Privacy and the Family: Conceptual and Empirical Reflections

This paper offers a critical assessment of the distinction between the public and the private spheres as often used in family studies. In place of the focus on a single public/private dichotomy which is common in sociological usage, it points to the multiple, cross-cutting, context-specific zones of privacy found in social life. It provides an empirical illustration of the nature and effects of such zones of privacy by examining some instances of social policy development in Ireland in the present century where questions of family privacy were very much at issue. It concludes by suggesting that the public/private dichotomy should be understood not as an objective division of the world into two spheres, but as a flexible cultural image which is put to use in wide variety of situations so as to serve a great diversity of interests and purposes.