Eric D. Widmer
Work presented in this chapter was supported by great 100015-122413 and by the NCCR Lives (overcoming vulnerability: Life course perspectives) of the Swiss National Science Foundation. Various recent authors have stressed the usefulness of considering family and personal networks as factors shaping couples’ interactions, projects, and behavior. Several dimensions of the relational context of partnerships have proved to be important for couples. Researchers have provided evidence in the last decade that the processes shaping such dyads can be better explained as pieces and parcels of larger chains of relationships. Following recent trends in family sociology (Widmer and Jallinoja, 2008; Jallinoja and Widmer, 2010), this chapter reconsiders this evidence by conceptualizing families and personal networks as configurations. The configurational perspective proposes a set of processes and explanations that somewhat modify and renew the understanding of family relationships in late modernity. I first present the main features of the configurational perspective on families and personal networks, and then, I turn to a series of studies concerning couples and their configurations that exemplify this perspective.
Family members often have strong feelings and concerns about what happens to each other. The configurational perspective focuses on the interdependencies between key family dyads, such as the parent–child dyads or conjugal partnerships, and larger sets of family ties (Widmer and Jallinoja, 2008; Widmer, 2010). With the decline of the nuclear family and the pluralization of life trajectories, the number and the complexity of family contexts have grown. Indeed, family members that matter cannot be defined a priori, using the household as a natural boundary of the family. The number of meaningful family relationships to be taken into account in order to understand contemporary families is much greater than that between partners or between parents and their resident children. In sum, the family should not be theorized as a small group with obvious boundaries but as a rather large and unbounded personal configuration of interdependences (Widmer, 2010).
The configurational perspective on families and personal relationships traces complex patterns of emotional, cognitive, financial, and practical interdependencies among large numbers of individuals beyond the nuclear family. It focuses on the interdependencies of partners, children, and other individuals such as relatives and friends (Widmer, 2006; Widmer and Jallinoja, 2008). Its main assumption is that partnerships and parent–child relationships are embedded in a larger set of family relationships that account for how they may develop. Accordingly, the configurational perspective is based on the assumption that each individual is the center of a complex set of relationships that are interconnected. It focuses on the influence of the configuration of relationships in which each individual is included on key dyads and the development of self-identity.
These relationships are defined as interdependencies, that is, relationships that respond to important personal needs such as social recognition, emotional connection, financial survival, or maintenance of functional autonomy in everyday life (Widmer et al., 2009). If practical services and money transfers clearly constitute a set of interdependencies within families, they are not the only or even the most significant ones. Although the literature on family support stresses the importance of financial and practical interdependences, emotions and cognitions concerning family members should not be underestimated as interdependencies. Various contingencies from late modernity may increase or decrease financial and practical interdependencies depending on personal or collective circumstances. The cognitive and emotional interdependencies between parents and children remain however strong in most cases across the lifespan (Antonucci and Akiyama, 1995). People may not receive money from their parents or they may not see them regularly because they do not need the provision of money or because they live far away from them. Despite that, they are in most cases still emotionally and cognitively interdependent with them. Psychological networks, that is, those that have an emotional significance, have a major importance for interdependencies (Milardo, 1989; Surra and Milardo, 1991; Widmer, 2010). Feeling loved and cared for is a central element for the development and maintenance of self-identity (Giddens, 1991). Emotional support and communication are prime features of relationships of individuals with their parents and siblings in adulthood (Coenen-Huther et al., 1994). Once established, the persistence of such interdependency does not require frequent, recent, long, or even positive interactions (Widmer, 2010).
The configurational approach is close to social network analysis, although different in its purpose. Both share a common interest for large sets of relationships, which cannot be defined on the basis of institutional criteria. However, social network analysis is most of all a methodological tool used by scholars from various theoretical backgrounds on a variety of relationships and social settings. In distinction, the configurational approach features a set of theoretical assumptions and explanatory mechanisms about relationships which can be empirically operationalized in a variety of ways, which do not necessarily relate to social network methods. The focus on relationships fulfilling basic individual needs, be they material or psychological, means that configurational researchers focus on relationships servicing social identity, with an emphasis on social mechanisms involving support and conflict.
Family structures refer to institutional criteria related to families, such as household membership, marriage, custody rights, or support obligations for a child. At first sight, these criteria may appear valid enough for defining significant family contexts; they however lead researchers to disregard some of the relational complexities of families. Indeed, family boundaries should not be defined by institutional criteria, but rather by interdependencies. So what each individual needs from others is given prime importance (Widmer, 2010).
Stepfamilies are a good case to illustrate the importance of empirically addressing the composition of family configurations. Researchers have underlined that their boundaries are ambiguous because divorce and remarriage create ties among different households and extend the set of family roles (for instance, Cherlin and Furstenberg, 1994). This diversity stems from a variety of changes following family recomposition. First, the size of configurations is in some circumstances increased. A common source of expansion is the paternal grandmother who retains relationships with her former daughter-in-law and her relatives while at the same time adds new relatives with her son’s remarriage (Johnson and Barer, 1987). Adding new sets of ties to surviving ones increases the inclusivity of such configurations. Second, the connectedness of configurations after remarriage is lower than those of the configurations in first marriages. Researchers have emphasized that relationships among stepparents and stepchildren differ in strength from those of parents and children (Ferri, 1984; Hobart, 1987; Coleman and Ganong, 1990). Because relationships among stepparents and stepchildren are less intimate and less supportive and are associated with more conflicts than relationships between parents and children (Coleman and Ganong, 1990), they tend to create low-density family configurations (Widmer et al., 2012). That is, each remarried spouse is likely to have a larger proportion of unshared family members than for first marriage couples. Third, the matrifocality of family configurations tends to be reinforced as a solidarity unit develops with mothers and children while ties between fathers and children may weaken after divorce and remarriage (Furstenberg and Winquist Nord, 1985; Cherlin and Furstenberg, 1994). Finally, achievement may in many cases take precedence over ascription in configurations of remarried couples. In her research on US middle-class suburban divorced families, Johnson (1988, 2000) found that about one-third of couples were involved in configurations where family members from their serial marriages were blurred and where distance from or closeness to kin was established on the basis of liking, rather than from a sense of responsibility.
Although stepfamilies present a good case for stressing the diversity of family configurations, this diversity is also relevant for first-time families (Widmer, 2010). Much of the recent research shows that these are not homogeneous, and scholars have stressed the uncertainty associated with many family roles in adulthood, including sibships (Cicirelli, 1995), aunts and uncles (Milardo, 2010), parents, and grandparents (Silverstein and Marenco, 2001; Mueller, Wilhelm, and Elder, 2002). Some individuals develop or maintain strong relationships with them in adulthood, while others disengage from them (Carroll, Olson, and Buckmiller, 2007). In some cases, pseudokinship ties, such as friends, may be considered as family members and play a significant role, as in other cases they do not (Weston, 1997). Therefore, the composition and boundaries of family configurations vary greatly from one person to the next according to a series of factors related with their biography of family relationships. In late modernity, who belongs to the family and who does not has become an open question, not only for stepfamilies but also all other family forms (Widmer, 2010).
In a Swiss study based on a sample of 300 women with a child aged between 5 and 12, half with a stepfamilies structure and half with first-time partners, we found no less than 9 types of family configurations (Widmer et al., 2012). Friend configurations focused on friends who were considered to be family members, as respondents in this group included on average three female friends in their family configurations. In-law configurations had a strong orientation toward the partner and the in-laws. The partner and the partner’s mother were overrepresented, as well as other in-law relationships. Brother and sister configurations included the respondent’s siblings and their children and current partners. Kinship configurations included a variety of individuals related by blood and marriage, such as partners, parents, children, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, cousins, and grandparents. Beanpole configurations focused on blood relatives, with the inclusion of members of various generations, such as respondents’ parents and grandparents. These were vertically rather than horizontally oriented, contrary to the brother and sister configurations. Nuclear family configurations were almost exclusively centered around the partner and the children and corresponded to a definition of the family as a coresident unit. Without-partner and postdivorce configurations were only found in the stepfamily subsample. Without-partner configurations did not include the present partner as a significant family member, although, as in all other cases, he lived within the same household as the respondent and her child. This was in contrast to postdivorce configurations which had two simultaneous orientations: one toward the former partner and his relatives and the other toward the new partner and his relatives (including his children and, in some cases, his ex-partner).
Similar family configurations are also present in other life stages. Beanpole, friendship, postdivorce, conjugal, kinship (either on the father’s or mother’s side), and sibling family configurations set the boundaries of family configurations of young adults (Widmer, 2010). Each type features a well-defined logic, with an emphasis on kinship or friendship ties, on parents, in-laws, or stepfamily members. Individuals focus on either male or female members and invest in their father’s side or in their mother’s side of their kinship networks. They may reinforce blood ties by maintaining strong interdependencies with their biological parents and siblings. But in contrast, they sometimes make the links with their in-laws prominent. They may choose to maintain or develop interdependencies with steprelatives. They may develop interdependences beyond the realm of blood and marriage by investing in friendship ties defined by them as family ties; they may follow a logic of genealogical proximity by promoting interdependencies with the closest blood or marriage ties or rather pick more distant relatives in genealogical terms as significant family members. Interestingly, those configurations exhibit a remarkable consistency throughout life stages, as they make generational shifts rather than truly change in older cohorts. For instance, in a sibling configuration, young adults build their configurations on their mother and their mother’s sisters, whereas older adults focus on their own sisters and their brothers-in-law, their nephews, and their nieces. The logic is the same, although the generations involved are different because their uncles and their aunts have passed away.
By asking individuals to define their family configurations, it becomes clear that the variability of family contexts matters rather than the institutional criteria traditionally used to define the family, such as the composition of the household. In this respect, family configurations are distinct from family structures, which have received so far much more research attention. Contrasting first-time families and stepfamilies as two highly distinct but homogeneous family structures, as is often done in empirical research, disregards the various configurations of interdependencies which are present in both of them and the interdependencies that they share.
Interdependencies within a configuration provide resources. So, the importance of family relationships as social capital has been stressed by researchers (Furstenberg and Hughes, 1995; Furstenberg and Kaplan, 2004; Widmer, 2004). Social capital is defined as resources stemming from the possession of a durable network of acquaintance or recognition (Bourdieu, 1986). Traditionally, the concept focuses on the benefits accruing to individuals by virtue of participation in associations (Portes, 2000; Putnam, 2000). Social capital has however also been measured in configurations of interpersonal ties. Family-based social capital in the form of family interdependences has positive consequences, such as promoting physical and psychological health or increasing individual resilience for adverse life course events (Furstenberg and Hughes, 1995; Furstenberg and Kaplan, 2004; Widmer, 2004; Widmer, Kellerhals, and Levy, 2004).
Much of this work uses a definition of social capital based on network closure, that is, a high density of relationships (Coleman, 1988). In dense configurations, most, if not all, individuals are interconnected. Such high interconnection enhances expectations, claims, obligations, and trust because of the collective nature of normative control. If a configuration member violates some shared norms or expectations, several other configuration members may jointly react. Dense configurations also facilitate communication by multiplying the number of information channels and by reducing the number of intermediaries between any two configuration members. Finally, in dense configurations, support is collective, as individuals are likely to coordinate their efforts in helping each other. From this perspective, social capital is found in family configurations in which most persons are interconnected by highly significant relationships.
Bridging social capital is an alternative to bonding social capital based on brokerage opportunities that some individuals develop in more heterogeneous family and personal configurations (Putnam, 2000; Burt, 2002). The absence of some connections and the diversity of the family circles present create “holes” in the configuration that provide some persons, known as brokers, with opportunities to mediate the flow of resources among members and, therefore, control and influence others. Such persons benefit from being intermediaries between other individuals, otherwise not directly connected to each other, by increasing their decisional autonomy and the variety of their resources. Bridging social capital proved to have positive consequences in a variety of domains as it stimulates the ability of individuals to innovate and to adjust to a complex and changing environment (Putnam, 2000; Davidsson and Honig, 2003; Szreter and Woolcock, 2004).
Families are generally assumed to be mostly producing bonding social capital, as they are considered small groups of densely connected individuals (Granovetter, 1973). This assumption, however, is challenged by some research, for instance, that on stepfamilies. Here, relationships among stepparents and stepchildren are more likely to be characterized as weaker ties than parent–child relationships (Ferri, 1984; Hobart, 1987; Coleman and Ganong, 1990; Ganong and Coleman, 2004). Although some children keep strong connections with both divorced parents, former spouses often see their relationships rapidly decrease in intensity. Therefore, many children of separated parents become the primary, if not the only, connecting persons between their divorced biological parents (Ganong and Coleman, 2004). Relationships with in-laws are also associated with relational or the so-called structural holes. Although the relationship between partners is usually a strong one, relationships with the spouse’s parents are frequently far from straightforward, and conflict, open or otherwise, is frequent (Fischer, 1983; Coleman, Ganong, Cable, 1997). Therefore, two spouses often have quite distinct family members (Stein et al., 1992). Research on friends considered as family members shows similar patterns (Weston, 1997).
These observations on different types of family relationships suggest that family configurations may sometimes promote a bridging type of family social capital, associated with a low density of connections among family members and a higher centrality of the individual in his or her family configuration. In various studies, a direct link was indeed found between the composition of family configurations and the type of social capital that they make available to their members (Widmer, 2006, 2010; Widmer et al., 2012). In beanpole and nuclear family configurations, there is a strong emphasis on bonding social capital. Here, individuals are embedded in a dense set of interdependencies; they are under the care and scrutiny of a large number of interconnected family members from older generations. In contrast, bridging social capital is dominant in friendship family configurations where both friends and blood relatives are considered family members but are often kept separate. Therefore, respondents benefit from a large structural autonomy. The investment in time, energy, and sociability necessary to maintain discrepant family connections may however overshadow the advantages provided by having an intermediary position in the family configuration. Postdivorce family configurations are representative of bridging social capital as well. Respondents’ centrality is high. Individuals in such family configurations have relatively few direct connections and their supportive alters are not densely connected. This is likely to be a peculiar situation for respondents as they have an intermediary position between family members who also have an intermediary position between their own family members. For instance, mothers have a central position between their child and their new partner (who is not the father of the child), and the new partner mediate the relationship of the mother with his own children. Therefore, postdivorce family configurations are chains of individualized interdependencies. This explains why much more active work is required in “doing family” to create and maintain interdependences in stepfamilies (Schneider, 1980; Cherlin and Furstenberg, 1994).
Because individuals are interdependent in families, family configurations face power issues. Family resources are scarce and individuals, while cooperating, may also struggle for them (Widmer et al., 2009). Family members compete for each other’s time, love, money, support, and social recognition. The unequal distribution of such resources within family configurations is subject to power and control attempts that make family configurations shift from one state of balance to another state over time. The patterns of interdependencies that characterize family configurations, therefore, are commonly unintended as no individual can fully control their distribution among such a large number of partly cooperating, partly competing family members. Such patterns, in turn, shape the cooperation strategies and the conflicts that occur in each dyad belonging to each configuration. The complex and often ambivalent mix of negative and positive emotions that characterize many personal relationships, especially in the family realm, is of central interest for the development of key dyads and self-identity.
In this perspective, conflict and ambivalences stem from the chains of positive interdependences linking family members and friends (Widmer and Lüscher, 2011). Consider, for instance, the story told by individuals facing divergent religious affiliations within their family configurations (Pillemer and Lüscher, 2004). The difficulty of developing a set of religious beliefs conflicting with those of parents is linked with the fear of endangering the emotional link with them. Parents may overact negatively because their own self-identity to some extent depends on their childhood religious affiliations. An open conflict with parents is costly as it means a decrease in exchange of support and self-validation. In such situations, a frail and shifting balance of power between the individual, the parents, and the partner develop, in which the needs of all four people compete and partly adjust to each other. A prioritization of one dyad over the others may follow to stabilize the configuration. As self-identity depends on the balance of interdependencies, this kind of shift is strongly intertwined with the development of new personal identities.
In the study of women with a child between 5 and 12 (Widmer et al., 2012), it was found that vertical and nuclear family configurations had a much higher density of conflict than postdivorce or friendship family configurations. As those configurations had the highest density of support, the dyads were very often characterized by simultaneous conflict and support. In those configurations, dyadic ambivalence was therefore dominant. In postdivorce and friendship configurations, conflict and cooperation more often concerned relationships with different family members. For instance, a child might receive emotional and practical support from her mother who is supported by her new partner, but the child and the new partner may develop a conflicted relationship, with very little exchange of support. In this case, ambivalence is triadic rather than dyadic: the individuals develop interdependencies that contradict each other as the child and the stepfather have other investments to prioritize over their relationship, but they are joined by strong interdependences with their mother/partner as a third person. Such individuals belong to an ambivalent triad, which is likely to produce oscillations in relationships and self-identity, with a greater need for reflexivity.
The configurational perspective stresses the importance of larger configurations of interdependences for understanding family conflict. This collective structuration of ambivalences is difficult to control by any one person, as the number of competing individuals that contribute to it is likely to be large.
Overall, the resources and conflicts created by members of personal configurations beyond the nuclear family should be stressed when dealing with partnerships. Conjugal dyads are embedded in configurations of family ties and friends. The variety of such family contexts is high as one’s family configuration originates not only from one’s life trajectory but also from the social convoy of ties that each family member develops throughout the life course (Widmer, 2010). The organization of ties in family configurations has consequences for processes occurring in conjugal dyads. I now present evidence to show how various transitions and relational issues associated with intimate partnerships depend on the configuration of ties to which partners belong. As predicted by the configurational approach, the distribution of resources among a large number of family members and friends becomes key for the understanding of conjugal dyads (Widmer, 2010).
Interpersonal attraction develops in relational contexts where family configurations and friends play an important role as go-between, facilitators, or hindrances in the courtship process. Family members and friends’ approval is one important factor in couples going successfully through the courtship process and one explanation of the prevalence of the high rates of endogamy and homogamy characterizing contemporary couples, as family and personal configurations feature a high rate of social homogeneity (Clark-Ibanez and Felmlee, 2004). The emotional reaction of friends and family members to a partnership influences the likelihood that it develops and stabilizes. Positive social reactions of friends strengthen a pair’s sense of identity as a couple and increase partners’ ability to withstand threats to relationship viability (Felmlee, 2001). Interpersonal attraction and courtship happen in social contexts where personal configurations play an important role. Individuals tend to foster a state of balance or “transitivity” within configurations (Milardo, 1986). Typically, this state is achieved when friends and family members of both partners become acquainted. Transitivity in configurations helps couples develop because third parties are less likely to entice partners into other commitments and the social capital lost by both partners following a breakup is higher. Thus, a powerful collective and often unacknowledged influence is exerted by configurations on personal choices concerning the development of intimate relationships, including initiation of conjugal relationships.
The concern of family members for each other’s intimate relationships is explained by the important consequences for family configurations of developing a partnership. The strengthening of interdependencies between partners means the loosening of other ties and the decrease in size of each of the partners’ personal configuration, a process referred to as “dyadic withdrawal” (Parks and Eggert, 1991; Kalmijn, 2003). Partners become less active with others as courtship progresses (Surra, 1985). In the later stages of courtship, dating individuals interact with fewer people, less often, and for shorter periods (Milardo, Johnson, and Huston, 1983). Some ties are severed in order for the couple to be able to affirm its primacy over other relationships: ex-lovers, formerly intimate relationships that might endanger couple intimacy, need to be put into a new perspective. Relationships with parents and siblings are recast. Accordingly, family configurations may slow down the development of a new partnership. The influence of configurations may not always be a positive one for couples. For instance, configuration members may disapprove of a romantic relationship and speed its demise (Johnson and Milardo, 1984; Felmlee, 2001).
Usually, however, as two persons become closer, the overlap between their personal configurations increases. Among dating couples, the absolute number of mutual contacts and the ratio of mutual to separate contacts increases as couples get more involved: one study, for example (Milardo, 1982), found that couples in the later stages of courtship had roughly twice as many mutual contacts in their configurations as couples in the earlier stages of courtship. Transitions such as living together and marriage are crucial transitions that make partners’ configurations became more interdependent (Kearns and Leonard, 2004). Thus, courtship and marriage restructures various relationships in making new connections in response to the functional necessity for couples to have a large number of shared configuration members as well as in reducing older interdependencies which may endanger conjugal privacy and conjugal primacy. The development of interpersonal attraction and courtship shows the duality of couples and family configurations. On the one hand, family members and friends play a major role for the initiation of a new couple, in making joint interactions possible, in imposing social expectations toward pairing, in providing support and information, and in imposing barriers (Parks and Eggert, 1991). On the other hand, the emergence of a partnership implies profound changes in the interdependencies characterizing each family configuration.
The process of dyadic withdrawal extends beyond courtship into other family stages, making the personal configurations of spouses or partners smaller and more overlapping (Kalmijn, 2003). The consequences of such a development are drawn from several studies on personal networks. The issue was first empirically addressed by the seminal work of Elisabeth Bott, which paved the way to a series of empirical studies. Briefly, Bott (1955, 1957) found that the segregation of conjugal roles was related to the extent of network connectedness. Couples with a high degree of segregation in the relationship between husbands and wives had highly connected configurations. Expressed differently, couples where husband and wife had an equal division of labor (i.e., no role segregation) had low network density. Because it is not self-evident, this finding has attracted the attention of scholars. As underlined by Milardo and Allan (1997), Bott explained this correlation between role differentiation and network density in two ways: First, dense configurations are more apt, because of their interconnectedness, to impose norms concerning conjugal roles compared with loosely connected configurations. Second, in dense configurations, mutual assistance among members is high, and as a consequence, spouses will have less need for one another’s collaboration and companionship. Thus, segregated marital roles have a greater chance to emerge.
Although the Bott’s hypothesis has triggered considerable interest, there is only sparse empirical evidence to support it. Milardo and Allan (1997) suggest that one problem lies in the fact that Bott equated a high density of interdependencies with traditionalist views of configuration members concerning conjugal roles. This assumption was never tested and might be problematic. Highly interconnected configurations might well be associated with weaker segregation of conjugal roles if their members hold progressive views about gender and the division of labor. In other words, structural features of conjugal configurations may only make a difference when the content of values or norms that they support is also considered, that is, when functional and structural features of groups are considered at the same time. Also, it was recently proposed that influence of kin on gender inequality in domestic tasks is likely to stem less from normative control and more from the kin exchanges that make a spouse’s assistance unnecessary (Treas, 2011). Data collected in various countries indeed showed that relationships in marriage are associated with characteristics of family configurations. Tight-knit configurations display gender-segregated marital relationships, as evidenced by the womens’ replacement of their male partner’s involvement in domestic chores and emotional support by configuration members (Treas, 2011). To summarize, because personal resources in time, money, and love are limited, various mechanisms balance out investments done in the dyads constituting family configurations.
With regard to the understanding of couples’ division of household and paid work, the transition to parenthood is a crucial moment. Research stressed how parenthood pushes couples to enter a male breadwinner model by the combined effect of traditional gender-based norms and structural constraints (Krüger and Levy, 2001). Once parents, men tend to assume the majority of professional and economic responsibilities, and women to reduce considerably their time of employment in order to assume household and child-related tasks.
Among the resources that play a role in the differentiation of individual trajectories, personal configurations represent a capital that exercises multiple effects on the employment of individuals once they become parents. Personal configurations of individuals undergoing the transition to parenthood are not well known (Bost et al., 2002). However, there is some evidence that personal configurations and the transition to parenthood are interrelated. Support from family members represents a resource allowing new parents to continue to work full time and have a more equal division of labor (Treas, 2011). The effects of personal configurations may also, as suggested by Milardo and Allan (1997), be caused by the normative pressure stemming from highly dense configurations of interrelated family members and friends.
Following a cohort of couples becoming first-time parents throughout the transition, we considered the impact of several properties of configurations on men and women’s intentions regarding future work participation and on real changes occurring during the transition (Le Goff, J.-M. and Levy R., 2011; Sapin and Widmer, 2009). Size, density, and overlaps between partner’s personal configurations were considered. In line with Bott’s hypothesis, results showed that the density of personal configurations was significantly correlated with the intentions of employment for the near future and the actual changes of employment. Women with a dense personal configuration more often intended to reduce their occupational time; as for men, the opposite was true. Those with a dense configuration had a higher chance of maintaining or even increasing their occupational time. Dense personal and family configurations actually promote a situation where women invest in mixed solutions of full-employment and the homemaker status.
In the transition to parenthood, two mechanisms derived from Bott’s perspective are at work. Couples with dense social configurations adopt a more unequal division of labor once they become parents, as women can more easily adjust to the demand of parenthood without institutional support (Treas, 2011), which paradoxically makes full-time employment less easy. Second, the informal social control exercised by denser personal configurations is stronger, which makes it easier for women to hold to prevalent social norms such as the benefits for young children of having their mothers at home with them.
Interestingly, in the transition to parenthood, configurations become on average denser, as the birth of the child creates a new focus point which changes the ways in which relationships between the parents are organized (Sapin and Widmer, 2009). The care for the new child activates a set of joint activities and coordination among individuals, such as indivudual’s grandparents, uncles, and aunts, from both paternal and maternal sides of the family. Therefore, having a child creates new activities and new connections both for parents and grandparents. Therefore, an increase of bonding social capital follows the transition to parenthood which has a cumulative effect of decreasing the labor force participation of women. Dense family configurations entice women to reduce their paid work participation, and the decrease of paid work makes their likelihood of developing bridging social capital less likely. This may be especially true in countries with liberal or conservative welfare state regimes (Korpi, 2000) where various institutional structures (such as the differences between women’s and men’s parental leaves, a strong gender segregation in the labor market, and the lack of childcare institutions) push couples to adopt an unequal division of tasks once they become parents (Krüger and Levy, 2001; Giudici and Gauthier, 2009).
The interest raised by Bott’s hypothesis also transferred to the issue of conjugal satisfaction. Spouses with denser and more overlapping personal configurations report greater conjugal satisfaction, more spouse support, and more marital stability (Stein et al., 1992; Kearns and Leonard, 2004; Cornwell, 2012). Network support is associated with greater conjugal quality (Burger and Milardo, 1995; Bryant and Conger, 1999; Felmlee, 2001). There is however a curvilinear effect of involvement of configuration members (Holman, 1981; Johnson and Milardo, 1984; Widmer, 2009). One major problem of couple embeddedness in configurations has been termed network interference, that is, interdependencies with configuration members being considered as threatening the integrity of the couple. For instance, in a study on couples and their personal configurations, 22% of women and 18% of men felt that their couple was controlled by their family (Widmer et al., 2009). When configuration members are too involved in partnerships, partners may see them as interfering in their functioning. As such, support from them becomes counterproductive in terms of conjugal quality. Members of personal configurations and partners actually compete sometimes (Johnson and Milardo, 1984; Julien et al., 1994). Developing a relationship creates anxiety in configurations by challenging time and energy previously devoted to other relationships. Thus, configuration members may try to hold or regain some influence by interfering in partnerships. In this respect, configurations with a high level of bonding social capital do not buffer the effects of conjugal conflict, but actually increase it, because the emergence of conjugal problems opens doors to further interference from the configuration members in the couple’s relationships. Those problems stimulate and contribute to conflict between spouses, especially when interdependences among relatives are strong. Dense configurations, in which members feud with each other, become destructive for partnerships. For instance, intervention of third parties in an existing conjugal conflict reinforces partners’ self-legitimacy (Klein and Milardo, 2000), thus making a consensual solution less likely. The fact that social support is not linearly associated with conjugal satisfaction reveals the power struggles that stem from family cooperation.
Some studies on couples and their configurations (Widmer, Kellerhals, and Levy, 2004; Widmer et al., 2009) found that family and personal configurations matter for conjugal quality. Based on a cluster analysis, six types of configurations were found. Couples with bicentric configurations were characterized by frequent contacts with relatives and friends. Financial, domestic, and emotional support from relatives and friends was available for both partners. Relationships with relatives were frequent and warm, and relatives were seen as never interfering in the couples’ decisions. Couples with patricentric configurations reported significantly higher support from the men’s personal configurations compared with the women’s personal configurations. We described such configurations as asymmetrical or unicentric, for example, when one partner’s friends and relatives are predominant. In this case, relatives and friends of the male partner were perceived as much more supportive than relatives and friends of the female partner. Couples with matricentric configurations were defined symmetrically by the greater support provided by the women’s personal configurations. Overall, these three clusters were characterized by a low level of interference. The next three types of configurations were characterized by interference. Couples with interfering configurations felt controlled by relatives of both partners, while for couples with patri-interfering, it was the men’s relatives, and couples with matri-interfering configurations felt more controlled by the women’s relatives. Note that these configurations provided as much support to couples as noninterfering configurations. Couples with sparse configurations were characterized by no support and no interference from their friends and relatives and reported little contact with them. Such couples were to a large extent isolated. Personal configurations and conflict management strategies of couples were significantly correlated. Overall, couples in which both partners had good conflict management strategies were underrepresented in interfering and sparse configurations and were overrepresented in bicentric configurations. As a consequence, the level of conjugal satisfaction was higher in bicentric configurations than in others. The positive effect of bicentric configurations was mostly an indirect effect, as such configurations increased the partners’ likelihood of having fewer conjugal problems and conjugal disagreements and poor coping strategies, which positively affect their overall positive feeling toward the conjugal bond. This result suggests that configurations prevent the occurrence of poor conjugal quality in a variety of ways, such as emotional support, alternate social ties, and social comparison.
When the process of divorcing begins, family configurations face many important changes (Milardo, 1987; Feld and Carter, 1998). The community dimension of divorce – that is, splitting friends, dismantling ties with former in-laws, and learning to live as a single person again – is a necessary stage in the process of divorcing (Bohannan, 1970). Typically, relationships with in-laws do not survive the dissolution of the marital dyad, especially when there are no children (Spicer and Hampe, 1975; Ambert, 1988). Divorce, therefore, decreases the size of family configurations, as relationships with in-laws are often severed (Widmer et al., 2012). But at the same time, divorce is sometimes an opportunity to invest in friendship (Albeck and Kaydar, 2002) and intensify relationships with other family members (Terhell, Broese van Groenou, and van Tilburg, 2004, 2007). Differences between men and women are significant in this regard. For men, personal friendships are key in dealing with divorce effects. For women, bonds with kin remain central after marriage, while bonds with friends are only secondary (Milardo, 1988).
In these circumstances, family configurations get a prime importance after divorce and are high in interdependences related with both social support and interference (Hurlbert and Acock, 1990). They indeed have consequences for the ways in which intimate partnerships in remarriage are worked out. In the study of 300 female respondents with a biological child referenced earlier, we found that parent–child dyads and conjugal dyads were related in distinct ways in first-time families and stepfamilies (Widmer et al., 2012). In stepfamilies, conjugal satisfaction depended to a large extent on the composition of the family configuration. Respondents who were embedded in a nuclear family configuration developed a much higher satisfaction in the relationship with their new partner than respondents who developed a postdivorce configuration or a without-partner configuration, which underplayed the current partner in favor of the previous partner. In those cases, the previous partner was still considered a central family member, as the biological father of the child. Accordingly, there is some form of trade-off between two competing interdependences in such configurations. The new conjugal partnership and the coparenting relationship between the custodian parent and her previous partner (the father of her child) compete for time, attention, and emotional involvement, as well as, in some cases, financial and practical support. In such family configurations, the interdependencies with the previous partner created by the joint parenthood should be taken into account for understanding conjugal satisfaction in the current partnership.
This chapter has stressed the importance of family and personal configurations for the understanding of partnerships at various stages of their development. Partnerships belong to chains of interdependencies of various kinds, emotional, practical, and financial, embedded in configurations of family members and friends. Such interdependencies have been shown to have consequences for couples.
The boundaries and composition of personal and family configurations is one meaningful dimension. The ways in which individuals set up the boundaries of their family and personal configurations have direct consequences for their partnership. For instance, family configurations which give space to in-laws or focus on household members while excluding ties from other origins are associated with a higher conjugal satisfaction than those in which ex-partners are more prominent. In stepfamilies, acknowledging the current partner as a family member is obviously associated with a more profound integration of the conjugal partnership in the family context. In contrast, keeping strong connections with the former partner in the coparenting process is likely to make the integration of the new partner more difficult. Individual strategies are developed for the composition and boundaries of family contexts and proved to be interrelated with the ways in which partnerships develop.
Relational resources and their distribution among a large number of family members and friends are a second key for the understanding of conjugal dyads in a configurational perspective (Widmer, 2010). Overall, couples embedded in dense configurations of interdependencies face a normative and supportive context which is more effective than for couples in family configurations with a lower density of interdependencies. Bonding social capital is strengthened by the transition to parenthood and has consequences for the distribution of household labor between partners. As the evidence shows, it promotes collective forms of support for the couple while increasing the pressure toward the performance of gendered roles within the partnership. An alternative to bonding social capital, bridging social capital is where individuals benefit from connecting otherwise unrelated people. Several sets of family members are not directly connected because they do not know each other or because they have weakened their ties after life events such as a divorce, a conflict, or the death of a family member. In those cases, some intermediaries become prominent in the configuration. Those individuals can draw resources and information from a variety of heterogeneous social circles within their family and personal configurations. Some family configurations, such as friendships or postdivorce family configurations, include members from various circles of sociability with gaps between them. This alternate form of organization of interdependencies may have positive consequences for social integration in complex societies. Indeed, developing bridging social capital in their family and personal configurations helps individuals to learn how to play intermediary roles in heterogeneous social circles (Wellman, 1999; Putnam, 2000; DiPrete et al., 2011).
Family interdependencies however also create power struggles because of the limitations of the resources that they convey. Cooperation in configurations triggers unexpected tensions and conflicts because it is associated with various constraints that individuals enforce on each other by their interdependencies. Resources are scarce and their unequal distribution within family configurations is subject to control attempts. Interference is a process associated with such unintended consequences of cooperation in personal and family configurations. While some configuration members try to actively help couples by providing emotional and practical support and information, there are various possibilities that such support creates additional tensions in partnerships. The inequality between the given and the received decreases the feeling of partners to be self-supportive while increasing the likelihood of having third parties tapping into the emotional exchanges usually shared only by partners. Imbalance between personal networks of partners may twist the interdependence between partners in favor of the one with the larger personal configuration in case of conjugal conflict. There are a large number of situations in which family and personal configurations create interference or conflicts in partnerships. Therefore, ambivalence is a main feature of configurations.
Overall, stressing the importance of personal and family configurations makes it easier to grasp how the relational context of partners intermingles and shapes a reality that becomes a resource as well as a source of conflicts for couples. By stressing the set of interdependences that link each individual with a relatively large number of significant others, we understand partnerships as parcels of larger chains of interdependences facing conflicting priorities in their line of solidarity. The pluralization of personal life courses made such configurations more complex, diverse, and individualized. And, while being influenced by them, partnerships actively contribute to build up such configurations.