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vision of individualized free choice and kinship decline, individuals’
choices in their personal and family networks are shaped by biographical
and social constraints. The book draws out the influence of major mecha-
nisms and constraints of relational proximity, such as partnership and
biological filiation, past co-residence trajectories and the duration of per-
sonal ties, new and old normative frameworks regarding family forms
and the value of children, the importance of friendship and work-related
acquaintanceship, or the influence of individuals’ positioning in social
structure, generations, and gender. But it is in relation to the comparison
of the impact of national context that this book provides more innovative
findings. Comparison across different national contexts illuminates how
different historical, social, and normative pathways affect the complex
reconfiguration of the shape and texture of personal networks. Personal
networks in Switzerland reflect a hybrid mix of opportunities and con-
straints. Alongside high and stable living standards and policies promot-
ing individualized practices and liberal ideals, societal and welfare
developments have underlined a conservative approach to family life,
thereby making for a double-pronged transformative effect on the way
people exercise choice in their personal and family networks: the high
salience of friendship and workplace relationships has developed along-
side more traditional interdependencies linked to marriage and children,
but further away from broader connections and commitments oriented
towards in- laws, collaterals, or even intergenerational relationships. In
contrast, personal networks in Portugal reflect the influence of a very dif-
ferent social, economic, and political pathway. Older models of the fam-
ily and strong intergenerational solidarities promoted by decades of low
welfare provision and a right-wing dictatorship have been radically trans-
formed by new family forms and gender-equal values. At the same time,
these solidarities were also partly reproduced due to socio-economic
hardship restricting individual autonomy and social policies which often
relied on familialistic cultures to cover gaps in caregiving and support.
The effect is also complex and double-pronged, but the nature of change
is different: personal networks in Portugal reflect flexibility and pluraliza-
tion, in particular through openness to friends, but they are more inclu-
sive of a variety of kin and non-kin relationships, larger than in the other
two countries and in overall terms more cohesive, since they tend to
K. Wall et al.