected, though he seemed to be able to resist this at least
covertly. Thomas uses the same phrase ‘fallen Catholic’ to describe the
image of both himself and his father held by his aunts. Interestingly he also
uses the word ‘fallen’ to describe his aunts’ view of one of his sisters, who
was apparently regarded as a ‘fallen woman’ because she had had a baby
without being married. This evidence that negative as well as positive
reputations can be transmitted across generations suggests that the process
at work is that children were being ‘tarred with the same brush’ as their
parents—a phrase in common usage which expresses well what we are
observing.
It is not only in childhood, however, that we should look for the
elements which go into constructing an individual’s reputation within their
kin group. When people refer explicitly to the construction of reputations,
especially negative ones, they usually refer to incidents in adult life.
Sometimes, though not always, it is a single incident which is decisive. We
have several examples in our data set of the ‘single dramatic gesture’ which
both establishes and symbolises a particular reputation. The initial decision
of Thomas MacIntyre’s father to leave Scotland would be one. In this
example the ‘single dramatic gesture’ which decisively constructed a
reputation concerned breaking moral codes of behaviour which were
perceived as established within the family. Sometimes, however, the gesture
can directly involve the negotiation of assistance between kin—one party
mishandles the negotiations and then carries a negative reputation with
them subsequently. There is an element of this in the cases of Joyce Miller
and Ken Wilson, or Jane Jones’s relationship with her son (all discussed
earlier in this chapter). Also, this characterises some of the examples
discussed in Chapter 4 of people failing to get their excuses for not helping
a relative accepted as legitimate by their kin. In all these situations the
personal conduct of one individual, in circumstances where they were
negotiating with relatives, subsequently had an impact on their family
reputation.
These are some of the processes which feed into the construction of
reputations. But it is equally important to understand the processes by
which reputations get sustained and confirmed over time. At its most
fundamental, this requires that members of kin groups talk to each other
about third parties, test out their own perceptions, and develop the shared
images to which we referred above. We have already used several examples
which demonstrate that kin do talk to each other in this way. One
interesting facet of this talk is that it enables people to identify and
understand the foundations of reputations, even if they themselves did not
have any direct knowledge. In this way, younger people have ‘past history’
in the family filled in for them—a mechanism which presumably ensures
that a reputation is more effectively transmitted across generations.
This is visible in our data set in several examples where people ‘explain’
the reputation of an older relative, by referring to incidents in that
relative’s childhood which they could not possibly have witnessed. Claire
Mitchell, for example, a married woman in her twenties with three small
children, resented her own father’s lack of domestic contribution to the
parental household, and explained this by describing the circumstances of
her father’s childhood.
Claire Father does very little. He washes the dishes, but he leaves them to
drain, you know, he doesn’t wipe them up as well. He cuts the grass
and does the garden. I’ve only seem him hoover up once. It’s only
because, I think, it’s the way he’s been brought up. He had a nanny
when he was little. He had a brother and neither of them did
anything. That’s why really.
The way in which Claire tells this story makes no distinction between
her father’s role in her parents’ household, which she has observed directly,
and the organisation of his own childhood home, which clearly she did not
observe. Indeed, in referring to her father’s childhood, she uses the phrase
‘I think’, indicating that she personally is wholly identified with this
explanation for his adult behaviour, We have several other examples of
people referring to incidents before they were born in this way, indicating
the importance and effectiveness of ‘filling in past history’ in the process of
transmitting reputations in kin groups.
Though ‘talk’ is the most obvious way in which reputations get
confirmed, sustained and modified, it is not the only one. We also have
evidence that face-to-face interactions are an important part of the same
process. One point which emerges strongly in our data set is that the active
cooperation of other relatives is required, not only to change a reputation,
but also to maintain one. This point is most striking in relation to very
positive reputations. It seems that, even where someone is widely regarded
as being ‘always ready to help’, they may still need other people to
cooperate with their efforts in order for that reputation to be sustained.
This kind of process is not easily visible in families, but in one case in
our data set, it is very apparent. This concerns Mary Jackson who, as we
have already noted, had a reputation of being ‘always there’ and willing to
help. Mary’s reputation among her own kin in many ways seemed very
secure and it had various effects upon the way in which other people
related to her. Other relatives expected that she would be there in a crisis
and relied upon her consistency in this. On the whole her children were
rather proud of their mother but McNeil did express the view that sometimes
she took on ‘too much’, perhaps hinting that he would feel obliged at some
point to step in and protect his mother from the consequences of her
reputation. Mary’s reputation, and the way in which she acted consistently
to reinforce it, also had an impact on her relationship with her daughter-in-
law, Elizabeth Jackson, though not in entirely helpful ways from
Elizabeth’s point of view. She described her mother-in-law in these terms:
Elizabeth She knits for the kids, she bakes. She daren’t turn up here unless
she fetches something with her, half a dozen eggs or something,
so she feels she’s giving us something every time.
Mary had also made it clear that she was only too happy to offer other
kinds of assistance to Elizabeth, and indeed had been called out by her to
help in crises. But Elizabeth also found this a mixed blessing and said that
she had decided not to rely on her mother-in-law in future if she could
avoid it.
Elizabeth I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut from her. You know, just
tell her the basic outline of things, because she tends to get
annoyed if she finds out something from somebody else
[pause]. If she found that we were in the red at the bank of
£3000, she’d go sky high that we hadn’t approached her.
Interviewer Would she?
Elizabeth Mm—and said, you know, ‘Can you help us?’ Even though she
probably couldn’t. But she doesn’t like to feel that she’s been
left out. She likes to feel that she’s involved. But then again, she
doesn’t want to be nosey.
Here we have a case of someone having a clear and consistent reputation in
a kin group, which has a significant impact on the way in which other
people negotiate relationships with her. Among other things, she needs
other people’s cooperation to be able to keep up her reputation as someone
who is always ready to help her family. Thus offers of assistance to her kin
not only are based upon her reputation, but the way in which they are
received will also affect her reputation. This tells us something important
about how reputations of this kind are built up, consolidated and
maintained: they need the active cooperation of other people, not only to
convey the image, but also to allow the person to act in line with the
reputation which they have developed. In the case of reputations which are
more negative, the active cooperation of other people is needed if they are
to be modified.
CONCLUSION: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE

MORAL DIMENSION OF NEGOTIATIONS IN
FAMILIES
We stated at the beginning of this chapter that we were turning the
spotlight specifically on the moral dimensions of interactions between kin.
While emphasising that the material and the moral are closely intertwined,
we believe that we have demonstrated that the moral dimensions are
invested with considerable significance. At the same time we have shown
that the true significance is missed unless one views interaction between
individuals within the context of the kin group as a whole. We have argued
that the key to understanding this is to see that exchanges of goods and
services are also processes in which people’s moral identities are
implicated. Reputations are being negotiated in these interactions, and
represent the means whereby shared images of individuals get transmitted
from one situation to another in families.
The remaining question is: why does a person’s reputation within their
kin group matter? Why does it matter to that person? Why does it matter
to other people? In considering these questions we are very aware that
there are also other relevant questions which we cannot even begin to
answer. The process of constructing and transmitting reputations is not
confined to families. In working life, in leisure activities, in the local
community, some individuals do apparently develop clear and recognisable
reputations. In the context of our own study, we have no way of knowing
whether the reputation of an individual within their kin group is consistent
with their reputation outside it. We also do not know whether the process
of constructing reputations in other social settings parallels that which we
have identified in families. These pose very interesting questions for
research but we feel that we cannot comment on them at this point, as our
own research has been confined to family relationships.
One very obvious reason why reputations are important within kin
groups is that they provide the basis on which exchanges of assistance can
be negotiated. Someone like Mary Jackson can be approached in all kinds
of circumstances and asked for practical help, and there is a very good
chance not only that she will respond positively but that she will be
‘pleased to be asked’ and even more pleased if she can offer. We have other
similar examples in our data set where a person gets asked to do things
because they have the reputation for doing them. The most striking of these
examples comes from the Jones family where an aunt, whom unfortunately
we were not able to interview, had become the ‘family carer’ early in her
life and had looked after a series of elderly relatives, spending most of her
adult life in this way. We introduced this case in Chapter 3, as an example
of responsibilities being assigned through a process of non-decision-making.
Various members of the Jones kin group told us about this aunt, and these
accounts make it clear that relatives had felt able to approach her for
assistance because she had developed the reputation as the family carer.
This rings true at a commonsense level—you are not going to approach
someone with a request of this kind unless you have some reason to
suppose that they might respond positively. Conversely, if someone has
developed a reputation for never being prepared to lend money, for
example, then they are very unlikely to get asked.
Thus reputations provide a structure for negotiations about assistance
within kin groups. It is a structure which means that people do not have to
negotiate with their kin in a vacuum when they need help. Individual
reputations offer guidelines about whom to approach and whom to leave
alone. It is also evident that, as a consequence, people’s reputations get
confirmed and reinforced—if someone has developed a reputation for
never lending money they will not be asked, and therefore there will be
plenty of evidence that they never lend money. From the perspective of an
indivdual, this means that the reputation which is generated at one point in
time will affect the way in which other people treat them in the future.
We have emphasised the usefulness of reputations in providing a
structure within which relatives can negotiate with each other about
giving and receiving assistance. But it is equally important to recognise that
they are treated as valuable in their own right—symbols of personal
identity which are worth fostering. Sometimes one can see that a person’s
reputation brings them direct benefits. A young man like Oskar Arkright
(whom we discussed above), who has a reputation for being hopeless with
money, might well be suspected by his relatives of actively ‘cultivating’ this
reputation which brings him direct benefits—no one ever asks him to lend
money yet they all expect that Oskar will need to be bailed out from time
to time.
In most cases the personal benefits of having a particular reputation are
not so clear-cut, and probably cannot be expressed in material terms. Their
importance seems to lie in the extent to which personal identities are bound
up with one’s family reputation. In Mary Jackson’s case, which we have
discussed in some detail, it was apparently really important to her to
cultivate a reputation for always giving assistance to her relatives. We have
several other examples in our data set of women who similarly seemed to
invest a great deal of themselves in the idea that they were seen as having a
generous nature, always willing to respond to another person’s need
especially in the family, and totally reliable in a crisis. There was, for
example, Jane Ashton who described herself as naturally ‘a giver’ and Tilly
Trotter who saw herself as the focal point for giving assistance in her kin
group.
This particular kind of good reputation is rather obviously gendered in
character. It is a reputation in which women specifically can invest their
identities for two reasons. First, the idea of being ‘the family carer’, or the
person who is always there to make a cup of tea in a crisis, entails domestic
activities which are characteristically regarded as women’s domain. Thus
acquiring such a reputation is regarded as appropriate for women and seen
in a very positive light—for a man to acquire such a reputation would not
have the same social meaning and would be a more ambiguous comment
upon him. Second, it implies a strong orientation to family and kin as a
major life interest—an orientation which is socially sanctioned for women
more than for men. Thus this particular kind of good reputation, which
entails investing a good deal of time in kin relationships, is most likely to
be characteristic of women. There may well also be a sense in which family
reputations generally are more important to women than to men—though
we do not feel that our data set allows us to make that kind of
generalisation with confidence.
Our focus on family reputations raises a further question: why is a
person’s moral identity within the kin group important? Most people do
seem to mind what their relatives think of them, even where they see kin
relationships as fairly peripheral to their everyday lives. We would argue
that the reason for this lies in the distinctive characteristics of kin
group relationships, particularly in relation to one’s family of origin. First,
they are a set of social relationships which are not chosen and they cannot
be exchanged for a different set. Second, they are quite literally life-long: they
are established on the day you are born and will last as long as all the
parties are alive. Unlike friendships, which require some active willingness
on both sides to maintain them, kin relationships have an element of
permanency which is independent of their quality at a personal level.
Third, these very characteristics give a social ‘place’ to each of us which
defines an element of identity in an important way, even though
subsequently we develop other elements of our identities which are not tied
to the family into which we were born (see Finch, 1989:221–36). Finally
there is a more instrumental reason. To the extent that family relationships
do provide a set of people to whom one can turn for assistance if other
sources fail, we all have an interest in keeping on good terms in case we
need to draw upon such assistance in the future. Thus the instrumental and
the symbolic reasons for cultivating a good reputation reinforce each other.
Thus we are each locked into a particular set of kin relationships
without the prospect of changing them for a more congenial set if they
prove too difficult—as we can do with friendships. We have to go on
interacting with our kin (at least at some minimal level), especially with
those who are genealogically close and very obviously ‘ours’. Therefore it
matters that we sustain a reputation which makes future interactions not
too difficult. Of course there is the choice of withdrawing totally from
contact with kin, and this is indeed a choice which some people exercise.
But most people do not, even if they find their relatives a bit of a trial. In
those circumstances contact may be kept to a minimum but, while at least
this level of contact is maintained, reputations matter. And while one’s

reputation within the family matters, individuals are bound to be subject to
a degree of constraint in their actions towards relatives. The kin group as a
whole, through the shared images which its members hold and transmit,
has the power to confer or withhold a ‘good’ reputation. Hence it is not
enough for any of us to behave properly towards our relatives according to
our own criteria. It is vital to have our actions accepted as appropriate and
for that view to be translated into reputational terms. It therefore becomes
understandable why, as we have emphasised throughout this chapter, the
moral consequences of negotiations within families are often treated as
more important than the material ones.
6
Conclusion
INTRODUCTION
A ‘Conclusion’ to this type of book can mean different things. Some
authors provide a helpful summary and overview of the book’s contents, a
condensed guide to the findings of the study. We are not attempting that
kind of conclusion. With a very rich data set, analysed with reference to
some difficult theoretical questions, we feel that we could not summarise
the complexities discussed in preceding chapters without compromising
them or misrepresenting them. Instead we have chosen to make this a more
substantive conclusion. We are using it to draw the key strands of our
argument together, in order to make explicit the distinctive view of family
responsibilities at which we have arrived, and to consider some of its
implications.
We do this in as straightforward a way as possible, without referring again
to our evidence or to other research. Readers who want that kind of detail
will need to consult earlier chapters. Some of the ideas developed here (and
elsewhere in this book) link with the discussion in Janet Finch’s Family
Obligations and Social Change (1989), a book written on the basis of
existing published work and before we had analysed our own data. Other
arguments developed in this book diverge from it. The distinctive task
which we are setting ourselves here is to present an argument about the
nature of family responsibilities which is grounded in our empirical data,
though naturally it is informed by the work of other people and by ideas
developed previously.
FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS AND FAMILY

RESPONSIBILITIES
We began by posing questions about the nature of kin relationships and
responsibilities: how significant are kin as sources of practical and financial
assistance? Do people accept that they have a responsibility to provide such
assistance for relatives, or at least for certain relatives? Does the concept
CONCLUSION 161
of ‘family responsibilities’ have any real contemporary meaning? Should all

these questions be answered differently for women and men? We are now
in a position to give some answers to these questions, and we want to
highlight three elements of our analysis: (a) the significance of kin
relationships as social support; (b) the nature of kin responsibilities; (c)
material and moral dimensions. We follow this section with some brief
comments about the broader implications of our analysis.
The significance of kin relationships as social support

The empirical evidence from our qualitative study shows kin relationships
to be a significant source of assistance for many people. Most people have
experience of money being lent or given, even if this involves quite small
amounts in most cases. Many people have experience of living in a house-
hold which was shared with an adult relative (who was not part of a core
nuclear family), at some point in their lives. Many have helped to look
after someone who was ill or incapacitated, or been on the receiving end of
such assistance. Some have also looked after a relative’s children, given
practical help with the house, the garden or the car, or given emotional
support to a relative who was feeling fragile. In Chapter 2 and Appendix C
we have given details which indicate the range of such experiences among
our study population of eighty-eight people. At the simplest level, our study
updates the work of researchers who looked at family and kinship in
Britain in the 1950s and 1960s (Young and Willmott, 1957; Bell, 1968;
Rosser and Harris, 1968; Firth, Hubert and Forge, 1970). They concluded
that, despite widespread beliefs to the contrary, the extended family was
alive and well, and had a tangible reality in most people’s lives, We are
saying that, thirty years later, it still does.
However, our main point is not so much that these experiences of giving
and receiving help within families were common experiences (though many
of them were), but that they were treated as unremarkable experiences by
many people who talked to us. They were seen as a characteristic part of
family life. They form part of people’s image of what constitutes ‘a family’
and most people in our study wanted to claim that they were part of ‘a
family’ of this type. They were keen to show us that their family did
actually work as a support system for its members, at least at a minimal
level. We have suggested (in Chapter 2) that the minimal level is defined as
everyone rallying round in a crisis to give practical and moral support. We
have just one or two exceptions to this in our study population but for the
most part our interviewees said that their own families worked at least at
this level. Of course there were plenty of examples of conflict, or of people
not actually receiving help when they felt they needed it. And our
interviewees were very aware that some families appear to work better than
others as support systems. But almost all of them presented their own
family as ‘working’ at the minimal level at least, even if they also had
indicated that they saw their own family as ‘less close’ than some others.
To put the point slightly differently, we are arguing that the kin group is
seen as something which you can fall back on if things go wrong in your
life, especially if there are unexpected traumas or disasters. But it is a
safety-net which should be used as a last resort, not as a first resort. People
expect that, for most of their adult lives, they will not be drawing on the
support of kin apart from their spouses. Indeed much of our data shows
people trying to avoid relying on help from relatives, rather than routinely
expecting to call on it. Many people go to great lengths to ensure that they
do not become dependent on this type of assistance (see especially
Chapter 2).
So we are arguing that, while most people value a kin group which
‘works’ as a support system for its members, most can only be actually
relied upon to do so in sudden crises and in situations of ‘last resort’. In
other circumstances our data suggest that the kin group is much more
unreliable as a support system, at least when looked at from the outside. By
this we mean that it is not possible to predict, simply from knowing the
genealogical relationships, what kind of support is likely to be given to any
individual. Knowing that Mr X has a brother, or five sisters, or two sons,
does not enable me to say if he is likely to be looked after when he is ill,
lent money if he needs to replace his car, or given a temporary home if his
own household is split up by separation or divorce. Some brothers, or
sisters, or sons would offer any of these forms of help; others would not.
The offers of help do not flow straightforwardly from the genealogical
relationship. Certainly it is more likely that parents and children will help
each other—particularly down the generations, from parents to adult
children—than will other relatives. That is clear from the evidence
contained in Appendix C, and our survey data endorse people’s beliefs that
it should be so (see Chapter 1, and also Finch and Mason, 1990b, 1991). But
even support from parents or children is actually very variable in practice.
Are these variations accounted for by other social characteristics of the
individuals involved—their gender, their occupations, their ethnicity, their
incomes? In previous chapters we have firmly rejected the idea that these
kinds of ‘structural factors’ explain the help which passes in families in any
straightforward way. Of course people who are in comfortable financial
circumstances have more options about helping their relatives than do
families where everyone is on the breadline. In that very simple sense, some
of our variations are accounted for by people’s economic and social
circumstances. But the idea, for example, that working-class people in
general are more inclined to value family support than are the middle
classes —or indeed the other way round—simply does not square with our
data, either the survey data or those based on qualitative interviews. One
reason why ‘structural factors’ do not straightforwardly explain people’s
CONCLUSION 163
experience of giving and receiving help, is that they are in part a product of
help given and received in the past. For example, parents’ assistance to
their children in getting them through higher education, in helping them to
set up businesses or to buy houses, or to migrate to another country, all
have an effect upon the occupational class position that the children
occupy in adult life. Thus factors such as occupational class or housing
tenure cannot be regarded as ‘independent variables’ in this context.
Two exceptions to this argument are ethnicity and gender because, except
in very unusual circumstances, these are fixed at birth. In this study, we
wanted to explore ethnic variations but were unable to do so effectively in
the survey data (see Appendix A). In our qualitative data we have eleven
interviewees out of eighty-eight who were of Asian or Caribbean descent—
a number large enough to give us some indication of where the similarities
and differences might lie, but obviously not the basis for making detailed
and generalisable comparisons. In fact we are struck more by the
similarities in the experience of our white interviewees and those of Asian
or Caribbean descent, than by the differences between them. Certainly we
can identify some obvious differences. For example, in kin groups of Asian
descent, we found evidence of a continuing expectation that a son, rather
than a daughter, will take responsibility for giving a home to elderly
parents—though the labour of caring for infirm elderly people will largely
fall on women in the household, as in the white community. But other than
this kind of difference, built on specific or cultural norms about the
responsibilities of kin, the ways in which our black and Asian interviewees
(all of whom were young adults who had been brought up in the UK)
approached family responsibilities had many similarities with those of the
white people we talked to.
In relation to gender, there certainly are some differences but not of a
simple kind. At the level of publicly expressed beliefs, women and men say
essentially similar things about the value which they place upon assistance
between kin and the circumstances in which it should operate. Therefore
any differences in women’s and men’s involvement with their kin cannot be
explained by the idea that they hold different beliefs about the family or
adhere straightforwardly to different value systems. When it comes to
looking at what happens in practice, women in general do seem to be more
firmly locked into sets of responsibilities to relatives, and men are more
peripheral. However, here, as with all our data, we find considerable
variations between individuals and exceptions in both directions.
In this section we have sketched out the basic pattern which shows that
kin relationships are significant as structures of social support, but in
a variable way. In subsequent sections we refer to these patterns and
attempt to develop our understanding of them.
The nature of kin responsibilities: rules, rights and

commitments
The concept of responsibilities lay at the heart of our research agenda in
this study. Where we find examples of people giving assistance to their kin,
does it make sense to talk in terms of responsibility or obligation or duty,
associated with family relationships specifically? This question links with
the theoretical debate (see Chapter 1) about whether in general kin
relationships have a special character which marks them off from all others,
and are distinctively defined by obligations and responsibilities. In essence,
our answer is that the patterns of assistance which we have identified are
underscored by a sense of ‘family responsibility’, but that we have to look
carefully at what this means.
We need to clear away first of all what it does not mean. We found very
little evidence to support the view that people see specific duties attached to
family relationships. Our main purpose in the survey element of our study
was to see if it is possible to identify anything approaching rules of
obligation which are widely acknowledged at the level of publicly
expressed norms. We found that there are not. The variations which we
observed in practice, in the assistance which relatives give to each other,
also suggest that responsibilities do not operate on the basis of fixed rules.
The interviewees who came closest to talking about rules of obligation on
the whole were people of Asian descent but even here, as we have noted,
there were variations in how that worked out in practice. For most people
responsibilities towards relatives were not fixed. They are far more fluid
than the notion of ‘rules of obligation’ implies. To return to the distinction
which we made in the introductory chapter, the concept of ‘guidelines’
seems to fit our data much better than ‘rules’. Further, the guidelines which
people recognise are procedural rather than substantive—they indicate how
to work out whether it is appropriate to offer assistance to a particular
relative, rather than ones which point to what you should do in concrete
terms. It is for these reasons that we have chosen to use the word
‘responsibilities’, which perhaps has less of a sense of fixed rules than does
‘obligations’ or ‘duties’.
So we would argue that the idea of ‘duty’ is an inappropriate way of
thinking about family life. We would reject even more strongly its
corollary, ‘rights’. If there were fixed rules of obligation or duty in families,
then we might expect that one person felt a duty to give assistance and the
other felt a right to claim it. But our data show a particularly strong
resistance to the idea that anyone has a right to claim assistance from a
relative (see especially Chapter 5). This is one of the strongest messages in
our data and is supported, in different ways, by evidence from the survey
and from the qualitative study. Claiming rights is definitely not seen as a
legitimate part of family life. Even where one person accepts a
CONCLUSION 165
responsibility to help, the other does not have the right to claim, or even to
expect, assistance. We have argued that this is because the right to offer
help must always remain with the donor—particularly important in a
situation where there are no fixed rules of obligation. The fact that
responsibilities are not mirrored by rights reinforces our basic point that
they are fluid and not fixed.
So in what sense can we identify responsibilities within kin groups? Our
most important point here is that a sense of responsibility for helping
someone else develops over time, through interaction between the
individuals involved. It is a two-(or more) way process of negotiation in
which people are giving and receiving, balancing out one kind of assistance
against another, maintaining an appropriate independence from each other
as well as mutual interdependence (see Chapters 2 and 3). As a product of
these processes, one individual becomes committed to giving assistance to
another. Responsibilities thus are created, rather than flowing
automatically from specific relationships.
We have referred to the process of creating responsibilities as one of
negotiation between individuals. Sometimes the negotiation is explicit but
often it is not. The outcome of such negotiations is not fixed in advance,
but at the same time it does not take place in a vacuum. Though there are
no fixed rules about what should be given to relatives there are some well
understood guidelines about how such negotiations should be conducted.
We saw this reflected in our survey data, in the fact that we found more
procedural than substantive consensus (see Chapter 1). Our qualitative
data also show, for example, that there are some well understood
principles which can be used by people in prioritising the various claims
upon their time, their money or their labour (see Chapter 4); also principles
concerned with how to conduct oneself in negotiations, above all the
importance of not showing that you expect help (Chapter 5).
We have found the concept of developing commitments particularly
valuable in expressing the processes which we are uncovering. It is a
conceptual framework which both helps us to understand the processes
involved in negotiating responsibilities, and also helps to explain why we
find the kind of variations which our data display. We are using the concept
of commitments as developed originally by Howard Becker (1960) and we
explain this in some detail in Chapter 3. The essence of this idea is that
people develop commitments over time and in ways which are possibly
half-recognised but often not consciously planned. One person helps
another out in a crisis and the other then wants to return the favour.
Opportunities for doing this may occur easily or they may not. Where a
pattern of reciprocal assistance builds up over time, each person invests
something of themselves in this relationship and becomes committed to it
as a relationship through which mutual aid flows. The essence of becoming
committed, in Becker’s terms, is that it becomes ‘too expensive’ to
withdraw from the situation which is developing. The ‘expense’ is not

necessarily calculated in material terms, though it can be. This was
certainly the case in one or two instances in our data set where, for
example, someone got locked into a set of commitments to an older
generation because they were to inherit property and money when that
person died. But more usually, it seems, the expense is calculated in terms
of people’s personal identities and their moral standing in their kin group
and in the eyes of the world at large.
Thus the concept of developing commitments encapsulates much of what
we have said about the ways in which family responsibilities are created
between specific individuals over a period of time. It also helps us to
understand why we have such a pattern of variation in people’s experiences
of assistance in kin groups, and in the pattern of responsibilities which they
acknowledge. Such variations occur because responsibilities are a product
of interactions between individuals over time. The course which such
interactions take can be very variable even for members of the same family,
including people in the same genealogical position (as sons, sisters,
grandmothers or whatever). At the same time, the genealogical relationship
of individuals does play some part in shaping the course which such
interactions are likely to take. For example, we have argued that parent-
child relationships—particularly ‘down’ the generations—come closest to
being in a category of their own. However, we see the explanation for this
as located within the framework of ‘developing commitments’, rather than
the idea that fixed rules of obligation cover parent-child relationships.
What we are saying is that the conditions under which people live their
lives make it more likely that parents and children will develop commitments
to each other, but that the underlying processes of developing
commitments are the same for all categories of kin.
To understand why parent-child commitments appear strongest ‘down’
the generations, we think that we need to take account of the social
relations of child-rearing which prevail in this society. Parents are allocated
responsibility for young children in a sense which is public as well as
private, sometimes directly a matter of public policy. When children are
young, parent-child relationships are defined as relationships in which
parents take responsibility for the material and emotional welfare of their
children. We are suggesting that the effects of this may flow into adult life,
making parent-child relationships down the generations the only
relationships in which someone can be held morally ‘accountable’ for how
someone else ‘turns out’ in adult life. In a sense then, the conditions
conducive to developing commitments are set from childhood. This will be
the case much more commonly for parents and children than for other kin.
But the point is that the processes would be the same for all categories of
relative, even though the conditions under which people live their lives
make it much less likely that cousins will develop stronger commitments
CONCLUSION 167
than, for example, parents and children, or siblings. As we have shown

though, sometimes they do, and even within the parent-child range, there is
great variation in the responsibilities which people acknowledge.
We think that we can understand the role of the structural location of
individuals in the way commitments develop in similar fashion. For
example women, who conventionally are seen as having time more readily
available than men, are more likely to get locked into sets of commitments
which entail giving time and labour. So responsibilities, as we have said, do
not get negotiated in a vacuum but they do get negotiated in ways which
allow for considerable individual variation. At the same time we would
argue that such variation should not just be seen as idiosyncratic and
incomprehensible. The concept of commitments helps us to put a
framework on it and to understand how such variations come about.
In defining family responsibilities this way, as created and not
predetermined, we recognise that we could be describing processes through
which a person develops a sense of responsibility to anyone, not just to
members of their family. So are we saying that there is nothing distinctive
about family responsibilities—that they are just one example of a more
general process through which one human being becomes committed to
helping another? Ultimately we cannot answer these very interesting
questions about the difference between responsibilities towards friends and
responsibilities towards relatives because we have not done a comparative
study of the two. But looking solely at our data on family relationships, the
fact that people are related genealogically does seem to create distinctive
elements in the process of developing commitments to kin.
Chief among these is the sense that a person ‘belongs’ to their kin group
in a way which is not true of other social groups of which they might be a
member. Especially in relation to the family of origin, a kin group is the
group into which a person is born, in which the membership is in no sense
chosen, and where relationships still exist throughout life even if they are
left dormant. It therefore exists as a ready-made context within which
responsibilities can appropriately develop, and also are very likely to
develop as people interact with each other. It is precisely the same set of
features which also makes the kin group an appropriate safety-net to use as
a last resort. In this sense kin relationships are distinctive.
Material and moral dimensions of family responsibilities

One distinctive feature of the argument which we are developing is to
emphasise the interweaving of what we are calling the material and the
moral dimensions of family life. Though this is perhaps implicit in earlier
research, in analysing our own data we have come to see the importance of
bringing this into the foreground.
Essentially our argument is that it is not possible to understand the

nature of family responsibilities, or how they operate in practice, if you
concentrate only on their material dimensions and look at exchanges of
goods and services solely in terms of their material value. Certainly such
exchanges are ‘reckoned’ in material terms, but only up to a point. In order
to see their full significance, and to understand the dynamic which such
exchanges create and recreate, we have to also see the moral dimensions.
By ‘moral dimensions’ we do not mean moral rules. We have already
indicated that the evidence of our study leads us to reject the idea of
following moral rules, as an inappropriate way of describing how family
responsibilities operate. When we talk about seeing the moral dimensions of
family responsibilities, we mean that people’s identities as moral beings are
bound up in these exchanges of support, and the processes through which
they get negotiated.
Much more is at stake therefore, than simply the material value of the
goods and services which are exchanged. People’s identities are being
constructed, confirmed and reconstructed—identities as a reliable son, a
generous mother, a caring sister or whatever it might be. The concept of
commitments links in here too. If the image of ‘a caring sister’ is valued as
part of someone’s personal identity then it eventually becomes too
expensive to withdraw from those commitments through which that
identity is expressed and confirmed. It appears that a particularly
important aspect of identities constructed in relation to family
responsibilities is the dependence-independence dimension. It has been a
strong theme in our data (see especially Chapter 2) that most people strive
to ensure that they do not beome ‘too dependent’ upon assistance from
relatives. A certain degree of interdependence is allowed, indeed is highly
valued. But any situation where one person receives more than they can
return to the other is definitely to be avoided.
Thus our argument is that, through negotiations about giving and
receiving assistance, people are being constructed and reconstructed as
moral beings. In thinking about the ways in which people’s identities form
part of these interactions, we have found it useful to talk about
‘reputations’. In Chapters 4 and 5 in particular we have developed the idea
that people’s reputations are at stake in all instances where a need is
responded to or not responded to. A person’s identity or reputation gets
confirmed or modified as a result of the way in which they conduct
themselves on each occasion. Reputations, we have argued, are not simply
the image which one individual has of another, but they have a more public
and a more enduring character. Reputations are images of each individual
which are shared by members of their kin group (and possibly by other
people too) and they have an influence upon the course of future
relationships. By stressing that reputations are shared rather than individual
images we do not mean to imply that there is always total agreement. In
CONCLUSION 169
Chapter 5 we have shown that there are cases where a person’s reputation
within their family is a matter of some dispute. But in a sense this
reinforces our point that a person’s reputation is public not private
property. It is moulded and remoulded as that person’s actions are
observed and talked about by other members of their kin group.
In focusing on these moral dimensions of family life we also see very
clearly the potential for conflict and for outcomes which do not suit one or
more of the parties. This is an important counterbalance to our evidence
that, on the whole, people do want to see themselves as part of a family
that ‘works’ at least at a minimal level, and make some effort to ensure
that it does. But when we see how closely people’s identities and
reputations are bound in with kin exchanges, it seems very unlikely that
families are going to ‘work’ equally for all people all of the time. The ways
in which they ‘don’t work’ can vary. We have noted that there certainly are
some examples of people in our study who have received little from their
kin and have given little (see Chapter 2 and Appendix C). Family
responsibilities seem to have a marginal place in the lives of these people
and the family may not ‘work’ as a support system, even of last resort.
There are also ways in which the family ‘doesn’t work’ for individuals on
a moral level, even when it does seem to be working at the level of material
assistance. The clearest of these examples arise when an ongoing process of
exchanges between kin leaves one person ‘beholden to’ another. This can
happen in a whole range of circumstances—where a young person has to
rely on their parents’ financial assistance after they feel they should be fully
independent; in old age when a person may become physically dependent;
at the end of a marriage when an adult child returns to the parental home,
in need of moral support and assistance with child care. In such
circumstances, it is possible in principle for the person in the position of
donor to extract forms of repayment which might otherwise not have been
given. ‘Moral blackmail’ is a phrase commonly used to describe such
situations, and indeed it was used by some of our interviewees. In earlier
chapters we have quoted a few examples which do seem to amount to a
fairly naked exercise of such power. More commonly people do not
actually take advantage of these situations in this way—indeed they may be
careful to avoid opportunities to exercise the power which potentially they
have. But this does not really change the situation fundamentally for the
person who has become the net recipient in an unbalanced pattern of
exchanges. Their identity and their position within the kin group has
changed, and they are beholden to someone else, even if this is not openly
acknowledged. The strenuous efforts which people make to try to avoid
getting into such situations demonstrates how unwelcome this is.
We have emphasised the importance of the moral dimensions in
understanding how family responsibilities operate but we do not mean to
imply that the material dimensions are of no importance. In terms of the
practical consequences of kin group exchanges, they are exceedingly

important. The quality and standard of living of individuals can be
enhanced or eroded in very significant ways through exchanges between
kin of money, goods, labour and time. Also the material value of assistance
is taken into account in ‘reckoning’ the moral dimensions of exchanges. We
see this very clearly when we look at how people try to keep a balance
between dependence and independence in relationships with their kin.
Some very fine calculations (which of course may not be successful) take
place to try to ensure that no one becomes a net giver or net receiver, or is
beholden to someone else. The way such calculations are reckoned
centrally concerns the material value of the exchanges.
In summary, our purpose is not to argue that the moral dimensions of
exchanges are more important than the material, or vice versa. Our central
theme is that the two are finely interwoven. To see either without the other
is to miss the main point.
SOME BROADER IMPLICATIONS OF OUR

ARGUMENT
Our main purpose in this chapter, as we have indicated, is to provide a
clear statement of our argument about family responsibilities, based on the
empirical study which we have undertaken. Having done that, we are very
aware that our arguments have more general implications. We happen to
have studied kin relationships but the processes which we have uncovered
may well have parallels in other social settings. At this level we connect
with some rather important issues in sociological theory. We shall indicate
briefly what we think these are. It would be inappropriate to make any
serious attempt to develop these here—to treat them properly would
require extended discussion. Therefore we are not referring to or
elaborating upon the relevant sociological literature in this section. Our aim
is simply to identify these broader issues and to point up some of the
questions which, we believe, our work raises.
The central sociological issue to which our work connects is the debate
about social structure and human agency, and how the two relate.
These debates essentially are concerned with the question: how can we
understand the processes through which people create and make sense of
their own lives, yet do so within constraints which they have little or no
power to alter? In treating ‘responsibilities’ as created commitments rather
than rules of obligation, we are saying firmly that they are the product of
human agency and not an external property of social structure over which
individuals have no control. But there is also a sense in which they become
structural features, in that they both constrain and facilitate future actions.
On the one hand they make it possible for one person to draw upon the
assistance of another, in ways which they could not do without the
CONCLUSION 171
development of reciprocal commitments. On the other hand they place

limits on the range of options subsequently available. Thus we think that
our study provides an empirical example of the processes through which
agency and structure relate.
While placing our emphasis on agency we believe that we have also said
that social structure is important. But we think that we are using a concept
of structure that is more fluid than that often found in sociological writing.
We can illustrate this by considering the idea that each person has a
‘structural position’ which shapes the kind of commitments which they can
negotiate with others, and influences the likely outcome of such
negotiations. Conventionally in relation to kinship, each individual’s
structural position would be defined by genealogy and by gender: a
mother, a father, a brother, a sister and so on. Such definitions ‘place’
individuals in relation to other relevant individuals,
In our view this is not enough if you want to know what is one person’s
effective structural position in relation to other kin, at any given point in
time. We refer here to ‘effective’ structural positions to emphasise that we
need to know, not only formal definitions, but also what those positions
actually mean—how they are going to constrain human agency. We would
argue, on the basis of our data, that we need to look also at what each
person has accumulated over time. We certainly need to do this in a
material sense. If one daughter has accumulated property and wealth but
another has not, this puts them in different structural positions vis-à-vis
their elderly parents. Such concerns conventionally are linked with social
structure. But we believe that we also need to look at what someone has
accumulated morally—their identity, their reputation, their commitments.
Certainly in the context of kinship we need a concept of ‘structural
position’ which incorporates these facets, if we wish to understand how
human actions are constrained at any given point in a person’s lifetime.
If we are right, then it is possible that this more fluid concept of social
structure is more widely applicable. How far does what someone has
accumulated—morally as well as materially—define their effective
structural position in other social settings? Occupational settings are one
obvious example, especially those in which ‘professional reputations’ seem
to play an important part. Political and voluntary activities are another.
Can accumulated commitments to support your local Conservative Club,
or the group trying to prevent the building of a nuclear power station, be
analysed in the same way as commitments to relatives? Is a reputation as ‘a
good Labour party member’ or ‘a faithful Catholic’ something which both
shapes and constrains action in the ways which family reputations do?
This brings us to our final point about the structure versus agency
question. This concerns the processes through which people construct and
use social meanings—one aspect of human agency in operation. In
planning our research project we looked at this issue slightly differently.
We made a clear distinction between beliefs and actions and argued that in
order to understand family responsibilities, we need to look at both. In the
design of our project we felt it important to ensure that we did not make
the error of ‘reading off people’s likely actions from the beliefs which they
express about family relationships, particularly in answer to survey
questions. We still think that was absolutely right. To make a simple link
of that kind would be a fundamental mistake.
However, in analysing our data, and developing the argument which we
have presented, we found that we were using the dichotomy of ‘beliefs
versus actions’ less and less. This is because we have increasingly realised
the importance of looking at the ways in which social meanings are
constructed for use rather than seeing them as ideas which exist inside
people’s heads. Beliefs, in that sense, may or may not exist. Increasingly we
have come to the conclusion that it is a mistake to concentrate on the
question: ‘what does this person “really believe”?’ If what we are trying to
do is to understand how social life actually operates, that question
probably misses the point. What matters is to understand the meanings
which his or her actions convey to other people. We have reached this
conclusion through several strands in the analysis of our empirical data. In
Chapter 4 we saw the importance, in relation to particular events and
needs within families, of each person’s developing a position which others
would regard as legitimate. Our examples in that chapter focused upon
what we called ‘legitimate excuses’, on situations where a person was
trying to avoid giving assistance to a relative—lending money, offering
them a home, looking after their children or whatever it might be. Whether
or not someone could successfully establish a legitimate excuse could be the
crucial factor in determining whether they did end up giving assistance or
not. The question of whether someone ‘really believes’ that they have a
responsibility to help this particular relative is not very relevant here in
understanding why they do or do not give assistance. Much more important
is how their actions are going to be understood by other people. In
Chapter 5 we showed that, more generally, having your actions understood
‘in a good light’ is important in the process of developing responsibilities
and commitments.
It is through these kinds of data that we have come to appreciate that the
meanings which social actions convey may be a much more important
topic for study than attempting to understand what the authors of those
actions ‘intended’. This is not an original idea but, if it is more generally
applicable, it has some interesting implications not least about research
methods. As it happens our own research design made it relatively easy for
us to pick up the importance of this feature of social actions because we
collected data from a number of different individuals in the same kin group.
Project designs which make this kind of perspective possible seem essential
CONCLUSION 173
for any researcher who wishes to understand the social meanings actually
conveyed by actions.
These are the main points which we want to make about the connections
of our work to larger sociological questions. We are finishing this section
by commenting briefly on the implications of all this for the analysis of
gender relations. In a sense gender offers one example of how the more
abstract theoretical arguments, which we have developed above, would
apply to a substantive aspect of social life. But gender cannot be treated as
just one example among many. As is well recognised in all the relevant
literature, gender divisions and gender relations are absolutely fundamental
to the patterns of family responsibilities which most people develop in
practice. To make no comment on it would be to leave a very important
end untied.
So, what are the implications of our analysis for understanding gender
relations? We think we have demonstrated that the processes of developing
commitments and responsibilities to kin are gendered but not in the simple
kind of way that is often supposed. In general women are more firmly
locked into sets of family responsibilities than are men, and usually more
finely tuned to issues of negotiations, identity, reputation and the like. But
there is considerable variation for both women and men. We feel that we
cannot say that in practice someone accepts a responsibility ‘because’ she is
a woman—or even because she is a daughter—when there is so much
variation and when people themselves do not present their actions in that
way. We relate our argument at this point to what we said above about the
concept of ‘structural position’. Being ‘a daughter’ is only part of what
constitutes someone’s effective structural position. We als o have to know—
for each individual—what she has accumulated in the course of her life,
both materially and morally. One daughter may have accumulated a far
more extensive range of commitments than others, even her own sisters,
and these form part of the structural position which a woman occupies at
any point in her life.
Similarly we think it too simple to argue—as some feminist literature
does—that women and men adhere to different sets of moral values, and
that this explains why they handle responsibilities differently. As we said in
our general comments on the concept of ‘beliefs’, we do not find it very useful
to think about people ‘holding’ sets of beliefs or values in a rather static
way. Rather we think that we should focus on the meanings which women
and men successfully convey to others with whom they negotiate. Thus the
important question is not: do women and men really believe different
things about family responsibilities? It is: are there differences in the way
people perceive and interpret the actions of women and men towards
members of their family? Do women have more difficulty than men in
getting certain positions accepted as legitimate?
In essence we are arguing that the differences which we observe between

the patterns of responsibilities acknowleged by men and those
acknowledged by women do not result from holding different sets of ideas,
or even from occupying different structural positions, as conventionally
understood. We would argue that these differences emerge as women and
men negotiate their own relationships with their relatives. Over a period of
time, the differences get established and—since commitments established at
one point affect future negotiations—they tend to get consolidated.
The processes of developing commitments, which we have uncovered,
enable us to understand how commitments do get consolidated once a
person has begun on that path. But there remains the question: why is it
usually women rather than men who begin on a path which leads to more
extensive sets of responsibilities? Though we cannot explore these issues in
any depth here, we would argue that the explanation lies in the very
different conditions under which women and men live their lives more
generally. On the whole women are more likely than men to need to
develop sets of reciprocal commitments with relatives because they are still
more likely to be allocated the major responsibility for the care of children
and the management of a home—matters where it is quite difficult to get
help from other sources and where help from relatives is considered
appropriate. Equally, women are less likely to have the sort of consistent
record of employment in well-paid jobs which gives the basis of a life-
time’s financial independence. Because women are more likely to be in a
position—and perhaps anticipate that they are going to be in the position—
where they need the kind of assistance which kin can provide, they are
more likely than men to begin on a path in early adult life where they start
to develop sets of reciprocal responsibilities with kin. But it is certainly
possible—as one or two instances in our data set show—that a man can be
in analagous circumstances. Where, for example, a young man has received
significant economic assistance from his kin to enable him to set up a
business, this could be the kind of situation conducive to a man’s
developing sets of commitments to kin on a scale more commonly
associated with women (though of course they may be commitments of a
different type).
This very sketchy outline of the kind of ideas about gender relations
implied by our analysis obviously has broader implications which cannot
be considered here. Our main point is to highlight the importance of
understanding accumulated commitments in women’s lives particularly,
and of seeing this as a feature which significantly shapes the actions which
they take. We would argue that theories of gender relations need to be
capable of accommodating the variations in experience which flow from
this kind of process. They need to give due weight to human agency, rather
than seeing the experience of women and men as flowing directly from the
different structural positions (as conventionally defined) which they occupy.
CONCLUSION 175
IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIAL POLICY

It has not been our purpose in this book to examine policy issues and
policy options directly. However, as we noted in our introduction, the
work which we have been doing raises questions about the ways in which
the concept of family responsibilities gets incorporated into social policy.
We are going to finish by identifying these questions. We are not going to
elaborate on the background to the relevant policy issues, as we have
discussed this in some detail elsewhere, especially in Finch (1989).
However, we feel that we can comment now with some authority because
we can base our analysis on a recent and extensive data set.
The questions which we want to address centre round a comparison
between contemporary social policies—in particular the assumptions that
are made about the nature of family responsibilities—and the way in which
people think about and act towards their relatives in practice. As we
indicated in Chapter 1, governments have to draw the line somewhere
between the responsibilities of the state for supporting its citizens, and
those needs which it assumes will be met by the family. If families are
meeting their members’ financial and practical needs, then there is no
necessity for governments to get involved. If they are not, then it may be
necessary to make provision through state funds and facilities. In planning
these, governments need to make some assumptions about what most
families will provide and what they will not. It can be shown that, in
periods when governments are trying to keep down the cost of public
expenditure, there is an incentive to encourage families to provide as much
as possible (Crowther, 1982). One such period, it can be argued, was the
1980s when the British and many other Western governments tried to re-
draw the boundary between state responsibilities and family
responsibilities to place more in the realm of the family. Increasingly kin
were seen as the first line of assistance for most people with the state
playing a residual role (see Finch, 1989, for an elaboration of this
argument).
However, the place at which that line is drawn has to be realistic, in the
sense that it needs to take some account of the expectations which most
people do really have, concerning what it is reasonable for family members
to provide. Our data enable us to compare the points at which that line
currently is being drawn with the ways in which family responsibilities
operate in practice.
Our first point of comparison concerns the concept of family
responsibilities itself. Social policies in Britain have long operated with a
view of responsibilities which sees them as a ‘natural’ property of
relationships between spouses, between parents and children, and possibly
beyond that. The Victorian Poor Law expressed this most directly, in the
way in which it allocated financial responsibilities for maintaining named
categories of relatives—spouse, immature child or grandchild, elderly

parent. People could be required through law to acknowledge these
responsibilities in practice. Built on an earlier tradition, it was not seen as
an attempt actually to change the way in which families operate. It was
based on the assumption that it was ‘natural’ for relatives to acknowledge
these responsibilities towards each other and that their codification in law
simply expressed something which all decent people would be doing in any
case. Such codification makes it possible for governments to assume that
certain services will be provided by the family, and therefore to draw a clear
line at the point where the responsibility of the state begins. However, it
also implies a role for the state in enforcing family responsibilities where
individuals are reluctant to accept them, which did indeed occur under the
Victorian Poor Law though not always with total success (Crowther, 1982;
Quadagno, 1982). Thus there is a history within British social policy of
governments acting in a rather contradictory way when drawing the line
between family responsibilities and state responsibilities. On the one hand
it is assumed that certain forms of reliance upon relatives is a ‘natural’ part
of family life. On the other hand it is accepted as part of the state’s role to
enforce such responsibilities—which implies that they are not universally
regarded as natural.
Our data suggest that any notion that specified responsibilities are
‘natural properties’ of named relationships is well out of step with the
contemporary reality of family responsibilities and the way they are arrived
at. Quite possibly this has always been so—a conclusion which would be
consistent with the fact that governments in the past found it necessary to
devise ways of enforcing responsibilities which it presumed to be natural.
One of the most important messages from our data is that the
responsibilities which people acknowledge are variable and do not flow
straightforwardly from particular geneaolgical relationships. There is no
guarantee that ‘a son’ or ‘a sister’ will feel responsibilities of a specific
kind. We have argued that responsibilities between kin grow out of, and
are dependent upon, the history of particular relationships. It makes little
sense therefore to build public policies which assume that certain types of
assistance will be given more or less automatically. Support may well be
offered—but its availability will vary from one family to another and from
one individual to another. This is a normal feature of family life, not a sign
that some people are irresponsible or uncaring.
Perhaps even more important than our argument about variability is
another strong message from our data: people do not want to have to rely
on their relatives for extensive help. We have found clear evidence of active
avoidance of, sometimes resistance to, accepting help from a relative. It has
been a long-running theme in the study of elderly people’s family
relationships that they seek ‘intimacy at a distance’—a relationship with
their children and grandchildren which is close at an affective level, but
CONCLUSION 177
where they do not have to rely on them too much on a daily basis and
maintain a strong sense of their own independence (Townsend, 1965;
Wenger, 1984; Finch, 1989; Qureshi and Walker, 1989). Our data not
only offer further confirmation of this but also show that it is not simply
elderly people who want to maintain independence from their relatives, and
strive hard not to rely on them too much—it applies to young adults, to
people in middle age, to both men and women, every bit as much as it does
in the case of elderly people. All try to ensure that they do not get into
situations where they are ‘beholden to’ relatives.
What we have found, in effect, is a continuing and strong sense of
individualism in social life which, it can be argued, has long characterised
English society. As Macfarlane’s (1978) influential work on this topic
makes clear, Britain has had a distinctive social and economic structure at
least since the thirteenth century, of which individualism is a key
component. It has been accompanied by a model of family life in which kin
relations outside the nuclear family were relatively unimportant, by
comparison with other societies in western Europe. In England, the
expectation that people will keep themselves economically and practically
separate from their kin has roots which go back at least six centuries. This
evidence directly challenges any idea that the family should be seen as the
first and most appropriate line of support wherever possible, and that the
state should simply play a residual role, perhaps concentrating assistance
mainly on people unfortunate enough not to have relatives. Policies which
are designed to make people more dependent on their relatives breach a
principle which many people hold dear.
Our final point about social policy concerns the idea that people should
have the right to fall back on assistance from their relatives. The idea of
‘rights’ to assistance was expressed explicitly in the Poor Law concept
of ‘liable relatives’. These were people identified as having a duty to offer
assistance to a relative in need, and the corollary of that duty was the the
right to make claims upon such assistance. In England a person had the
right to make claims for financial assistance upon a spouse, a son, an
unmarried daughter or (if they were a child of immature years) a parent or
grandparent. In Scotland this was extended further to a grandchild, a
brother or a sister (Wall, 1977; Crowther, 1982; Quadagno, 1982). The
concept of liable relatives was removed from the law in 1948, leaving legal
liability only between spouses, and for young children. However, the more
that governments try to re-draw the boundaries between the state and the
family, and to extend the range of responsibilities which they assume will be
taken by kin, the closer we come to reviving the idea of liable relatives
(whether or not the same term is used).
The idea that anyone has the ‘right to claim’ help from a relative is well
out of line with our evidence about how family life operates. People reject
even the idea that anyone has the right to expect assistance, let alone to
demand it. The right to provide or withhold help must always remain with
the potential donor, we have argued. This is a principle to which people
adhere strongly, both in theory and in practice. There is a strong resistance
to any suggestion that a potential recipient ever has the right to make claims.
The clarity of our data on this point should act as a strong indication
that policies which rest on the assumption that people have a right to
expect assistance from their relatives (even from their parents or their
children) will not align with the realities of family life. People do accept
responsibilities to help relatives, sometimes at considerable cost to
themselves. But we all, it would seem, want to retain the right ultimately to
say that we do it of our own choosing. Our study has shown that ‘family
responsibilities’ operate in a way which is much more complex and more
individual than the idea that we acknowledge and follow rules of
obligation. It simply doesn’t work like that.
Appendix A:
Methodology and research design
The Family Obligations Project was funded by ESRC, grant number

G00232197:£121,000, 1985–1989. The study used a two-stage research
design, involving a large-scale survey, and a smaller in-depth qualitative
study. The rationale for this research design is described in Chapter 1.
THE SURVEY
The survey was designed by Janet Finch in consultation with Social and
Community Planning Research (SCPR). It involved structured interviews
with 978 respondents. SCPR undertook the data collection and
preparation, between September 1985 and February 1986.
Full details of the sampling procedure and technical aspects of the survey
are given in Gill Courtenay’s Survey of Family Obligations: Technical
Report, London, SCPR, February 1986. This is available from the authors
for consultation on request.
Sampling
The survey was carried out in the Greater Manchester area among a
representative random sample of adults aged 18 and over. The response
rate among those who were eligible for interview was 72 per cent (978
respondents). Sampling was executed using a two-stage, stratified, cluster
sampling technique. Forty-five electoral wards in the Greater Manchester
region were selected from a list ordered according to the OPCS
Constituency File, and using a random start number and a fixed interval.
Within each selected ward, thirty-five addresses were selected with equal
probability from the 1985 Electoral Registers. This procedure yielded a
sample of 1,400 addresses. In order to convert the sample of addresses to
one of individuals, the names of all electors were listed for each address,
and the name of the individual on whom the sampling interval landed was
marked with an asterisk (this person is known as the ‘starred elector’). The
interviewers then called at the address of each ‘starred elector’ where they
listed all those eligible for inclusion in the sample (that is, all people aged
18 and over). When the list of eligible people and the list of electors for the
address were identical, the interviewer attempted to interview the ‘starred
elector’. But when the list of eligible people differed in any way from the
electors registered for that address a random selection was made using a
Kish Grid.
Sample characteristics
The following tables set out our sample characteristics by comparison with
appropriate national data, and data from the Greater Manchester District.
Our purpose in making these comparisons is to allow readers to develop a
view of the representativeness of our achieved sample. We believe that we
have achie ved a sample which is reasonably representative of the national
population, with small variations on a few of the characteristics. However,
the sample is not necessarily representative of sub-groups of the national
population which appear in small numbers, such as respondents from non-
white ethnic groups.
Table A.1 Gender
Source of national data: OPCS, 1982, 1983. All figures based on adult population
aged 18 and over.
APPENDIX A 181
Table A.2 Age
Source of national data: OPCS, 1982, 1983.

* Greater Manchester figures here art based on the age range 16 upwards, so are
not directly comparable with sample and national statistics which are based on 18
upwards.
Table A.3 Ethnic group
Source of national data: OPCS, 1987. National data are based on a sample of adult
population aged 16 and over. Sample is based on adult population aged 18 and over.
* Based on interviewer’s assessment of ethnic group.
** Based on interviewee’s assessment of ethnic group.
Table A.4 Economic activity: percentage economically active or inactive
Source of national data: OPCS, 1987. All figures based on adult population aged
18 and over.
Survey questionnaire content
The survey questionnaire used the vignette technique (see Finch, 1987a) to
ask questions about three main types of support between relatives:
personal care, accommodation and financial support. This involved posing
hypothetical situations concerning third parties, and inviting respondents to
indicate what should be done in those situations. Most of the questions had
both precoded and open coded parts. Appendix B gives examples of the
short vignettes used in the survey. The questionnaire also included four
longer vignettes, in which respondents were guided through an evolving
hypothetical situation, and asked what should be done at specified stages.
The following is an example of one of these vignettes.
John Highfield is a married man in his early thirties. He and his wife
have two young children. John is unemployed but has a chance to
start his own business. He can get various grants to help him get
started, and the bank will lend most of the money he needs. But he
still needs another £1,500.
(a) If he thought his parents could afford to help, should he ask
them for the money?
Yes.
No.
If answer is yes:
(b) Should he ask them for a gift or a loan?
Gift.
Loan.
(c) Why do you think he should ask for a gift rather than a loan (or
loan rather than a gift) ?
Probe fully and record verbatim
Ask all
(d) He does not like to ask his parents for the money, but should
they offer it?
Yes.
No.
(e) John’s parents do offer the money. But John knows that his
father’s pension is low and that the money will come out of his
APPENDIX A 183
parents’ small savings account. Should John accept the money or

should he refuse it?
Accept.
Refuse.
If accept or refuse
(f) Why should John accept/refuse the money?
Probe fully and record verbatim
The logic and rationale of using vignettes in the survey is outlined in

Chapter 1. Basically, the intention was to tap public norms or statements
about ‘the proper thing to do’ in specified circumstances. We did also
include some general questions about family responsibilities and
obligations. We did not intend to use the survey to discover what people
actually did in practice, and therefore we only asked a few limited
questions about respondents’ own experience of giving or receiving the
three types of support. These were contained in a more general section
about respondents’ social characteristics, which was used to construct
variables for analysis.
THE QUALITATIVE STUDY

The qualitative study also took place, for the most part, in Greater
Manchester. A few interviews were conducted elsewhere in the north west
region of England. These involved respondents of Asian or Caribbean
descent whom we contacted via a different sampling strategy. A few others
took place in other parts of England, because we were interviewing
relatives of respondents living in Greater Manchester. Both of these aspects
of our sampling strategy are explained more fully below.
This part of the research was designed and conducted by Janet Finch and
Jennifer Mason, and data collection took place between 1986 and 1988.
The qualitative study involved 120 interviews with eighty-eight people;
thirty-one of these had also taken part in our survey, and most of these
respondents were interviewed twice at the qualitative stage. Our policy was
to interview our initial contact person in any family twice, if they agreed.
Mostly, these were the people who had also been in the survey (see
sampling strategy below) but seven had not. These seven were respondents
of Asian or Caribbean descent, who were included in the qualitative study
via a different sampling strategy (see below). The remaining interviewees
were interviewed only once, usually because they were included in the
study as kin of our initial interviewees (see below).
Policy on confidentiality
All interviewees are referred to by pseudonyms throughout this book.
Interviewees were invited to choose their own pseudonyms, and most of
them did so. Some people selected names which are those of fictional
characters or of people in real life: we have not altered these.
Furthermore, in some of our discussion, we have felt it necessary to use
additional measures to preserve anonymity. We have done this in a number
of ways: by changing pseudonyms; by changing characteristics or events in
a way which does not alter the analysis; by using examples abstracted from
their context and/or without a pseudonym attached at all.
Sampling
Our sampling strategy was guided by the principles of theoretical
sampling, and we have discussed this fully in Finch and Mason (1990a).
We did not aim to produce a sample representative of the general
population in statistical terms. Instead we wanted to end up with a study
group which would help us to understand the processes of negotiation
about responsibilities between relatives. This meant incorporating into the
study group people who might have been involved at some stage in
processes of negotiation and renegotiation of family relationships. We
wanted to capture a range of experiences, or instances of negotiation and
support, and we sampled accordingly. Initially, we decided to use our
survey as a sampling frame. Respondents in the survey had been asked
whether they would be willing to be contacted again, and we used those
who said yes as our starting point. We began by selecting people who were
either young adults, or who had been divorced or separated, on the basis
that these two groups would have experience of the negotiation and
possibly renegotiation of family relationships. We were not seeking
straightforwardly to compare the experience of young adults and divorced
people, but were using both groups as a ‘way in’ to the kinds of family
situations which we did want to study.
We subsequently engaged in two ‘stock-taking’ exercises (several months
apart), designed to examine our study group and its characteristics and
experiences, and to modify our sampling strategy on that basis. The major
principle which we used to guide our selection at those points was
theoretical signficance: we chose to focus on those groups and experiences
which would enable us best to evaluate and develop the theoretical ideas
and concepts with which we began the project. The approach we adopted
was intended to achieve that, by being both flexible and systematic. Details
of the study group are given below.
Another important strand in our sampling strategy was the inclusion of
relatives of our initial interviewees. Where an interviewee was married, or
APPENDIX A 185
cohabiting, we asked whether we could approach their partner for

interview. If they agreed, we usually did a second interview with the initial
respondent, and a simultaneous interview with the spouse in a different
room in their own home. Forty of our interviewees have a spouse or
cohabiting partner in the study.
Additionally, with some interviewees, we asked if we could approach
other relatives. We made these requests at the end of the second interview
with the initial interviewee. We have called our successful examples of this
‘kin groups’. We have eleven of these in our study group, where we
interviewed between three and eight members of the same family. In all,
fifty-eight of our interviewees have kin other than a spouse in the study.
We felt this was important, given our focus on processes of negotiation
between relatives: including a number of members of the same family
would help us to understand negotiating processes from different
perspectives and positions. We followed up the kin of our initial
interviewees using similar criteria of theoretical significance, but also we
made our selections within the range of kin that our initial interviewee had
identified as close, or important, or immediate kin. Therefore, kin groups
‘belong’ to the initial interviewee (see Chapter 1, and Finch and Mason,
1990a, for elaboration of these points). The ‘shape’ of our kin groups as a
result depends first upon who was named as close or immediate kin, and
second upon whom out of that list we wished to interview and agreed to be
interviewed.
It is important to add that we made a policy decision not to attempt to
gain access to people whom we knew to be in ‘crisis’ situations, on ethical
grounds. Details of the kin groups are given below.
Another aspect of our sampling strategy concerns the mechanism by
which we included people of Asian and Caribbean descent in the study
group. Our method of using people who had taken part in the survey as
initial interviewees in the qualitative study failed to give us access to any
people of Asian or Caribbean descent, for a combination of reasons. As
stated above, these groupings formed only small proportions of our survey
respondents and that factor, added to a higher refusal and non-response
rate, meant that none of them ended up in the qualitative study. This was
because: either they did not fit our theoretical sampling criteria (we did not
want to pick any respondent fitting the description of Asian or Caribbean
descent, if they did not display any of the other characteristics or
experiences in which we were interested); or they declined to be
interviewed; or they were no longer living at the same address and we
could not trace them.
So, we had to adopt a different strategy, and this involved using personal
contacts to get introductions to people of Asian or Caribbean descent. This
strategy took us away from the Greater Manchester region, and these
interviews were conducted in other parts of north west England. In total, we
did twelve interviews with seven people; two of Caribbean descent, and
five of Asian descent. All of these were young adults. We were similarly
unsuccessful in gaining access to either an Asian or Caribbean kin group,
although we do have interviews with two brothers of Asian descent
(Mohammed and Rafiq Hussein).
Qualitative interview content

The qualitative study involved semi-structured interviews which were tape
recorded and fully transcribed. Interviews lasted on average around one
and a half hours. We were interested in people’s own experiences of family
relationships and responsibilities, and the negotiation of support within
families. Hence we asked people about such experiences, inviting them to
couch their responses within a life-history framework. Although we
followed up similar themes in each interview, in a sense each interview
comprised its own particular focus, namely the specific experiences,
relationships and responsibilities of that interviewee. As a result, we did
not ask exactly the same questions of each interviewee, and the interview
products are not directly comparable on those terms (see Appendix C
where this point is elaborated).
Study group characteristics

We set out below various key characteristics of our study group, and show
the gender distribution for each of these. In addition, we have identified
into which categories our respondents of Asian and Caribbean descent fall.
Our main purpose in setting out these characteristics is to give a sense of the
range of people we interviewed at the qualitative stage. We are not making
claims about the representativeness or otherwise of the study group on the
basis of these characteristics.
Table A.5 Gender
Interviewees of Asian descent: 2 female, 3 male.

Interviewees of Caribbean descent: 1 female, 1 male.
APPENDIX A 187
Table A.6 Age
Interviewees of Asian descent: 4 aged 18–29, 1 aged 30–49.

Interviewees of Caribbean descent: 2 aged 18–29.
Table A.7 Current paid employment status
* Includes one Asian man on YTS scheme, and one white man on Enterprise
Allowance scheme.
Interviewees of Asian descent: 3 full-time, 1 part-time, 1 student.
Interviewees of Caribbean descent: 1 full-time, 1 student.
Table A.8 Current occupational group (for those currently in employment)
Interviewees of Asian descent: 2 other non-manual, 1 skilled or semi-skilled

manual, 1 unskilled manual.
Interviewees of Caribbean descent: 1 skilled or semi-skilled manual.
Table A.9 Educational qualifications: highest qualification
Interviewees of Asian descent: 1 with ‘A’ levels, 1 with ‘O’ levels, 3 with CSE/
equivalent.
Interviewees of Caribbean descent: 1 with ‘A’ levels, 1 with ‘O’ levels/equivalent.
Table A.10 Housing tenure: people living in households which are:
Interviewees of Asian descent: 3 owned with mortgage, 1 owned outright, 1

privately rented accommodation.
Interviewees of Caribbean descent: 2 in privately rented accommodation.
Table A.11 Religion
Interviewees of Asian descent: 1 Hindu, 4 Moslem.

Interviewees of Caribbean descent: 2 Christian.
APPENDIX A 189
Table A.12 Political allegiance
Interviewees of Asian descent: 2 Labour, 3 none/not specified.

Interviewees of Caribbean descent: 1 Labour, 1 none/not specified.
Kin group details

We have eleven kin groups in our study, involving interviews with between
three and eight people in any one kin group. The following gives brief
details of each of the kin groups and its members. In line with our policy
on confidentiality, all names are pseudonyms, and most were chosen by the
interviewees themselves. Usually the initial interviewee chose a family name
and other interviewees simply chose a first name. Where there is more than
one family name within a kin group, subsequent family pseudonyms were
usually chosen by the first interviewee with a different family name from
our key interviewee.
The Yates: Sarah Yates’s kin group

We interviewed six members of this family, beginning with Sarah Yates, a
42-year-old married woman who lived with her second husband and their
15-year-old daughter, in their own home in the Greater Manchester region.
Sarah was employed full-time as a driver. Her second husband, John Yates,
was our second interviewee. He was aged 59 and had worked as a
mechanical engineer for over thirty-five years until his ‘early’ retirement in
1986. Since that time he has done part-time voluntary work. He and Sarah
had been married for sixteen years at the time of our interviews with them.
Our next interviewee was Sarah’s daughter by her first marriage, Anna
Yates. Anna was aged 22, and lived with her boyfriend in another part of
north west England. She had left her parental home to train as a nurse.
We also interviewed Sarah’s mother, Ethel Phillips, a 73-year-old
widowed woman who lived near to Sarah and John, and also near to Sarah’s
brother. Ethel did factory work before she had her children, and various
part-time jobs afterwards including working as a cleaner and in a canteen.
She retired from her last job in 1986. Sarah’s brother, Henry Phillips, was
our fifth intervieweee in this kin group. A married man aged 49, he and his
wife live about three miles away from Sarah’s household. He is a self-
employed decorator, and he and his wife have two teenaged children.
Finally, we interviewed one of Sarah’s cousins, whom she had identified

as a close relative. Mary Mycock, aged 37, lives with her second husband,
her two children aged 10 and 8 from her first marriage, and one of her
husband’s children, aged 21, from his first marriage. Her husband’s other
child, a daughter aged 19, used to live with them also but has now left home.
Before the birth of her children, Mary did full-time clerical work. She does
not intend to return to full-time employment until her children are at
secondary school. Mary’s household is also in the Greater Manchester
region.
The Archers: Shula Archer’s kin group

We interviewed five members of this family, beginning with Shula Archer,
a 19-year-old single student living in her parents’ home. Shula had been
doing an ‘A’ level course, but in between her first and second interviews
with us she left the course, and went to work and live in a Kibbutz in Israel
for a short period. Shula had a brother aged 13, and two sisters aged 6 and
4, none of whom were included in our study. We did interview Shula’s
parents, Jill Archer and Phil Archer. Jill and Phil were married, and neither
had been married before. Both were ‘only’ children. Jill was aged 43, and
employed from time to time as a supply teacher, although she saw herself
as most fully engaged in bringing up her children. Phil was aged 42, and
self-employed full-time as a partner in a practice of veterinary surgeons.
They lived in their own house in Manchester.
We also interviewed two of Shula’s grandparents, Dorothy O’Malley and
John O’Malley. Aged in their late sixties and early seventies respectively,
these were Jill’s parents, and they lived in the Manchester region also,
although in a different town from Jill, Phil and Shula. Both had retired
after a life-time’s working in a public service industry. We did not interview
Shula’s other grandparents, that is Phil’s parents, who lived also in Greater
Manchester, and were aged 80 and 79.
The Simpsons: Julie Simpson’s kin group

We interviewed four members of this family, beginning with Julie Simpson,
a 25-year-old single woman who lived alone in her own flat in Manchester,
where she had moved after completing her degree course at a university in
the Midlands. Julie was employed full-time as a computer programmer.
Her parents, Stan Simpson and Eileen Simpson, also took part in our study.
They lived in Leeds in their own house, which they shared with Stan’s
widowed mother, Doreen, who did not take part in our study. Doreen had
been living in the household for eighteen years. Stan and Eileen were aged
52 and 46 respectively, and they had recently acquired a grocery shop
which they were running together. This followed Stan’s redundancy from a
APPENDIX A 191
management post a few years previously. Eileen had not worked full-time
for many years prior to taking on the grocery shop, but had done a number
of part-time jobs including shop work.
Julie had two younger sisters, one of whom—Clare—had been married
and divorced, and was now living with her new partner in Essex. Clare
remained in Essex when her parents and sisters moved from there to Leeds,
following a promotion for Stan. She married shortly afterwards. Clare did
not take part in our study. Julie’s other sister, Janet Simpson, was our
fourth interviewee in this family. She was aged 21, single, and lived alone
in a privately rented flat in the same town as her parents. She had moved
out of her parents’ household about a year before our interview with her.
She was employed full-time as an insurance clerk locally.
The Kings: Avril King’s kin group

We interviewed just three members of this family. Avril King was our initial
contact. She was married, aged 43, and lived with her second husband and
their 13-year-old son in their own home in Greater Manchester. Avril and
her husband had been married for twenty-three years (she married for the
first time about thirty years ago). She was employed part-time doing shop
work. Avril’s husband, Miles King, was our second interviewee. He was
aged 52, and was employed full-time in a public service industry. Miles had
not been married before.
Our final King interviewee was Miles’s father, Alfred King, a 77-year-old
twice-widowed man. Alfred had remarried after the death of Miles’s
mother, and had two adult stepchildren from his second marriage, as well
as another son from his first. He lived in his own home not far away from
Miles and Avril. He was now retired, but had been a railway worker
throughout his working life.
The Crabtrees: Jean Crabtree’s kin group

We interviewed six members of this kin group, beginning with Jean
Crabtree, a 24-year-old single woman who lived with her partner in a
house which they jointly owned in the Greater Manchester region. Jean
was employed full-time doing clerical and secretarial work. Her partner,
David Waterworth, was our second interviewee in this kin group. David
was 23 years old, and was employed full-time as a computer representative
and consultant. Jean and David planned to marry in a year or two’s time.
Jean had a brother and a sister. Her brother was aged 37 and lived in the
north west of England, but did not take part in our study. Jean’s sister,
Joyce Stevens, also lived in the Greater Manchester region, and did take
part. Joyce was aged 39, married with two children aged 13 and 8, and
was not currently in paid employment. Jean and Joyce’s widowed mother,
Ellen Crabtree, was also one of our interviewees. Ellen was aged 63, and
lived alone in a flat she had purchased under a sheltered housing scheme, in
the north west of England. Ellen’s husband, Jean’s father, had died some
twenty years before, following which Ellen retrained as a book-keeper and
gained full-time employment. All of Jean’s grandparents had died, but she
had three remaining uncles; one, her mother—Ellen’s—brother, and the
other two her father’s brothers.
Jean also identified some of her quasi in-laws as close kin, and David’s
mother and father, Tom Waterworth and Ethel Waterworth, also took
part in our study as a result. Aged in their late forties, they lived in a small
town in a different part of north west England, where they ran a fish and
chip shop, which also provided their rented accommodation. One of
David’s sisters (single and aged 18), and his brother (single and also in his
late teens), lived in the parental household, and David’s third sister (single
and aged 21) lived nearby with her 2-year-old child. Tom and Ethel had
run a series of small businesses over their life-times, including an hotel in a
British seaside resort, and a bar in Spain. They lived in Spain for a few
years, along with all their children with the exception of David, who
remained in the UK. All of David’s grandparents had died, but he had two
uncles; his mother’s brothers.
The Arkrights: Simone Arkright’s kin group

We interviewed seven members of this kin group, beginning with Simone
Arkright, a 22-year-old single woman who lived in her parents’ household
in Manchester. Simone was employed full-time in an insurance company.
She had five siblings: two sisters and three brothers. We interviewed all but
her eldest sister (who was in fact the eldest sibling) who was aged 26,
married and living in Canada where she worked as a shop manager. The
youngest sibling whom we interviewed was 20-year-old Selina Arkright,
Simone’s other sister. Selina also lived in the parental home, and was at
college doing a business studies course at the time of our interview with
her. She was single, but had just become engaged. Dylan Arkright and Eric
Arkright were twins aged 23. Dylan lived in the parental household, and
was employed full-time as a graphic artist. Eric had moved out of the
family household after doing a degree course at university, and now
worked for the Ministry of Defence in the south of England. Oskar
Arkright was the eldest brother. He lived in the parental household and
worked as a lab technician in a local hospital, but planned to leave home
shortly to seek work abroad.
Our other two interviewees from this kin group were Simone’s parents,
Barbara Arkright and Kenneth Arkright. They were married, and had not
been married previously. Barbara was 60 years old, and worked as a night
sister in a special baby care unit in a local hospital. Barbara was born and
APPENDIX A 193
brought up in Ireland, where three of her sisters (one brother had died, and
the other sister lived in London) and their widowed mother still lived.
Kenneth’s origins were in Manchester. He was 75 years old, and had
retired from his job as a warehouse manager some fifteen years prior to
our interview with him. He had not taken paid work since that time. Both
of his parents were dead, as were four of his six siblings.
The Mansfields: Susan Mansfield’s kin group

We interviewed six members of this kin group, beginning with Susan
Mansfield, a married woman in her mid-thirties with four children aged
20, 17, 13 and 7. The eldest two, a son and a daughter, lived away from
home and were from her first marriage. The younger two lived at home,
and were from Susan’s second marriage. Susan lived in Manchester with
her second husband in their own home, and she worked as a data
preparation officer. Her husband, Roger Mansfield, was our second
interviewee. Roger was aged 36, and was a full-time student at a local
university. He had not been married previously. One of Susan’s brothers,
Kevin Ellis, was married to one of Roger’s sisters, Kath Ellis. We
interviewed both Kevin and Kath. They had four young children, and lived
in their own home just round the corner from Susan and Roger. Kath was
not currently in paid employment, and Kevin had been made redundant
from his job in the steel industry. Roger had four other siblings, one of
whom, Lesley Trafford, we interviewed. She was aged 40, married with
two children aged 20 and 16, and ran her own ‘corner shop’ business in
the Greater Manchester area. Susan had one other sibling, a brother, whom
we did not interview.
Roger’s father had died in 1985, but his mother, Nan Mansfield, was
aged 67, living locally in her own home, and also participated in our study.
She did not have paid employment. She had separated from her husband—
Roger’s father—some years before his death. Her own mother had died
when she was very young, and she had been brought up by an aunt, who
had also died some years ago.
The Jacksons: Robert Jackson’s kin group

We interviewed five members of this kin group. Robert Jackson was our
first interviewee. He was aged 37, and living with his second wife and their
two young children in a rented house in the Greater Manchester region.
Robert had recently taken ‘early retirement’ from a public service
occupation on grounds of ill-health, and was in the process of setting up
his own business. He had a daughter aged 11 from his first marriage with
whom he had little contact. David’s second wife, Elizabeth, was our next
interviewee. She was aged 27, and did not have paid employment although
she had done various part-time jobs recently—including shop work, pub
work and catering. Elizabeth had not been married before, and she and
Robert had been married for five years.
We then interviewed Robert’s parents, Richard Jackson and Mary
Jackson. Richard was aged 68, and Mary was aged 67. Neither had been
married before and they lived together in their own house in a different
part of Greater Manchester from Robert and Elizabeth. Richard had
worked for the local authority for many years in manual occupations, until
his retirement in 1979. Mary had worked part-time as a seamstress and
retired in 1983.
McNeil Jackson one of Robert’s two brothers, was our final interviewee.
He was aged 40, married, and lived in a different town in north west
England with his second wife and their two children aged 9 and 7, and his
son aged 18 from his first marriage. McNeil had recently started his own
business in home improvements, having left a public service occupation.
The Frosts: Andrew Frost’s kin group

We interviewed six members of this kin group, beginning with Andrew
Frost, a 23-year-old married man. Andrew lived in Manchester with his
wife, in their own house. He was employed full-time as an accountant, and
became fully qualified shortly after our second interview with him. Andrew’s
wife, Elizabeth Frost, also took part in our study. She was aged 24 and was
employed full-time as a secretary. She and Andrew met while they were at
Manchester University, both doing degree courses. Andrew was born in the
Midlands. He left his parental home in order to go to university, and did
not return again afterwards. Elizabeth was born in South Wales, and
similarly left home to attend university and did not return afterwards.
Elizabeth’s father died in 1979, but her mother still lives in South Wales, as
does her brother and her sister, both of whom are married.
Andrew’s parents, June Frost and Francis Frost, both took part in our
study. They are married, neither having been married previously, and live
in the Midlands in their own house. June does not have paid work, but
Francis is employed full-time as a physicist. Francis’s mother is alive and
lives locally, but his father, and June’s parents, have all died.
Andrew also has two siblings, both of whom were interviewed as part of
our study. Jack Frost is his elder brother. He was in his early thirties when
we interviewed him, married with a baby, and living in London in a house
he and his wife owned jointly with another couple. Jack was employed as a
company secretary, full-time, and his wife worked part-time as a trading
standards officer. Jane Smith is Andrew’s elder sister. Also in her thirties,
she is married with two young children. Jane trained as a teacher, but is
currently not in paid employment, and neither is her husband. They live in
their own home in the Midlands, in a different town from Jane’s parents.
APPENDIX A 195
The Gardners: Tim Gardner’s kin group

We interviewed three members of this family, beginning with Tim
Gardner, a 22-year-old single man who lived in privately rented
accommodation in Manchester which he shared with friends. Tim had
until recently been a full-time university student, and following on from
that a sabbatical officer for the Students Union. After that, he started a
small business selling second-hand and handmade clothing on a market
stall. Tim was an only child. His mother, Caroline Gardner, who also took
part in our study had been involved in Tim’s business venture as a
dressmaker and adviser. She and her husband, Lawrence Gardner, our
third interviewee in this family, lived in Greater Manchester in their own
home. They were aged 50 and 51 respectively when we interviewed them.
Caroline from time to time did part-time paid work, mainly dressmaking,
for a variety of employers. Lawrence was a self-employed upholsterer, in a
family business he had inherited from his father. His mother had died in
1982, and his father in 1987, shortly before our interview with Lawrence.
Caroline’s parents had both died, her mother fairly recently, and her father
in 1968. Lawrence had one married sister, who lived locally, and Caroline
was an only child.
The Joneses: Isobel Jones’s kin group

We interviewed five members of this, our final, kin group. The first was
Isobel Jones, a 42-year-old widowed woman. She lived in her own home
with her son. Her daughter had recently left home. Isobel had a full-time
professional job in the education sector. She had been widowed for about
two years. Prior to that, she and her husband and their two children had
lived in South America for about six years in the 1970s. Isobel had a
married sister who lived in Canada, and who did not take part in our study.
Isobel’s son Zaki Jones was our next interviewee. He was aged 22, and
was a student. He was living at home temporarily in between a degree
course and a Master’s course, both at universities away from north west
England. He had also done various part-time and temporary jobs. Zaki’s
younger sister, Ann Jones, was our next interviewee. She was aged 20, and
had recently moved out of her mother’s household to share a local
authority rented flat with friends nearby. She had worked on a YTS
scheme, and had recently started ‘A’ level courses.
We also interviewed Isobel’s mother, Kathleen Snow, a 62-year-old
widowed woman who lived nearby in her own home. She had not been in
paid employment for many years. Kathleen had just one sister who lived
nearby but who did not take part in our study. Isobel also identified her
late husband’s mother as close family, and we interviewed her also. Jane
Jones, herself a widow, was in her seventies, and lived nearby in another
part of Greater Manchester. She lived in a house which had been provided
by her late husband’s employer, and where she had been allowed to remain
since his death in 1976. Jane also had not had paid employment for many
years.
Appendix B:
Should relatives be the preferred source of
help for someone in need of assistance?
Survey findings
Appendix B gives details of the survey findings discussed in Chapter 1.

These relate to fourteen questions from the Family Obligations Survey,
where we sketched out a situation where a person was in need of
assistance, then asked respondents to say whether the help should come
from relatives or from some other source. We have selected only shorter
questions for this exercise. The survey also contains several longer and
more complex questions, where choices of this type are posed. Data from
the longer vignette questions are discussed elsewhere in the book.
In this appendix we are giving the question wording, followed by the
frequencies. We have also noted the consensus baseline (explained in
Chapter 1) for each question. Details of how the survey was conducted can
be found in Appendix A and in Chapter 1.
We have grouped the questions in the following way:
A. Questions where there was a high level of agreement that help should
come from relatives.
B. Questions where there was a high level of agreement that help should
not come from relatives.
C. Questions where there was a split pattern of responses.
A.
HIGH LEVEL OF AGREEMENT THAT HELP SHOULD
COME FROM RELATIVES
1. Suppose that a couple with a young child have returned from working
abroad and can’t afford to buy or rent any where to live until one of them
gets a job. Should any of their relatives offer to have the family in their
own home for the next few months?
2a. A 19-year-old girl, who has been living with her boyfriend, has a baby.
She and her boyfriend split up and she can no longer go on living in his
home. She cannot afford to rent a home of her own. Should she:
2b. (Respondents who said ‘something else’ or ‘depends’.)

Do you think that her parents ought to offer her a home or not?
B.
HIGH LEVEL OF AGREEMENT THAT HELP SHOULD
NOT COME FROM RELATIVES
3. A young couple with children aged 2 and 4 have not been able to have a
holiday since the children were born. They want a two-week holiday but
cannot afford it. Should they:
APPENDIX B 199
4. A young couple with children aged 10 and 8 want to send them to a

private school but cannot afford the fees themselves. Should they:
C.
SPLIT PATTERN OF RESPONSES
5. If someone has enough money to help an elderly relative who cannot
look after himself or herself, which of these three forms of help do you
think would be best?
6. Are there any circumstances under which it is reasonable to refuse to

provide personal help for a sick or elderly relative?
7a. Suppose a young couple need an extra £800 for the deposit on their
first home, and they cannot borrow the money from a bank, building
society or loan company. Should they wait to buy a home until they have
got enough money, or should they see if they can borrow it from relatives?
7b. (Respondents who said ‘wait’ or ‘depends’.)

Are there any circumstances under which you think it would be alright to
borrow from relatives?
APPENDIX B 201
8. If someone lends money to a relative so that they can start a business, do

you think that the loan should be repaid with interest, or should just the
amount that was borrowed be returned?
9. If a student runs up £400 in debts while at college, do you think that

parents should pay off the debts, even if it means some financial hardship
for them?
10a. If an elderly person wants to go into a private nursing home to live,

but can only afford part of the price, do you think that relatives should
offer to provide the rest of the money that is needed?
10b. (Respondents who said that relatives should not pay were asked this
open-ended question. Up to three answers were post-coded.)
Why do you think that relatives should not be asked to pay part of the
nursing home costs?
11a. Suppose an elderly couple need to redecorate their home.

Do you think that relatives should offer to pay to have the work done?
11b. (Respondents who said that relatives should ‘not offer’.)

If the elderly couple cannot do the decorating themselves, do you think
that they should ask relatives for the money to have it done?
APPENDIX B 203
12. A couple with children aged 9 and 14 have been evicted because they
could not pay their rent. They cannot get a council flat and cannot afford a
private one. Should relatives offer to give them a home for the next six
months or so?
13. There is a woman with children aged 3 and 5 who has just left her
husband because he is violent. Should she:
14. Suppose an elderly person needs help with shopping and a little help in
the home. The elderly person has an adult niece and nephew who live
nearby and no other relatives. Should the niece and nephew take over
responsibility for the tasks, or should someone else?
15a. If an elderly person, who has become very frail and can only move
around with help, can no longer live alone should he or she move into an old
people’s home or go and live with relatives?
15b. (Respondents who said ‘old people’s home’.)

Are there any circumstances in which the elderly person should live with
relatives?
Appendix C:
Who does what for whom?
WHO DOES WHAT FOR WHOM?

This appendix summarises data from our qualitative study on types of
assistance which are given and received in families. We interviewed eighty-
eight people in total, forty-nine women and thirty-nine men. Appendix A
gives details of of how these data were collected.
The summary given here is only a very sketchy outline of some of the main
patterns which emerge from our interviews. Some readers will find it useful
to have it set out in this way, others may not. We were not attempting to
construct an accurate account of precisely who does what. In contrast with
our survey, we did not ask people identical questions phrased in precisely
the same way. Therefore the numbers which we give in the summaries
below should be taken simply as guides to identifying experiences which
were common or rare among our study population, rather than an accurate
representation. There may, for example, have been experiences which
people had forgotten about, or where they had forgotten the precise
sequence of events which led to some help being given. We do not wish to
impose a spurious accuracy on our data to which our methods do not lend
themselves. However, we did think that it would be useful to indicate the
range of experiences which our study population have had, and for this
reason we have separated out categories of assistance and included them in
full, even where we have only one example in each category.
These are summaries of the simplest possible sort and they are
incomplete in the sense that we have only included lists of items where we
felt that we had reasonable confidence in our numbers. We have much
more data than appears in these lists but we do not think it appropriate to
express it in numerical form. For example, in relation to looking after
children, we felt that we could say with a reasonable degree of certainly
who was providing this type of assistance. We are less sure about whether
we collected accurate information from everyone about the circumstances
under which such assistance was provided, though we do have interesting
data on this from some people. So read alone, these lists raise more
questions than they answer. The discussion contained within the book
chapters makes much more extensive use of the data in different ways.
In using these tables readers should note:
1 In most cases we have counted in the number of examples which we

were given. Some interviewees gave us several under one heading,
others might not have given us any.
2 In most cases, we have counted only those examples where the
interviewee her/himself was involved. Where we have included ‘third
party’ examples, we have stated that. This means that the interviewee
reported an example which did not involve themselves directly, but
concerned other people in their kin group.
3 The total number of people in our study population was eighty-eight.
1:
Financial assistance
a. How many people have experience (either as donor or recipient) of
giving or lending money within families?
b. For what purpose is money given/lent, and to whom?

Note: about 10 per cent of these examples concern third parties.
i. Daily living expenses (mostly small amounts of money):

APPENDIX C 207
c. Daily living expenses: is the money a gift or a loan?
2:
Providing a home for a relative, either temporarily or
permanently
a. Under what circumstances do adults live with a relative (other than their
spouse and their immature children)?
Note:
Current examples=arrangements in the interviewee’s own
household at the time of interview.
Past examples=arrangements in which our interviewees have
themselves been involved in the past, either as donor or recipient.
APPENDIX C 209
b. How many people have experience of living in a household which

contains an adult relative (categories ii-viii above)?
APPENDIX C 211
3:
Looking after young children
Note:
Regular arrangement=where an interviewee said that this is something
which happens, or happened in the past, as part of a common pattern. It
does not necessarily mean frequent.
Occasional arrangement=where interviewee cited specific individual
occasions on which child care had been provided.
a. Who looks after whose children?
Mother’s mother: regular 14

Mother’s mother: occasional 5
Father’s mother: regular 6
Father’s mother: occasional 3
Mother’s stepfather: regular 1
Mother’s father: occasional 1
Father’s sister: regular 1
Mother’s brother: regular 1
Sisters looking after each other’s children: occasional 5
Sister/brothers-in-law looking after each other’s children: regular 1
Sisters-in-law looking after each other’s children: occasional 3
Child’s older sister and brother: regular 2
Child’s older sister: occasional 1
Mother’s aunt: occasional 1
b. If arrangement was regular, was any payment involved?
4:
Practical help
Who helps whom with practical tasks?
Note:
We asked open-ended questions about help with practical tasks, but did
not itemise tasks separately. The examples here are those which our
interviewees thought sufficiently important to mention.
APPENDIX C 213
5:
Caring for someone who is ill or incapacitated
Note:
i. Major commitment=where the person named was acting as the main
supporter and/or where the time involved made a significant impact on
daily life.
ii. In these tables the first number given represents examples where our
interviewee her/himself had been involved as either donor or recipient. The
number given in brackets represents third party examples.
a. Looking after relatives who are elderly: who looks after whom?
APPENDIX C 215
b. Looking after adult relatives who are not elderly : who looks after
whom?
c. Who reports looking after a relative (in any of the above categories)?
6:
Giving emotional support
Note: Examples here represent situations where someone helps someone
else by listening, talking, giving advice.
Under what circumstances do people receive emotional support from
relatives, and who gives it?
APPENDIX C 217
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Wenger, G.C. (1984) The Supportive Network, London, Allen & Unwin.
Willmott, P. and Young, M. (1960) Family and Class in a London Surburb,
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Name index
Allan, G. 28 Hubert, J. 6, 12, 28, 161

Anderson, D. 9
Arber, S. 17, 81 Leach, E.R. 8
Lévi-Strauss, C. 50
Becker, H. 92, 93, 164, 165
Bell, C. 6, 161 Mcfarlane, A. 176
Bloch, M. 8 Martin, J. 119
Brannen, J. 6 Mason, J. 13, 14, 15, 17, 17, 18, 20,
34, 35, 78, 95, 98, 119, 133, 161,
Cheal, D. 141 183, 184, 185
Corrigan, P. 141 Mauss, M. 141,143
Courtenay, G. 178 Morgan, D.H.J. 9,18, 28
Crowther, M.A. 174, 175, 177 Morris, L. 6
Finch, J. 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 28, 33, 41, 50, Parker, H. 9

52, 59, 158, 159, 174, 176, 178, 182;
and Groves, D. 7; Quadagno, J. 6, 175, 177
and Mason, J. 13, 14, 15, 17, 17, Qureshi, H. 84, 176
18, 20, 34, 35, 78, 95, 98, 119, 133,
161, 183, 184, 185 Roberts, C. 119
Firth, R. 6, 12, 28, 161 Rosser, C. 6, 28, 161
Fletcher, R. 28
Forge, A. 6, 12, 28, 161 Sahlins, M. 50
Fortes, M. 8 Stacey, M. 6
Gilbert, N. 17 Townsend, P. 176

Goffman, E. 127, 134, 143
Gouldner, A. 42, 50, 53 Ungerson, C 7
Green, H. 17
Grieco, M. 52
Walker, A. 84, 176
Groves, D. 7
Wall, R.6, 81, 177
Wallace, C. 9
Harris, C.C. 6, 28, 161 Wenger, G.C. 176
Harris, N. 9 Wicks, M. 7
Henwood, M. 7 Willmott, P. 6, 7, 28, 161
222
NAME INDEX 223
Wilson, G. 6
Worsley, P. 8
Young, M. 6, 7, 28, 161

Subject index
age: development over time 59–4, 77, 92–

and public norms about family 6, 164–8, 170–4, 173–7
responsibility 35; conflict, family 161, 168
qualitative study group control see power
characteristics 186 cousins vii–2, 5, 40, 46–8, 48, 166
agency and structure 169–7 crises 32, 59, 73, 79, 157, 161, 161,
Asian descent, families of 52, 81, 138, 164;
139, 162, 163, 183, 185, 186, 187, individual examples 42–4, 53–5, 74,
188, 206 147, 154;
authority see power study data on types of assistance
215–19;
Caribbean descent, families of 3, 52, and study methodology 185
162, 183, 185, 186, 187, 188
caring for elderly and infirm 7, 42, 59, daughter:
63, 75, 77, 103, 104, 107, 161, 162; father/daughter relationship 48,
individual examples 2–3, 5, 24–6, 153–7;
31, 48, 71–4, 75–9, 95–98, 101–5, step-father/daughter relationship 42;
103, 104–8, 106, 110–15, 113–17, see also mother/daughter
115, 123–7, 140, 156; relationship
survey findings 16–17, 18–19, 33–6, daughter-in-law see mother/daughter-in-
60–4, 92, 99–4, 103, 106, 132–7, law relationship
198–1, 204; dependence see independence/
types of assistance 29, 213–17 dependence
child care 42, 119, 161, 165, 173; divorce 33, 184, 215–18
as excuse 103, 120, 121; duty see family duty
individual examples 31, 45;
survey data 33–5; economic assistance see financial
types of assistance 29, 40, 204, 210 assistance
childhood and development of economic change 6–7
commitment 152, 165–9 education, assistance for 3, 22, 26, 108;
Christian values see religious values study data on types of assistance
commitment 24–6, 34, 53–7, 91–5, 94, 108, 206;
143, 167; survey findings 19, 198
case study of Simpson kin group 79– educational qualifications:
91, 92;
224
SUBJECT INDEX 225
qualitative study group importance in practice 28–32;

characteristics 187 material value of 58, 91, 126, 145,
elderly 7, 9, 176; 167–2;
assistance to 36–39, 43–5, 67–68, reasons for 4–5, 8;
80–88, 92, 135, 136–40, 140, 145; reciprocity see reciprocity;
personal care of see caring for relation between previous
elderly and infirm; experience and beliefs 17;
survey findings on assistance to 129– relation between previous
3, 201–3, 203; experience and practice 24–7, 50–2,
types of housing assistance 210 143, 152;
emotional support 31, 32, 42–4, 63, 70, rights related to 10, 135, 138, 139,
135, 161; 140, 163–7, 176–80;
types of assistance 29–1, 215–19; significance of family relationships
see also crises and responsibilities as social support
employment 173; 159–6;
as a legitimate excuse 95, 96, 97, survey findings on preferred source
98, 99–5, 110, 114, 115, 118–2, of help 196–204;
120; symbolic significance 32, 36, 83;
study data on types of assistance variety of experience 30–3, 56, 58,
with 217; 59, 161, 164, 165, 166, 172
and study group characteristics 187; family conference see negotiation,
survey data 34–6, 61, 95, 99–3; explicit
and survey sample 180 family duty vii, 5, 8, 163, 177
ESRC 178 family obligation vii, 5, 7, 8,9, 18, 86,
ethnicity: 109, 135, 163
and social support 162; Family Obligations Project 10–14;
and survey sample 179–3; large-scale survey see survey;
see also Asian descent; methodology and research design
Caribbean descent 178–97;
etiquette 129, 137, 140 qualitative study see qualitative
study;
family: relationship between two sets of
British model 176; data 14, 21, 184
decline of vii, 9, 28, 161; family relationships:
defined for research 5–6; distinctive character of 8–9, 18,157–
ideas about whether it ‘works’ as 1,166
support system 32, 73, 161–4, 168; see also genealogical relationship;
interaction in see negotiation; significance as social support 159–6;
reputation of 5; and social change 7
research into 6, 7, 9, 12, 18, 28, 33, family responsibilities:
50, 161, 167, 176 law and 6, 8, 175, 176–80;
family assistance: moral dimensions of see moral
asking for or offering 129–5, 134, aspect of negotiations and
135, 140 responsibilities;
see also generosity; nature of 9, 12, 20, 21, 26, 33, 94,
expecting or not expecting 132–44, 109, 141, 163–9, 167, 175–80
142, 164, 177; see also negotiation;
in practice see qualitative study;
226 SUBJECT INDEX
public norms see survey; government policy see social policy

reasons for studying vii–10; grandchildren 34–6, 100, 177;
relationship between principles and individual examples 43–5, 48, 57,
practice 9, 28, 163, 171, 177 66–9, 101, 103, 106–10, 108, 135
father/daughter relationship 48, 153–7 grandparents 6, 34–6, 40, 100, 177;
father/son relationship 76–9, 112–16, individual examples 5, 43–5, 48, 57,
115–19, 122 66–9, 101, 103, 106–10, 108, 135
feminism 39, 172
financial assistance 29, 30, 56, 63, 135, holidays:
161, 162, 173; study data on types of assistance
individual examples 3, 21–7, 31, 38, 206;
43–5, 46–8, 48, 49, 51, 66–68, 96, survey findings 17–18, 197–198
102, 103, 108, 112–16, 127–1, 131– housing 29, 30, 43, 63, 161;
5, 135, 137, 141–8, 146–50, 157; individual examples 31, 37–9, 45,
social and legal policy 9, 177; 81–88, 136–40, 138;
study data on types of 40–2, 205–9; and qualitative study data on types
survey findings 17, 19, 129–4, 200– of assistance 206, 207–11, 217;
3 qualitative study group
friends 5, 32, 166 characteristics 188;
and social policy 9;
gender: survey findings 16, 17, 18, 19, 131,
and competence 105, 119–3, 121; 196–9, 203
dependency and independence 39,
48–49, 58; identity, public and personal see moral
and expecting assistance 139–3; identity
and family responsibility 89, 94, 98, immigration 7
103, 162, 170, 172–7, 215; independence/dependence 24, 67, 68,
and indirect exchange 42; 69, 126, 127, 131, 161, 164, 167,
and legitimate excuses 95, 116–25; 176;
and non-decision-making 74–9; concept of balance see under
and qualitative study group reciprocity
characteristics 186; individualism 176, 177
and reputation 93, 157; in-laws:
and survey data 17, 35; individual examples 4, 5, 25, 45–7,
and survey sample 179–3 48, 49, 75–8, 136–40, 145, 154–8;
genealogical relationship 5, 8–9, 18, 94, survey data 33–5, 60, 100
161, 165, 166, 170, 175; interdependence 164, 167;
and legitimacy of excuses 98, 100, see also commitment
116–20, 122;
see also family relationships: kinship see family
distinctive character of
generosity 26, 127, 134, 139, 141–8, law and family responsibility 6, 8, 175,
157 176–80
geographical mobility 7; legitimate excuses 94–125, 126, 171;
and commitment 54; commitments to ‘one’s own family’
as legitimate excuse, 105–10, 120 95, 103–7, 115, 120–4;
gift-giving 141, 143 competence 104–8, 119, 120;
SUBJECT INDEX 227
employment 95, 96, 97, 98, 99–5, mother/daughter relationship 2–3, 5, 7,

110, 114, 115, 118–2, 120; 31, 51–3, 65–8, 70–4, 75, 86–9, 133–
geographical distance 105–10, 120; 7, 152
importance of legitimacy 122–8; mother-/daughter-in-law relationship
lack of resources 107–12; 33–5, 45–7, 48, 49, 60, 100, 145,
making excuses and constructing 154–8
meanings 109–28, 153; mother/son relationship 26, 127–1, 146–
nature of 94–99, 115–19 50, 148
liable relatives 6, 8, 175, 176–80 mother-/son-in-law relationship 4, 5,
136–40
men:
and assistance 29, 32, 75, 76, 173; negotiation 58–94, 94, 109, 126, 165,
dependence/independence 24, 48– 173;
49; creation of legitimate excuses see
expecting assistance 44, 139; legitimate excuses;
and indirect exchange 42, 43–5, 48– demeanour 127–1, 134, 136, 138,
49; 140, 142, 164, 168;
and legitimate excuses 95, 105; forms of negotiating practice 78–91;
reputation 93, 157 hinting 137, 138;
migration, help with 52–4, 206 importance of time 59, 90, 122,
moral aspect of negotiations and 164;
responsibilities 91, 122–8, 126–31, open discussion see negotiation,
140, 141, 144, 145, 167–2; explicit;
significance of 155–61; Simpson case study 79–91;
see also moral identity; understanding 58–4, 134, 185
moral reputation negotiation, explicit 59, 62–69, 73, 75,
moral blackmail 168 77, 78, 79, 80, 82, 84, 85, 87–88, 89–
moral identity 27, 39, 91, 99, 115, 123, 3, 94, 96, 111, 122
125, 126–31, 140, 141, 145, 146, negotiation, implicit 44, 59, 62–5, 65,
151, 155, 157, 165, 167–1, 169, 170, 66, 70, 80, 85, 89–2, 94, 115;
172; clear intentions 62, 70–5;
individual examples 26, 89, 124, non-decisions 62, 72–9, 78, 79, 90,
127–1, 131, 132, 139, 142, 143, 122, 156
144 nieces/nephews:
moral reputation 77, 93, 115–19, 117, survey findings 203
122, 123, 125, 126, 127, 140, 145, non-commitment see legitimate excuses
146–58, 165, 167–1, 170–4, 172; nuclear family 6, 176
effects over time 150–4, 152, 153; nursing care 18, 104;
and gender 93; see also caring for elderly and infirm
importance of 150, 155–61;
individual examples 88, 89, 91, 112, obligation see family obligation
113, 115–19, 128, 139, 146–50, Office of Population Censuses and
148–4, 152, 153–8; Surveys 178, 179, 180
processes of construction and
maintenance of 151–9; parent/child relationship 6, 41, 42, 43,
see also generosity 63, 70–3, 78, 108, 116, 128, 134–8,
161, 162, 165–9, 177;
228 SUBJECT INDEX
asymmetry 19, 29–1; Blanchflower, Shirley 65–8;

and ethnicity 162; Brown, Sally 30–2, 106;
individual examples 21–7, 30–2, 36– Crabtree kin group 71, 101–5, 103,
39, 48, 51–4, 67–69, 73–6, 75–9, 113–17, 135, 138, 139, 140, 191–4;
80–90, 92, 95–98, 101–5, 104–8, Ellis, Sophia 139;
106–10, 110–17, 118–5, 123–7, Frost kin group 45–7, 48, 49, 117–5,
131–5, 138–2, 140, 141–8; 137–1, 194;
survey data 61–4, 101, 103, 129–4, Gardner kin group 21–8, 46–8, 48,
133–7; 49, 54, 55–7, 104–8, 111–15, 115,
see also individual relationships 194–7;
parents-in-law see in-laws Green, John 42, 43–5, 48, 49, 57,
political allegiance and qualitative study 135, 136–40, 138, 139, 140;
group characteristics 188 Jackson kin group 53–5, 73–6, 143–
Poor Law 6, 8, 175, 176 8, 146–50, 151, 152, 154–8, 156,
power 38–39, 49, 56, 57, 58, 67, 68, 157, 193–6;
69, 72, 79, 131, 144, 168 Jones kin group 76, 108, 127–1,
practical assistance 30, 32, 42, 63, 103, 129, 131–5, 137, 153, 156, 195;
161; King kin group 71–4, 139, 191;
individual examples 31, 36–39, 44, McIntyre, Thomas 112–16, 115–19,
45–8, 55–7, 84, 118, 135, 138, 145, 122, 150–4 152, 153;
154; Mansfield kin group 41, 54, 95–97,
qualitative study data on types of 98–2, 101, 103, 110–14, 113, 115,
29, 210–14; 116, 120, 123–7, 192–5;
survey findings 203 Miller, Joyce 148–3, 153;
pride in family 53, 64, 65, 73–6, 78 Mitchell, Claire 153–7;
Mycock, Mary vii–2, 5, 68–1, 189;
qualitative study 12–14, 26, 161, 162, O’Malley, John and Dorothy 48, 51,
164, 183–97; 66–9, 141–6, 190;
interview content and method 13, Pearson, Keith 67–68, 71;
14, 186; Phillips, Ethel 145, 189;
policy on confidentiality vii, 183–6, Simpson kin group 79–91, 92, 116,
188–1; 120, 136, 148, 190;
sampling 184–7; Simpson, Eileen 76–9;
study group characteristics 186–90; Smith, Alf 4, 5, 140;
types of assistance 204–19; Smith, Jane 45–7, 48, 49, 117–5,
see also individual topics 137–1, 194;
qualitative study: Smith, Leona 3;
kin groups and examples 13, 185, Smith, Marian 42–4;
188–7; Trafford, Lesley 110, 115, 193;
Allen, Sarah 36–39, 57; Trotter, Tilly 51, 52, 152, 157;
Anwar, Sara 103, 138; Turner, Jim 139;
Archer kin group 48, 51, 52, 66–9, Vickers, Maureen 2–3, 5, 7, 31,
141–6, 189–2; 106;
Arkright kin group 105, 107, 120, Wilson, Ken 148–3, 153;
147, 157, 192; Yates family vii–2, 5, 68–1, 70, 106–
Ashton, Jane 64–7, 157; 10, 189
Bailey, Paul 52, 53;
SUBJECT INDEX 229
reciprocity 33–58, 58, 135, 141, 164–8; son/mother-in-law relationship 4, 5,

concept of balance between 136–40
independence/dependence 35–39, spinster-carer 76, 156
50, 57–9, 59, 62, 65, 70–3, 83, 88, spouses 5, 6, 97, 98,121, 123–7, 177,
90, 135, 137–1, 140, 143, 144, 145, 184
168–2; state responsibility and services see
direct payment 39–2, 50, 56; social policy;
generalised 50–7; social services
indirect payment and rates of step-father/daughter relationship 42
exchange 42–50 survey 13, 14:
relatives 6 asking and offering 129–4;
reliability 127, 157 class and 162;
religious values 152; consensus baseline 15;
and caring 35; expecting 132–7;
qualitative study group and influence of circumstances on
characteristics 188 responsibility 17–18, 19, 20, 21,
remarriage 34 104, 107–11, 130, 146, 176;
reputation; legitimate excuses 95, 99–3, 103,
of family 5; 104, 106, 107–11;
of individual see moral reputation negotiating 60–4, 93;
resentment 66,96, 153 parent/child exchange 29, 161;
preferred source of help 196–204;
siblings 40, 41, 166, 177; and public norms 11–12, 14–20, 26–
individual examples 3, 41, 42–4, 65– 8, 28, 163, 164, 171, 183;
8, 67–68, 83, 85–91, 92, 147, 148, questionnaire content 182–5;
185 reciprocity 33–6, 56;
Social and Community Planning and reputation 146,
Research (SCPR) 178 sample characteristics 179–3;
social anthropology 8, 50 sampling 178–2
social change 6–7 survey:
social class 17, 54, 161–5 vignettes 11–12, 182–5;
social meanings 94, 171–5, 173; Harper, Mary 34–6, 100, 101, 133–
see also legitimate excuses 7, 137;
social policy 7, 8–10, 11,20; Highfield, John 19, 129, 130–4,
implications of authors’ research for 135, 182–5;
174–177 Hill, Jane 33–5, 35, 60, 62, 100,
social services 18, 104 101;
social structure: Robertson, Jim and Margaret 19,
and agency 169–7; 60–4, 92, 100, 101, 103
family responsibility related to symbolic interactionism 59
position in 58, 161–5, 166, 172
sociological research methods 172 taboos 104
sociological theory 169–7 time:
son/father relationship 76–9, 112–16, and development of commitment
115–19, 122 25, 27, 50–3, 59–4, 90–3, 122, 164–
son/mother relationship 26, 127–1, 146– 8;
50, 148
230 SUBJECT INDEX
and development of reputation 122,

146, 170–4
travel 32, 45–7, 138,212
women:
and assistance 17, 29, 33–6, 48, 74–
8, 105, 162, 166, 172–7;
and expecting 139–3;
legitimacy of excuses 95, 116–25;
reputation 93, 157;
subordination and dependency 39,
48–49, 57
working class 54, 161–5
young adults 134–8, 162, 184, 209;

individual examples 21–7, 51–4,
112–16, 138, 141–5;
social policy and 9;
survey findings 16, 17–18, 19–1,
129–4, 196–198, 200, 201, 203

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Negotiating family responsibilities

Negotiating Family Responsibilities provides a major new insight into

Janet Finch is Professor of Social Relations and Jennifer Mason is

Janet Finch and Jennifer Mason

ISBN 0-203-39320-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-39603-0 (Adobe eReader Format)

1 Understanding family responsibilities 1

Appendix A Methodology and research design 179

This book is based on a research study funded by ESRC grant number

Anthropology, University of Manchester; the Department of Sociology,

INTRODUCTION: WHY STUDY FAMILY

relationships do have some significance in adult life as the means through

We begin by clarifying what we mean by the term ‘family’ in this

well as reviewing existing evidence about kin relationships and obligations.

governments in Britain and in many other Western countries have sought

know what family responsibilities people acknowledge in principle and

THE FAMILY OBLIGATIONS PROJECT

help in these kinds of circumstances? which relatives? what should they do

If respondents answered ‘yes’ to this, we then went on to ask them which

PUBLIC NORMS AND FAMILY RESPONSIBILITIES

We can demonstrate that there is a lack of consensus about family

money from a bank, or state-provided support services for an infirm

FAMILY RESPONSIBILITIES IN PRACTICE: A CASE

Our qualitative study was designed to enable us to look at family

do so. While he was a student, though he was entitled to a grant and

it purely as a business relationship and not a continuation of his economic

future relationship with them was coloured by aspects of his own

INTRODUCTION: THE IMPORTANCE OF KIN

be given by children to their parents; similarly we have excluded personal

GIVE AND TAKE IN KIN EXCHANGES

services exchanged. A central theme in classic accounts of reciprocity is

EXAMPLE: SARAH ALLEN’S RELATIONSHIP WITH

mother kept control in important ways: by keeping actual ownership of the

eleven were between siblings, siblings-in-law or cousins. Indeed it seems

However, in our category ‘daily living expenses’ the pattern is a bit

INDIRECT REPAYMENT: NEGOTIATING RATES OF

going to be major beneficiaries. As a result, John felt able to call on his

therefore in the middle of a rather complex web of financial and other

Negotiating rates of exchange

slightly ludicrous, were nevertheless favourable to Caroline. Jane Smith

INDIRECT EXCHANGE: GENERALISED

process of negotiating the balance between dependence and independence

trace patterns of assistance which seem to be based upon a generalised

should emphasise again, however, that we think that there is a minority of

Although (as we noted above) there is no obvious currency in which one

INTRODUCTION: UNDERSTANDING THE

whatever? We are drawing here on the classic symbolic interactionist use of

Jim and Margaret Robertson are a married couple in their early

EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT NEGOTIATIONS IN

Shirley There’s a little bit of a bone of contention really there, because

discussion. Again they cover a wide range of support, including practical

us in this way, because implicit processes tend to be more difficult to

In this example we do get a sense of the implicit negotiations and indeed

FORMS OF NEGOTIATING PRACTICE

becomes entirely understandable when one knows enough about the

NEGOTIATING COMMITMENTS IN PRACTICE: A

The initial issue: how to respond to Doreen’s widowhood?

The continuing issue: developing commitments in the