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"Although sociology is full of long and complicated words, it's important to remember it's about the lives of real people."

These are the first lines of this programme and they set the tone. Filmed on location, it makes the topic of families more accessible by interweaving key sociological ideas with real people's experiences of family life.

It is divided into three inter-connected but self-standing sections:

1: Sociological Approaches to "The Family"

This section looks back at family life as it was around the middle 20th Century and at classical sociological theories of "the family": structural functionalism, Marxist theory and early feminist theory. We conclude by observing that although these theories gave us important insights, the very thing they were explaining – the traditional nuclear family – has fragmented into increasingly diverse forms.

2: Fragmentation and Diversity

This section explores and illustrates the dramatic changes in family life over the last 30 years, the decline in marriage, increase in cohabitation and divorce and the lowering fertility rate with the consequent fragmentation of the nuclear family into increasing diverse forms. We end up asking where this fragmentation and diversity of family life leaves sociology.

3: Contemporary Approaches to Family Life

The final part of the programme moves discussion on beyond that found in most textbook accounts and looks at contemporary research, making a very specific comparison between the 'old' and the 'new' sociology of families. The focus is now much more on comparative analysis and how family relationships are negotiated in everyday life. It then looks at how changes in family life can be linked to changes in wider society, such as the growth of consumerism and reflexivity, and asks if families have a future.
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