This chapter further explores the everyday processes of family life in conditions of low income. Chapter Two used economic and moneyrelated processes as a prism through which to view family life. Here we look at cognitive and cultural processes. The chapter has two main aims: to explore further the meanings of family and the ways in which people try to build ‘a sense of family’; and to better understand the emotions and attributes that are connected with keeping families going under adverse circumstances. The chapter is divided into four sections. The first focus of discussion is the sets of understandings around family that prevail – depictions of the ‘we’ of family – and the ways in which everyday activities and interactions contribute to realising prevailing senses and ideals of family. This part of the discussion revolves around the question of what is being evoked by the language of family and the actions engaged in to construct family in the context of everyday strains on income and resources. The chapter then goes on to examine some instances whereby people engage in family building. As well as routine examples, it also looks at what people do at Christmas and birthdays. The third and fourth parts of the chapter investigate people’s sense of their capacities to realise the personal and family lives that they envision for themselves. Among the themes to be investigated here are the impacts of living on a low income on people's sense of themselves and their capabilities and whether they feel empowered to bring about change. Throughout the chapter, a key interest is in family as a mental and cultural category – respondents’ sense of ‘this family’ as it emerges from how they describe their family, especially in terms of the characteristics of family life that they identify as positive and negative, and how they situate family resources and responsibilities in a context of both continuity and change.

Views and understandings of family

As Ribbens McCarthy (2012, p 69) says, it is important in the various debates about how to understand ‘family’ in contemporary societies to include close consideration of how people themselves use this term. What words do people use? What or whom do they refer to when they speak of family?