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Explain the key concepts, apply them accurately to the supplied case and answer the enquiry with a qualified, evidence-led judgement. Use fictional examples. You do not need to disclose personal experiences.
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Recall and connect
Retrieve the previous lesson, then record a view you can revisit.
Missed the preparation? Read the recap
Why do feminist approaches not form one explanation? They place different emphasis on discrimination, capitalism, patriarchy and intersecting structures. What is agency? Capacity to interpret and act within social constraints. Why might a formal opportunity be difficult to use? Money, time, dependence, discrimination or inaccessible services may restrict practical options.
Check an explanation after your attempt
They place different emphasis on discrimination, capitalism, patriarchy and intersecting structures.
Check an explanation after your attempt
Capacity to interpret and act within social constraints.
Giddens: negotiated intimacy
Giddens’s pure relationship is sustained through what the relationship provides to the people involved, rather than only through external tradition. Pure does not mean morally superior or conflict-free. Confluent love is contingent: continuation depends on an ongoing relationship rather than an unconditional promise of permanence. Negotiation may create opportunities for equality, but the model does not establish that every relationship already operates this way.
Open the vocabulary reference
- Individualisation
- A process in which people must increasingly construct and manage their own biographies.
- Detraditionalisation
- Weakening of the taken-for-granted authority of inherited traditions.
- Reflexivity
- Monitoring and reconsidering action in the light of information and experience.
- Late modernity
- An account of intensified modern processes rather than a complete break from modernity.
- Pure relationship
- Giddens’s model of a bond sustained for the satisfaction the relationship itself provides.
- Confluent love
- Giddens’s idea of active, contingent love dependent on a continuing relationship.
- Negotiation
- Discussion and adjustment of expectations and arrangements.
- Contingency
- Dependence on conditions rather than guaranteed permanence.
- Risk
- Uncertainty about possible adverse outcomes.
- Biography
- The pattern and story of a person’s life over time.
- Constraint
- A condition limiting realistically available action.
- Interdependence
- Mutual reliance among people.
- Postmodernism
- Approaches emphasising fragmentation, plurality and limits of one overarching account.
- Plurality
- Coexistence of multiple forms, meanings or ways of living.
- Commitment
- A continuing obligation or attachment to a person or relationship.
- Unequal choice
- Different practical capacity to exercise nominally available options.
Check an explanation after your attempt
It is sustained through the rewards of the relationship itself. Pure does not mean perfect, morally better, necessarily unmarried or free from inequality.
Check an explanation after your attempt
It depends on a continuing relationship that satisfies those involved, rather than an assumption that the bond must last regardless of its quality.
Individualisation and risk
Beck and Beck-Gernsheim examine tensions as people increasingly construct biographies while depending on close relationships. Choices about work, place and commitment must be coordinated, and responsibility for managing uncertainty can become individualised. Individualisation is not the same as selfishness or living alone. People may have to make choices while remaining materially and emotionally dependent on others.
Open the vocabulary reference
- Individualisation
- A process in which people must increasingly construct and manage their own biographies.
- Detraditionalisation
- Weakening of the taken-for-granted authority of inherited traditions.
- Reflexivity
- Monitoring and reconsidering action in the light of information and experience.
- Late modernity
- An account of intensified modern processes rather than a complete break from modernity.
- Pure relationship
- Giddens’s model of a bond sustained for the satisfaction the relationship itself provides.
- Confluent love
- Giddens’s idea of active, contingent love dependent on a continuing relationship.
- Negotiation
- Discussion and adjustment of expectations and arrangements.
- Contingency
- Dependence on conditions rather than guaranteed permanence.
- Risk
- Uncertainty about possible adverse outcomes.
- Biography
- The pattern and story of a person’s life over time.
- Constraint
- A condition limiting realistically available action.
- Interdependence
- Mutual reliance among people.
- Postmodernism
- Approaches emphasising fragmentation, plurality and limits of one overarching account.
- Plurality
- Coexistence of multiple forms, meanings or ways of living.
- Commitment
- A continuing obligation or attachment to a person or relationship.
- Unequal choice
- Different practical capacity to exercise nominally available options.
Check an explanation after your attempt
People increasingly have to plan and account for their own life paths. This concerns social organisation and responsibility, not a claim that everyone lacks concern for others.
Check an explanation after your attempt
Partners may need to negotiate work, place and expectations without a single accepted script. More possible routes can create uncertainty about agreement and continuity.
How much choice, and for whom?
Late-modern accounts emphasise transformations within modernity. Postmodern interpretations give greater weight to plurality and less uniform pathways; Stacey’s US research explores changing family arrangements. Neither label proves unlimited freedom. Housing costs, care responsibilities and unequal resources can constrain negotiation or exit. Comparing ideals, actual practices and structural conditions makes evaluation more precise.
Open the vocabulary reference
- Individualisation
- A process in which people must increasingly construct and manage their own biographies.
- Detraditionalisation
- Weakening of the taken-for-granted authority of inherited traditions.
- Reflexivity
- Monitoring and reconsidering action in the light of information and experience.
- Late modernity
- An account of intensified modern processes rather than a complete break from modernity.
- Pure relationship
- Giddens’s model of a bond sustained for the satisfaction the relationship itself provides.
- Confluent love
- Giddens’s idea of active, contingent love dependent on a continuing relationship.
- Negotiation
- Discussion and adjustment of expectations and arrangements.
- Contingency
- Dependence on conditions rather than guaranteed permanence.
- Risk
- Uncertainty about possible adverse outcomes.
- Biography
- The pattern and story of a person’s life over time.
- Constraint
- A condition limiting realistically available action.
- Interdependence
- Mutual reliance among people.
- Postmodernism
- Approaches emphasising fragmentation, plurality and limits of one overarching account.
- Plurality
- Coexistence of multiple forms, meanings or ways of living.
- Commitment
- A continuing obligation or attachment to a person or relationship.
- Unequal choice
- Different practical capacity to exercise nominally available options.
Check an explanation after your attempt
Late modernity stresses intensified change within modern social processes; postmodern approaches stress plurality or fragmentation and question a single standard pathway. These broad positions contain internal variation.
Check an explanation after your attempt
If alternative housing is unaffordable, a person may have less practical ability to change a living arrangement. Formal permission to choose does not supply the resources needed.
Apply the evidence
Fictional case: Erin and Dev regularly discuss how to divide care and whether their partnership meets their needs. Dev is offered work in another city. Erin’s local caring commitments make moving difficult, and two homes would be unaffordable. They negotiate a temporary arrangement and plan a review. The account illustrates negotiation and constraint; it does not establish a national trend.
Check an explanation after your attempt
Adults are examining materials together. The image does not establish family ties, beliefs, gender identity or the reasons for their actions. Use participant accounts or relevant contextual evidence before applying the theory.
Optional scaffold
Name the concept → select a precise case detail → explain the connection → state what the detail cannot establish. Rehearse aloud, then write independently.
Check an explanation after your attempt
Discussion of the relationship’s value fits negotiated intimacy; coordinating the job move with personal plans illustrates managing biographies. Neither establishes a completely pure relationship.
Optional scaffold
Name the concept → select a precise case detail → explain the connection → state what the detail cannot establish. Rehearse aloud, then write independently.
Check an explanation after your attempt
Caring commitments tie Erin to place; housing costs limit living separately. Show how these conditions narrow the options the couple can realistically negotiate.
Challenge and judge
Make a precise claim, connect it to evidence and state its limits.
Check an explanation after your attempt
Compare accounts or practices over time using consistent measures, consider different groups, and distinguish changes in reported ideals from actual decisions. One invented couple cannot establish a trend.
Optional scaffold
Name the concept → select a precise case detail → explain the connection → state what the detail cannot establish. Rehearse aloud, then write independently.
Check an explanation after your attempt
Traditional expectations may weaken or be contested without disappearing. Resources, care and continuing norms can restrict choices; explain variation between settings and groups.
Prove: retrieval check
Answer without notes, then check explanations. Retry after correcting insecure ideas. This is separate from the 15-mark mini-test.
Not marked.
Prove and improve
Complete retrieval, then write independently for eight minutes.
Success criteria
Develop two distinct points. For each, identify the concept, explain how it works and use an accurate example or comparison relevant to the question. Extended writing needs teacher review. No automatic mark is given.
Prepare for Lesson 15
Read the three short passages and answer the preparation questions.
Smart: connected lives
Carol Smart’s personal life perspective examines how people remain connected through memories, emotions, obligations and shared histories. It questions accounts that treat each person as freely constructing a life independently. Connections can be supportive, difficult or ambivalent. Investigating what a relationship means to participants does not require assuming that all attachments are freely chosen or beneficial.
Two connected concepts
Personal life: A perspective examining meaningful relationships, attachments and lived connections. Connectedness: The ways a person’s life is bound up with other people.
A question to bring
Explain how connectedness challenges an isolated-individual account. People’s decisions are bound up with obligations, memories and other people’s lives. A choice cannot be understood solely as a preference made by a detached individual.
Check an explanation after your attempt
People’s decisions are bound up with obligations, memories and other people’s lives. A choice cannot be understood solely as a preference made by a detached individual.
Your progress summary
Completion records attempts, not correctness. Review your extended response with a teacher and use the feedback to choose your next practice.
Restore a backup
Resource: RFTS-AQA-AL-SOC-7192-FAM-L014 · v1.0. Original Reach for the Star learning resource. The six-mark task is a classroom bridge assessment, not an official AQA Paper 2 format. Teacher mark guidance is supplied separately.