Concepts of Family among Children and Young People in Ireland

In recent years the demography of the family in Ireland has undergone structural transformation and single-parent and step-parent families are now a common feature of our social landscape. Given the increasing diversity in children’s family experiences, it is important to explore how they construct their own ideas about their family lives. In this paper, findings are presented from a cross-sectional study of 99 children and adolescents living in Ireland (age range 9 to 16 years). The study adopted a focus group methodology to examine children’s and young people’s ideas about what constitutes a family, exploring the salience of concepts such as family structure, relationships, marriage, children, co-residence and biological relatedness for children’s developing concept of family. The findings suggest that children are accepting of a variety of diverse family forms and view supportive family relationships as the basis for defining ‘family’. For a small number of children, however, the traditional nuclear family remains a salient image. Children’s perspectives on roles within the family indicated the pivotal role that they themselves play in family life. These findings may have implications for how researchers and policymakers conceptualise contemporary family life and relationships.