Households

In recent years, much social theorizing has focused on changes in personal life. In particular, structural changes associated with late modernity, including especially globalization and individualization, are [Page 746]recognized as having had a profound effect on the routine construction of the life course and the patterning of family commitments and relationships. Most noticeably, in Westernized countries, albeit with significant national variation, there is far greater diversity in patterns of family formation and dissolution than there was in the mid-twentieth century. In particular, there have been substantial shifts in the social patterning of sexual relations, partnership, cohabitation and marriage, and childbirth. In turn, the timing of key life markers has been altering. Not only are marriage rates declining, but the fewer marriages that there are now occur at later ages. Similarly, age at first birth, whether inside or outside marriage, has been increasing, as has the age at which people finally leave the parental home. As a result, life-course transitions now tend to be less ordered and clear-cut than they were previously.

These relational and life-course changes are having a significant impact on the social organization of households. There have, of course, always been shifts in household composition across the life course, with living arrangements inevitably being shaped by the wider circumstances of people's lives. Expressed differently, the decisions people make about their household arrangements depend on the options open to them at different phases of their life course, which in turn depend on both the character of their domestic and familial commitments and the availability of different forms of housing. With the reordering of personal life characteristic of late modernity, there is significantly greater diversity in household experiences across time, with movements into and out of new and existing households routinely being more varied and less predictable. Flux in these matters is more common and more normative now than it was for much of the twentieth century.

In turn, this has raised interesting questions for the study of household consumption. This entry focuses on three of these: the changing constitution of households, the relationship between individual and household consumption, and the emergence of the home as a domain for—rather then just a site of—consumption.