Are personal relationships deeper and more intimate than ever before or are they increasingly empty and structured by selfish individualism? This exciting new book examines the question in a wide-ranging discussion of the nature of intimacy, focusing on key relationships between parents and children, families, sexual partners, couples and friends.

Lynn Jamieson is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh.

Acknowledgements

x

1 Introduction

1

(14)

A story of intimacy?

1

(1)

The wider significance of intimacy in personal life

2

(5)

Dimensions of intimacy

7

(3)

Stories and story tellers

10

(3)

Conclusion

13

(2)

2 From `The Family' to Sex and Intimacy

15

(28)

Pre-modern/pre-industrial period

17

(1)

Modern/industrial period

17

(2)

`Postmodern' period

19

(1)

The making of the conventional modern family

20

(12)

Victorian sexual morality and the Victorian family

20

(3)

Marriage, love and sex

23

(3)

Child-centred family households?

26

(3)

Gendered divisions of labour

29

(3)

Visions of the future

32

(11)

3 Parenting and Intimacy

43

(32)

Mothers and fathers as intimates

43

(13)

Theories of good mothering

45

(3)

Absent father deplored and affirmed

48

(3)

Feminist debate over equal parenting

51

(5)

More shared caring between mothers and fathers?

56

(6)

Lost fathers following divorce

57

(1)

Earning fathers and full-time mothering

58

(1)

Unemployed fathers at home

59

(1)

Dual-earner households

60

(1)

The exceptionally involved fathers

60

(2)

Parenting: trends in intimacy and democracy?

62

(13)

4 Are Good Friends All You Need?

75

(31)

Friends, kin and intimacy

76

(17)

Withering community or flourishing friendship?

80

(3)

The overstated isolation of the nuclear family?

83

(2)

The balance of friends and kin, exclusivity and `community' in social networks

85

(4)

Working-class friendships of necessity versus middle-class pure intimacy?

89

(4)

Gender, heterosexuality, friendship and intimacy

93

(13)

Childhood, youth and friendship

94

(5)

Gender differences in adult friendships

99

(2)

Adult same-sex friends versus sexual/domestic partners?

101

(3)

Friendship as a non-sexual relationship

104

(2)

5 Sex and Intimacy

106

(30)

Introduction

106

(1)

Stories of `normal sex' and intimacy

107

(10)

The realities of sexual lives

117

(16)

Sex surveys

117

(2)

Learning about sex and intimacy

119

(9)

Adult sexualities and social change

128

(5)

Stories, practices and social change

133

(3)

6 The Couple: Intimate and Equal?

136

(22)

The heterosexual couple: still she the housewife, he the earner?

138

(12)

Consequential disruption and resentment?

142

(6)

Heterosexual couples who did things differently

148

(2)

Domestic violence and forced intimacy

150

(2)

Same-sex couples

152

(2)

Intimacy and relationship breakdown

154

(4)

7 Conclusion

158

(18)

Notes

176

(5)

Bibliography

181

(21)

Index

202

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