Family Identity and Deviations from the Master Narrative in Sweden

ABSTRACT

This study examines the content of family identity among people in Sweden, a country often portrayed as relatively free from traditional family norms. More specifically, we investigated the types of family-related narratives that individuals shared, narratives of deviation from the master narrative of what was expected and accepted in Swedish society. In addition, the identity centrality of the themes was investigated. The data covered 462 participants, 170 of whom – 139 women, 30 men, and one non-binary (M_age = 20.11, SD = 4.85) – had family-related narratives. We identified six themes of deviating narratives, of which the family-related narratives had significantly higher identity centrality than did the non-family-related narratives. Not only do the present findings emphasize the importance of family for people’s identities, but they also illustrate the complex and multilayered aspects of family identity. The master narrative discernable in the participants’ narratives of deviation portrays ideals of the happy, white, secular, middle-class, heteronormative nuclear family, even though this does not always correspond to the actual lived situations of families in contemporary Sweden.

KEYWORDS:

• Family
• identity
• master narrative
• identity centrality
• Sweden

Acknowledgments

The authors of this paper acknowledge the valuable contribution, time and effort put in by all the participants, as well as all the people involved in the GREEN project, especially Professor Ann Frisén and Professor Moin Syed.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Due to the nature of this research, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data is not available. Materials such as the coding manual are available from the corresponding author.

This study was not pre-registered before publication.

Additional information

Funding

Preparation of this manuscript was supported by a University of Gothenburg Grant-in-Aid 220211 awarded to Fanny Gyberg.