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The couple’s views echo those
of Anthony Giddens who, in
The Transformation of Intimacy
(1992), argues that in contemporary
society we make our identity rather
than inherit it. Such a change has,
he says, altered how we experience
the family and sexuality.
According to Giddens, in
the past, when marriages were
economic partnerships rather
than love matches, expectations
were lower and disappointments
fewer. Now that men and women
are increasingly compelled to
reflexively create their identity
through day-to-day decisions,
Giddens argues that they are able
to choose partnerships on a basis
of mutual understanding, leading
to what he describes as “pure
relationships”—entered for their
own sake and only continuing
while both parties are happy. Such
partnerships, he says, bring greater
equality between individuals and
challenge traditional gender roles.
Intimate but unequal
Although Beck and Beck-
Gernsheim agree with Giddens
that there is far more scope in the
modern world for men and women
to shape their own lives and thus
weaken gender stereotypes, they
are not wholly optimistic.
Individuals are subject to forces
beyond their control; life may be
do-it-yourself but it is not do-as-
you-like. Women and men, say
the couple, are “compulsively on the
search for the right way to live”—
trying to find a model of the family
that will offer a “refuge in... our
affluent, impersonal society.”
Individualization may have
released people from the gender
roles prescribed by industrial
society, but the material needs of
modern life are such that they are
forced to build up a life of their own
that is adapted to the requirements
of the labor market. The family
model, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim
say, can mesh “one labor
market biography with a lifelong
housework biography, but not
two labor market biographies,”
because their inner logic demands
that “both partners have to put
themselves first.” Inequality willULRICH BECK AND ELISABETH BECK-GERNSHEIM
The pursuit of love and marriage
remains a feature of modern society,
despite the fact that the pressures on
our lives mean that marriages are more
likely to end in divorce than in the past.
persist until men become more
accepting of women’s participation
in the workplace and until men
engage in more domestic labor.Fragile yet resilient
Beck and Beck-Gernsheim contend
that, for the most part, intimate
relationships cannot be egalitarian;
if equality is what is required, then
relationships must be abandoned:
“Love has become inhospitable.”
Men and women face choices
and constraints that differ
significantly from those faced
by their counterparts in previous
eras because of the contradiction
between the demands of
relationships of any kind (family,
marriage, motherhood, fatherhood)
and the demands of the workplace
for mobile, flexible employees.
These choices and constraints
are responsible for pulling families
apart. Rather than being shaped
by the rules, traditions, and
rituals of previous eras, Beck
and Beck-Gernsheim argue
that contemporary family units
are experiencing a shift from
a “community of need,” where
ties and obligations bound us
in our intimate lives, to “elective
affinities” that are based onFor individuals who...
invent... their own social
setting, love becomes the...
pivot giving meaning
to their lives.
Ulrich Beck & Elisabeth
Beck-Gernsheim