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Viewing report
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Post-Solidarity and Postmodern Intergenerational Relation(ship)s. Edition No. 1
VDM Publishing House, Sep 2009, Pages: 120
Modernist notions of the primacy and unity of the nuclear family and of the inviolate nature of intergenerational relation(ship)s perpetuated by such influential researchers and social-gerontological theorists as Bengtson and colleagues, I suggest, no longer sufficiently comprehend the lived experience of contemporary kin relation(ship)s. Such notions, which Luescher and Pillemer term as constitutive of the ‘solidarity perspective’ of intergenerational relation(ship)s, I argue, inadequately capture both the content and tone of contemporary intergenerational relation(ship)s. Bernardes has gone so far as to observe that the Modernist view that family and intergenerational relation(ship)s are dominated by one socially ‘normative’ model (i.e., the enduring nuclear family) is an ‘oppressive practice.’ I propose a construct of intergenerational relation(ship)s that goes beyond the Modernist paradigm asserted by the ‘solidarity perspective’ and that comprehends the Postmodern conceptualization of the “contemporary family as filled with doubt, ambivalence, and insecurity” (Stacey, 1991, p. 17).
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