Sociological Perspectives on Family Practices
Summary
Sociological perspectives on family practices foreground the everyday routines, rituals and material arrangements through which family life is enacted and reproduced. Rather than treating the family as a static institution defined by legal or biological ties, this approach examines how care, intimacy, identity and power are negotiated through everyday activities such as cooking, caring, digital communication and spatial co-presence. It draws on practice theory to reveal how social structures are both enacted and contested in mundane interactions, and on feminist, queer and new materialist frameworks to highlight how gender, sexuality, generation and technology reconfigure what counts as family. Comparative and global studies further demonstrate that family practices vary with cultural norms, welfare regimes and socio-economic conditions, offering insights into policy implications for care provision, social inclusion and intergenerational solidarity. By centring the micro-dynamics of relating, this perspective illuminates how families adapt to demographic change, economic pressure and evolving moral discourses, and how transformative possibilities emerge in diverse contexts.
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Sociological Perspectives on Family Practices publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in sociological perspectives on family practices across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Family practices: The routine actions and interactions through which family life is produced, maintained and transformed.
Practice theory: A theoretical approach emphasising that social reality is constituted through repeated practices rather than abstract structures or individual attitudes.
Homonormativity: The reproduction of normative, often middle-class ideals of family life within LGBTQ+ communities, reinforcing conventional domestic models.
New materialism: A framework that attends to the agency of non-human actors and material processes in shaping social relations and practices.
Intergenerational care: The mutual provision of practical and emotional support between different age cohorts within a family, often involving grandparents and grandchildren.
References
- Beyond homonormativity versus anti-normativity: Recognising transformative practices of rainbow families in rural alpine Switzerland. Journal of Rural Studies (2025).
- More–than–relationship quality: A feminist new materialist analysis of relationship quality and the potential of digital couple interventions. Journal of Family Theory & Review (2023).
- Intergenerational care in corona times: Practices of care in Swedish families during the pandemic. Journal of Family Research (2022).
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