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

Family has been posited as among the most important factors influencing the development of identity, that is, people’s sense of who they are (Erikson, 1968; McLean, 2015). Also, the family is among the most important life areas, or identity domains, which together constitute individuals’ overall sense of identity (Fadjukoff et al., 2005; Galliher et al., 2017). Although identity formation is a key developmental task that comes to the fore in adolescence, it is seen as a central developmental process that continues throughout the lifespan (Erikson, 1968; Ferrer-Wreder & Kroger, 2019). Similarly, for most people, the concept of family stays with the individual throughout their lifespan, being an important aspect of people’s lives (see, e.g., Bohanek et al., 2008; Fivush, 2008; Komter et al., 2011). However, neither identity nor family emerge in a vacuum, but can also be viewed as reflecting a larger cultural context (Erikson, 1968; Galliher et al., 2017; McLean et al., 2018). One way to understand identity is to investigate people’s stories about themselves, their surroundings, and their experiences, also known as their narrative identity (McAdams, 1993, 2001; McAdams & McLean, 2013). People’s narrative identities are continuously evaluated, constructed, and reconstructed over time (McAdams, 2001; McAdams & McLean, 2013; McLean, 2015). Here, we apply a structural-psychological perspective, viewing context and structural factors as embedded in psychological phenomena (Fish & Syed, 2018; Syed & McLean, 2022) in order to capture the content of family identity and the importance for identity as a whole of family-related narratives of deviation from what is expected in Sweden.

Family identity

Who someone is as part of the family system is a part of their identity typically referred to as family identity (Ferring, 2017). As any group does, the family system includes its own specific kinds of interaction and internally created memories. Furthermore, most people have a family history filled with family-related experiences that mark important events in the adaptation and survival of the family system (Ferring, 2017). Also, a vast amount of research has illustrated how the parents’ style influences their children’s identity formation, for example, showing that parental attachment and support are connected to higher levels of identity exploration (Mullis et al., 2009; Nawaz, 2011; Prioste et al., 2020). Other research indicates that other family members, such as siblings, also affect people’s identity-formation process (Davies, 2015). It is important to understand not only the parents’ role but also the role of the wider family in the identity-formation process.

Identity content and centrality

While most relevant research has focused on the processes and dynamics of family identity, there is a lack of research exploring the content of family identity, that is, what identity is made of (Galliher et al., 2017). When trying to understand the actual content of identities, one can analyze the matter at different levels, from the broadest level of culture, through social roles and domains, down to specific everyday experiences. Family is at the domain level (Galliher et al., 2017), and is one of many domains of which a person’s identity is made up of. Earlier research has shown that not all domains are equally important for people’s identity, and that people place different values and importance on different domains for their sense of who they are (Fadjukoff et al., 2005; McLean et al., 2016; Meca et al., 2015). For example, Fadjukoff et al. (2005) found that in a sample of middle-aged adults, domains concerning both work and family were more important than domains concerning religion and politics. In a similar vein, when coding narratives from adolescents for content, McLean et al. (2016) found that interpersonal domains were the most common, and when they co-occurred with other themes the most dominant, followed by existential and ideological domains. Taken together, these studies point to the importance of interpersonal domains, including the family domain, for identity development.

The concept of identity centrality refers to the enduring relative importance an individual ascribes to a particular identity domain (Stryker & Serpe, 1994). As mentioned, family has been found to be among the most central domains of identity (Fadjukoff et al., 2005; Galliher et al., 2017), and this will likely have consequences for the way people develop their identities within this domain. Previous studies in stress research, for example, have suggested that the centrality of a life domain to one’s identity may potentially moderate the effects of stressors within this domain. Thoits (1991) suggests that stressors from an important life domain are more identity-relevant than stressors from less central domains and will therefore lead to more negative emotional responses. Other research, however, suggest that a more central identity might buffer against negative emotional responses because people are more attentive to potential threats in identity central domains, thereby being better prepared to cope (Martire et al., 2000). Extant research has, however, not explored how content and centrality of the family identity domain are related. Thus, exploring both the content of the family-related narratives and the centrality of these for identity will broaden the family identity perspective beyond processes and dynamics.

Narrative identity and the family

One way to understand the family’s role in identity formation is from a narrative identity perspective, according to which identity is formed through the formulation of stories (McAdams, 1993; McAdams & McLean, 2013). According to McAdams (1993), a story might be the best way for people to organize their lives in time, in the past, present, and future, as knowing who one is involves telling a meaningful life story. Creating narratives about themselves and their lives is something that everyone does to understand themselves and their surroundings (McAdams, 1993; Reese et al., 2010). In addition, the stories people tell about themselves are a way for them to tell others who they are (McAdams, 1993; 2001). Narratives go beyond simply what has happened: they explain the framework, the how and why, and include a reflective perspective that conveys a subjective stance (Fivush et al., 2010). The family, with its history created through jointly told stories, has been shown to be a central domain for narrative research (see, e.g., Ferring, 2017; Fivush., 2008; Marin et al., 2008). Using narratives to create and develop one’s identity means having to relate to the narratives created within the family system (Ferring, 2017).

Family members greatly influence the formation of people’s identities, even being described as the “co-authors” of people’s narrative identity (McLean, 2015). The stories that family members tell about each other and their families are integrated into their stories about themselves and are therefore an central part of people’s identity formation (McLean, 2015). A lot remains to be understood about exactly what role the family plays in people’s narrative identity. There is thus a need to investigate different types of family-related narratives and to understand the centrality of these stories to people’s identities as a whole.

Master narratives and deviating stories

When forming a narrative identity, people must not only relate to the family’s shared narratives, but also master narratives in wider society (McLean et al., 2018; McLean & Syed, 2015). Master narratives are described as shared cultural stories conveying cultural norms and expectations that form ubiquitous narratives about how life should be lived (see, Galliher et al., 2017; Hammack, 2008; McLean et al., 2018). People unconsciously adopt master narratives as their own, and it is usually not until people deviate from them that they become aware of these narratives’ existence (McLean, 2015; McLean et al., 2018). People must position themselves either with or against these master narratives, whether they are within the family system or wider society (McLean, 2015; McLean et al., 2018). Deviating from master narratives often leads to intensified identity-formation processes in people making sense of themselves and their place in the world; these processes in turn seem to make the specific involved identity domains more central to the identity as a whole (Galliher et al., 2017; McLean et al., 2018). Also, being embedded in the cultural context, master narratives change over time alongside changes in society, as does the family system together with its impact on people’s identities (Erikson, 1968; Giddens, 1991). It is thus important to understand the specific cultural context in which the family is situated, in this case, Sweden.

The family context in Sweden

Sweden is in many ways a country that stands out. For example, the World Value Survey (Haerpfer et al., 2022) identifies Sweden as an outlier when it comes to self-expression and secular values, standing out from most countries in the world, even other Nordic countries, in having high levels of both. This results in less strict traditional family values, with, for example, divorce and abortion being seen as relatively acceptable (Haerpfer et al., 2022). According to Statistics Sweden (SCB), people in Sweden do not get married until their late 30s (SCB, 2021a) despite living together (see, Björnberg, 2002; Wängqvist et al., 2016) and having their first child when they are around 30 years old (SCB, 2021b). Almost a fifth of people in Sweden live in single-person households without children (SCB, 2021c) and a fourth of all children in Sweden live with one or neither of their biological parents, with 80% of these children having at least one sibling, including full, half, and “bonus” siblings (SCB, 2021d). Families are structured in a great variety of ways in Swedish society. The extended family is also important, where statistics have shown that closeness to grandparents affects the rate of sick leave for parents (SCB, 2017). In addition, there are strong gender equality norms in Sweden when it comes to the family. Both parents are encouraged to care for their family through legislation granting, for example, paid parental leave, making it easier for both parents to combine work and family life (Allard et al., 2011; Gyberg et al., 2019). In this regard, and since Sweden is often portrayed as extreme when it comes to self-expression, secular values, and family norms, Sweden is a particularly interesting context for the study of family-related narratives deviating from the master narratives in society.

Aim

The purpose of this study is to examine the content and centrality of family identity. More specifically, we will explore what types of family-related narratives people in Sweden share when asked about deviating from master narratives in Sweden, investigating the identity centrality of these stories. We do this by answering the following research questions:

RQ1: What types of family-related narratives do people share when asked about deviating from master narratives?

RQ2: Are there any differences in identity centrality between family-related and non-family-related narratives?

RQ3: Are there any differences in identity centrality between the different types of family-related narratives?

Method

This study was part of the GREEN-project (Gothenburg Research on Ethnicity-related Experiences and identity Narratives) at the University of Gothenburg in collaboration with the University of Minnesota, with the aim of capturing identity experiences among adolescents and early adults in Sweden (see, e.g., Gyberg et al., 2018).

Procedure

The data were collected at six upper secondary schools (three years of education following elementary school) and two universities in western and southern Sweden. The studied schools and universities were selected for the diverse socioeconomic backgrounds of their students. Those interested in participating were given questionnaires to complete either on paper or online during class. Trained research assistants informed the participants of the aims of the study and that participation was voluntary, that they could end their participation at any time, and that their answers would be kept anonymous.

Participants

The sample for this study was drawn from that of a larger study of narratives from 462 individuals, aged 15–46 years (M_age = 20.3 years, SD = 5.10), consisting of 345 participants identifying as women, 111 as men, and three as non-binary or transsexual. Regarding ethnicity, there were about 90 different self-identified ethnicities reported, with 289 participants (64%) indicating ethnic majority, 116 (26%) indicating both majority and minority (i.e., mixed), and 43 (10%) identifying as an ethnic minority group. There were 14 participants not included in these numbers due to stating that they did not belong to an ethnicity or because they did not answer which ethnicity they belonged to. Whereas 210 participants mentioned family in their narratives, family was central to the stories of 170 participants (M_age = 20.1 years, SD = 4.85, 139 women, 30 men, one non-binary, 52% ethnic majority, 34% mixed ethnicity, 12% minority, 60% upper secondary and 40% university students). Both the large sample and the subsample are presented in Table 1.

Table 1. Descriptive information on the participants in the total sample and subsample.

	Total sample (N = 462)		Subsample (n = 170*)
Variables	n (%)	Mean age (standard deviation)	n (%)	Mean age (standard deviation)
Gender
Women	345 (75)	20.48 (5.04)	137 (82)	20.42 (5.13)
Men	111 (23.8)	19.8 (5.31)	30 (18)	19.00 (3.39)
Non-binary/Trans	3 (0.6)	21 (4)	1 (1)	17 (-)
Self-Identified Ethnicity
Ethnic majority	289 (64)		90 (54)
Mixed	116 (26)		56 (34)
Ethnic minority	43 (10)		20 (12)
Education
Upper secondary school	267 (57)		100 (59)
University	195 (42)		68 (41)
Total	462 (100)	20.3 (5.10)	168 (100)	20.1 (4.87)

* 37% of the large sample

Measures

The data collection survey gathered background information from the participants about, for example, age, self-identified gender, and school level. The specific measures used for this study are described in detail below.

Master narrative prompt

The narratives were identified using a master narrative prompt developed by McLean et al. (2018). The prompt first explained that life may be viewed as a story and that we all have our own personal stories based on our experiences. These stories may differ from what others expect or what is viewed as normal, and the prompt continued with a question worded as follows: “Have you ever felt that your story diverged from what was considered to be normal, expected, or accepted by family, peers, society, etc.?” The prompt ended by clarifying that the story the participant chose to write could be about a specific event or about her/his life more generally, and that the story should be as detailed as possible. After responding to the prompt, the participants were asked to answer three additional open-ended questions concerning their narratives. These additional questions, building on the work of Syed and Azmitia (2008), encouraged the participants to elaborate on their stories. The three questions were as follows: (1) “What did you do to handle, resolve, or otherwise make sense of the event?”; (2) “How did you feel when this event occurred?”; and (3) “Did this event affect what you think about or how you view your approach to difficult problems?” The narrative and the follow-up questions were treated as one unit in the analysis.

Identity centrality

Identity centrality was investigated by asking the participants to rate the level of importance for their identity of the narrative they had shared (Syed & Azmitia, 2008). The question was worded as follows: “How important is this experience (that you wrote about) to your identity, your understanding of who you are?” The question was answered using a response scale ranging from 1 to 7, with 1 being “Not at all important” and 7 being “Very important.”

Data analyses

In this study, mixed methods were used to answer the research questions (see, Creswell, 2021) as the use of both qualitative and quantitative methods when collecting and analyzing data allows a broad understanding of the issue to be presented. A convergent embedded mixed methods design was used (see, e.g., Creswell, 2021) where both qualitative and quantitative data was collected simultaneously, the emphasis was on the qualitative analyses, but quantitative analyses was performed in order to enhance the understanding (hence we specified it as embedded): The first step of the analysis was an inductive qualitative analysis of the narratives (RQ1). In a second step quantitative analyses were performed to investigate differences between the analyzed subsection of family-related narratives and other narratives in terms of identity centrality (RQ2). In a final step, in order to enhance the understanding from the qualitative analyses, frequencies of themes were calculated and related to identity centrality (RQ3). In the following we describe these steps in more detail:

For the qualitative part of the study, addressing RQ1 about what types of family-related stories people wrote, a thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) was conducted with a structured tabular approach (Robinson, 2022). The structured tabular approach to thematic analysis is very similar in procedure to the procedure described by Braun and Clarke (2006) but includes the use of spreadsheet software when coding the data, which is well-suited for larger samples of brief texts, and the approach allows for both qualitative interpretation as well as frequency and reliability calculations (Robinson, 2021). The narratives were analyzed using an inductive semantic approach to identify the essence of the narratives through interpretation without making too many assumptions. In line with narrative theory and methodology, each narrative was viewed as a whole with one essential theme rather than as a collection of several themes (see, Adler et al., 2017).

Coding of narratives

The qualitative working process for this study started with the first author selecting the subsample from the larger sample by coding the narratives as family related or not. The narratives were included when the participants mentioned family or family members such as parents or siblings. Narratives about grandparents, cousins, or aunts and uncles were also included, since the family concept was considered to encompass extended family. Narratives about partners were not included unless marriage or co-habiting was mentioned, since it was otherwise considered too difficult to decide whether the partner was seen as family (i.e., part of a stable and long-term relationship). The decision to include marriage and cohabitation and exclude other romantic partners was made based on the fact that marriage legally makes a partner into family, and young people are known to generally have short-term, less-committed relationships (Rauer et al., 2013), which is also related to the increasing age of marriage in Sweden (SCB, 2021a). Narratives about creating a family, such as having children and/or getting married, were also included in the subsample. In a second step, all the family-related narratives were reread to select those in which family was central to the story, where the story was about family; these narratives were included in the analysis. In cases where it was not fully clear what the main story was about, discussions were held among the first and second author.

In the first step of coding, the first author read and reread all the selected narratives, to familiarize with the material and taking notes of ideas and initial codes relating to our research question. In the second step, 30 randomly selected family-related narratives were thoroughly read by the first author and assigned initial codes. In the third step, the initial codes were clustered into potential themes. This was followed by coding an additional 20 narratives and clustering these new codes into potential themes and going back reviewing the previous themes created. These first 50 narratives were then divided into preliminary themes and subthemes and discussed with the second author. Once a group of themes was established, the analysis and coding of the rest of the narratives continued in the same manner, going back to the prior themes, reviewing, and revising. In the step reviewing the themes created, all of the narratives were once again read to ensure the themes created was a good representation of the content in the narratives and each theme was tabulated against the narratives in the spreadsheet. Since many narratives had more than one theme, several narratives were chosen in discussion with the second author to identify the most dominant theme connected to family. In the fifth step, the first author defined and named the themes and described the definitions of the themes in a coding manual. After the coding manual was in place, reliability of the coding was tested, where the third and fourth authors coded 53 randomly chosen narratives coded by the first author, resulting in an overall inter-rater percent agreement of 76% and an average κ of .70 between the three coders. The reliability coding procedure included a tabular coding of the narratives using the coding manual, including whether the narrative was about family. In cases in which the reliability coders did not agree, consensus was reached through discussion between all four authors resulting in the first author going back to reading all the narratives in order to establish that the decisions made were applied consistently throughout the data set (see, Syed & Nelson, 2015 for a discussion on reliability procedures).

Quantitative analyses

To answer research questions 2 and 3, about identity centrality, quantitative methods were used. To identify possible differences between the narratives coded as family related and not family related regarding the identity centrality of the narratives (RQ2), an independent-sample t-test was conducted. When trying to identify possible differences among the themes regarding identity centrality (RQ3), the Kruskal–Wallis nonparametric test was used, due to the small and uneven sample sizes.

Results and discussion

Types of family-related narratives

To answer RQ1 about what types of family-related narratives people share when asked about deviation from master narratives, thematic analysis was conducted, resulting in six themes in the subsample. Each theme was then divided into subthemes. The themes and subthemes are presented in Table 2.

Table 2. Frequency of narrative themes and identity centrality.

Themes and subthemes		Identity centrality
	n (%)	M	SD
Family structure	40 (23.5)	5.38	1.50
Unusual family	21
Divorce	15
Choosing a different family structure	4
Family adversity	40 (23.5)	5.79	1.53
Experiencing negative events and difficult emotions	24
Mental illness in the family	12
Wishing things were different	4
Perceived social norms	35 (21)	5.43	1.69
Choosing differently	18
Deviating views in the family	15
Deviating from family norms	2
Where are you from? Family roots and heritage	34 (20)	5.27	1.74
Double identity	17
Experiences of racism	14
Coming from a certain social class	3
Hiding my identity	16 (9)	5.00	1.71
Hiding from my family	9
Hiding my family	7
The normative family	5 (3)	5.00	1.61
Family-related narratives (reporting identity centrality) Other themed narratives (reporting identity centrality)	165 267	5.42* 4.60*	1.61 1.87

* Significant difference in identity centrality between samples, p< .001

Family adversity

One of the most common themes found in the sample, being evident in 40 narratives (23.5%) was Family adversity. The narratives conveying this theme concerned experiencing difficulties in relation to the family and were divided into three subthemes: Experiencing negative events and difficult emotions, Mental illness in the family, and Wishing things were different.

Experiencing negative events and difficult emotions

The narratives associated with the most common subtheme concerned experiencing difficult emotions because of something that happened in or to the family. There were narratives about specific traumatic events and about more prolonged feelings that the participants described as difficult. For example, some stories told about losing a family member and experiencing grief. As a 17-year-old woman wrote:

My grandmother and I had always been extremely close. She was there all my childhood and I always had extreme trust in her. She was my best friend. She passed away of cancer the year I turned 11. My whole world turned upside down. A lot of people might recognize themselves when I say that I barely knew who I was. I had to start all over with my life and try to find the right path again.

More than describing the identity impact of family loss, the narrative above shows an example of the extended family members being important as well. Having a close bond to grandparents have been shown in statistics to be connected to rates of sick leave in parents (SCB, 2017), but the relationship to grandparents and extended family seem to be central for the identity for other family members as well.

Mental illness in the family

There were many narratives about having a parent or family member dealing with mental illness and how that had affected the participant. Feelings of shame, guilt, worry, sadness, and loneliness related to the family member’s mental illness were common in this subtheme. A 25-year-old woman described her experience:

Have a dad who is severely mentally ill. Live in a small town, everyone knows who it is. People talk about him. I almost only have contact with him over the phone nowadays. But when we see each other on the street, etc., everyone stares a lot, etc. It can be embarrassing and difficult. This has affected me and my life, and [I have] a constant fear that someone will approach in a public place, e.g., school, and start asking about my dad, etc. Sadly, I don’t want to be identified with him. He has hurt me and my family very badly.

The participant describes her feelings of shame and sadness for her relationship with her dad. Many of the participants shared these types of stories about mental illness in the family, which also may be linked to family structure as, for example, having a parent with severe mental health issues might lead to the child not living with that parent. In addition, having a psychological diagnosis or being closely related to someone who does has been shown to potentially be a big part of people’s identities (Cruwys & Gunaseelan, 2016), corresponding to the present results.

Wishing things were different

Lastly, there were narratives in this theme that conveyed jealousy of others and a desire to have a different family from their own. Participants wrote about having a difficult time growing up with mental illness, negative events, and emotions, wishing that they could have a “normal” family without those problems. A 20-year-old man wrote:

I feel jealous of those who’ve been fortunate enough to feel a family’s closeness, in all kinds of ways, and not the apathy, the emptiness that has filled my life. I feel sorrow for those who’ve lost their dear relatives or family, a feeling that I don’t understand. And lastly … I feel hatred towards those who so thoughtlessly throw away the family they have.

The longing for a different family experience is evident in the narrative above. The narratives in this subtheme indicate that the normal family, aligning with the master narrative, is a family without difficulties like mental illness or negative events and emotions.

In sum, Family adversity being one of the most common themes, reflects how experiences of negative events and emotions are seen as deviating from what is expected or normal by the participants and thus reflecting a master narrative of a care-free, healthy, and happy family. Experiencing difficulties is part of the normal development, yet the stigma around mental health seems to still be so strong that it is perceived as a deviation to experience negative emotions.

Family structure

Also one of the most common themes found in the sample, was Family structure, present in 40 narratives (23.5%). This theme contained narratives about feeling different and deviating from the norm because of how the participant’s family was structured in terms of, for example, size, roles, biological relationships, and marital status. The subthemes found were Unusual family, Divorce and Choosing a different family structure, which are described in more detail below.

Unusual family

The most common subtheme in this group of narratives concerned the impact of being part of an unusual family. “Unusual” referred to things such as growing up with only one parent, having more than two parents, or having a big or very small family. Some participants associated with this subtheme appeared to view the conventional nuclear family, not their actual family structure, as unusual. The nuclear family in the Swedish context consists of two adults and their two biological children (SCB, 2021e). For example, a 25-year-old woman who grew up with a single mother and several stepsiblings wrote: “Don’t have a strong belief in the ‘nuclear family’; I believe that family are the people who are there for you.” She describes her view on the nuclear family, which seems to be the master narrative for family structure. Even though the participant does not believe in the master narrative, she still has to position herself in regard to it (McLean, 2015; McLean et al., 2018). Another participant, a 17-year-old woman, wrote:

My biological mom left me when I was younger. It wasn’t easy that she just left me and went on with her life; it created a lot of problems for my dad. My dad remarried a couple of years ago with another woman whom I call my mom. She’s always there for me no matter what. What I’ve learned in life is how I should be as a mother in the future, since my mom left me and I got to know how that feels. I would never want my child to feel that way.

This participant gives an example of how the family structure can change and the complex feelings a person can experience toward having both biological and non-biological family members.

Divorce

The second most common subtheme concerned the divorce of the participants’ parents. Some participants described this as an event that made a big change in their lives, both negative and positive. These people described having a stepmother or no longer having any contact with one parent as making them feel different. Many participants wrote about reactions from society when the divorce happened, about having felt weird, as everyone else lived with both parents. For some participants, this experience of deviation had changed over time. As a 19-year-old woman wrote:

My parents got divorced when I was seven years old. Then I thought I was the only one in the world who didn’t have both my parents in the same house. That disappeared after a while when I realized that it’s actually quite common to have divorced parents and not a weird thing at all.

As in the Unusual family subtheme, the Divorce subtheme, reflect a prevailing master narrative of having a nuclear family even though divorce is quite common in Sweden (SCB, 2021d), as the participant above also states.

Choosing a different family structure

Some people described deviating from the norm by actively choosing a different family structure from that of the people around them. There were also narratives about having or not having one’s own family, about deciding not to have children or getting married young. A female participant wrote:

I’m 24 and married. I’m the only one in my peer group (with the same background) who’s married. Marriage is seen as something a bit absurd in my peer group, something that has played out its role in our modern society.

In this quote, the participant describes feelings of deviation when choosing to create a family structure of her own (through marriage) at a young age. The Swedish context provides a norm of getting married later in life, with the mean age for marriage being 37 years old (SCB, 2021a), indicating why marrying young may be perceived as deviant in a Swedish context.

Taken together, the theme Family structure indicate a master narrative in Sweden concerning the idea of a nuclear family, consisting of two adults and two biological children living together in the same household. The norm of having a nuclear family, seem to still be strong in Sweden, even though the structure of families has many variations (SCB, 2021a, 2021b, 2021d), and Sweden often is described as not as bound to traditional family norms compared with many other countries (Haerpfer et al., 2022).

Perceived social norms

The third theme we identified was Perceived social norms, conveyed by 35 narratives (21%). This theme concerned participants who had family views and norms that deviated from normative expectations or who had views different from their family’s views. Participants associated with this theme wrote about discussing life choices and politics with their families or peers and standing up for their opinions. There were also participants in this theme that did not experience deviation, but rather aligned with the perceived social norms. This theme was divided into four subthemes: Choosing differently, Deviating views in the family, Deviating from family norms and The normative family.

Choosing differently

Some participants wrote narratives about how deviating from perceived social norms created distance in their families: they could feel left out, or as if they had to either choose between different sides or live a compromised life. One participant wrote:

The fact is that I, a 25-year-old woman, live with my 26-year-old boyfriend without being engaged or married. This has created disagreement in my family since my cousins, uncle, aunt are Christian and live in the US. This has made me feel “worse” as a person and that I’m somewhat of a “sinner” in their presence.

The perceived social norms within this participant’s family made her feel deviating for choosing to live differently. This participants narrative concerns living in line with the Swedish norms, which made here deviate from her families’ norms. As such this narrative illustrate how master narratives operates at different levels (culture, family etc.) The participant lives in a Swedish context with its secular norms, but because of her family, she still has to relate to the master narrative in the more religious context in the U.S (Haerpfer et al., 2022).

Deviating views in the family

Some participants wrote about being raised in families that were perhaps outspoken, religious, or very political, with certain views of life that separated them from people around them. Some wrote that valuing family time made them stand out from the crowd. As a 25-year-old woman wrote:

I’m a person filled with opinions and have some trouble holding back. I gladly say what I think even though there might be a hundred people not agreeing with me. I was raised in a family where discussions were part of daily life. In other contexts (not family) I feel as if I stick out and am seen as a threat or as if I talk too much.

This participant wrote about how her family context, and the family identity within her family system as deviating and made her stand out in other contexts. The perceived social norm in the Swedish context seems to be that people do not share opinions that might risk being unpopular. The Swedish context is also bound to the Scandinavian norm often referred to as the “Law of Jante” (Sandemose, 1933), which describes a mentality of never seeing yourself as more or better than anyone else.

Deviating from family norms

This subtheme also contained narratives about differing from their family in a way that was not chosen, about how their sexuality or gender expression opposed the family’s norms and was not accepted by the family. A 25-year-old transsexual man wrote about his transition and the reactions from his social milieu: “The close friends and classmates I’ve talked to have taken it positively, while relatives have a slightly more difficult time accepting it. But my view of the future is still positive.” There might be different norms working at different levels of our surrounding social contexts, which do not always coincide. As illustrated by this participant narrating how he was not as easily accepted in the family context as among his peers.

In sum, the Perceived social norms theme highlight how perceived social norms can collide with the family identity in different ways. This theme further shed light on how different norms may operate at different levels, where we might have master narratives in society that do not always correspond with norms in our families, or in our peer groups.

Where are you from? Family roots and heritage

The fourth most common theme was Where are you from? Family roots and heritage, conveyed by 34 narratives (20%). This theme was about ethnicity, nationality, class, and race, all connected to family. The participants wrote about how coming from a certain family had affected them and made them feel different from others, as if they were deviating from what was expected and accepted. This theme was divided into three subthemes: Double identity, Experiences of racism, and Coming from a certain social class.

Double identity

Many participants wrote about having a double identity connected to where they were from. These narratives concerned having parents from countries other than Sweden, having moved from the country where they were born, or being surrounded by many different cultures. These experiences made the participants experience a sense of doubleness or in-betweenness, of belonging to more than one or being stuck between several cultures and/or countries. A 16-year-old woman described this in-betweenness:

My family and I have adapted very well to the Swedish culture/community. Sometimes it can feel difficult to be asked where I’m from, that you’re seen as an “immigrant.” I get the same question in my homeland, where they call me “Swedish,” so sometimes I wonder which of these countries I belong to.

These narratives, including the quote above where the participant described how she and her family always have been perceived as an immigrant family in Sweden, no matter how much her family adapts to Swedish norms, portray deviation related to the family’s ethnic identity and/or background. This theme of double identity corresponds with prior research suggesting that it may be difficult living up to normative expectations of being a Swedish family, as there is a lack of accepted hyphenated identities in Sweden when it comes to ethnicity, resulting in feelings of “in-betweenness” and deviation as people are generally viewed as either Swedish or immigrants (e.g., Gyberg et al., 2018; Scuzzarello & Carlson, 2019; Svensson et al., 2018).

Experiences of racism

Other participants wrote about experiencing racism in relation to family and family members, about having prejudice to cope with, being exposed to slurs, verbal abuse, or mistreatment. Some participants wrote about their family members experiencing racism, for example, through having an adopted sibling or a stepsibling with a parent from another country. Here is how a 17-year-old woman described her experiences of racism:

Yes, I can get a lot of racists on my back, it hasn’t happened a lot, but it has happened. My mom wears a hijab, so there are even more people who give her an “ugly” look or make a mean or unpleasant comment, which makes you feel bad, even though we’re Swedish citizens.

This quote reflects the serious consequences that can come from not aligning with the master narrative in society, in this case in the form of racism and correspond with the double identity theme in that it does not seem to be enough to be a Swedish citizen when you do not pass as Swedish in the eyes of others.

Coming from a certain social class

There were also narratives about having a family from a certain social class. The narratives in this subtheme concerned living in a community or going to school with people associated with a social class different from their own, either having lower or higher social class than their peers, and how that led to feelings of deviation. A 30-year-old man shared the following about his social class: “Something that has followed me and affected me as a person is that we didn’t have that much money. This brought me quite a lot of shame.” Being part of a family, having less money, which indicates coming from a lower social class has, as the participant said, impacted his identity. The narratives in this subtheme were about either coming from an upper social class or a lower social class, which indicates that the master narrative seem to include coming from the middle class. This corresponds to the socioeconomic demographics of Sweden, which shows that Sweden has a large middle income class, larger than many other countries (OECD, 2019).

The Where are you from? Family roots and heritage theme emphasize the importance of family background and portray a master narrative comprising norms of whiteness and being middle class. Even though Sweden has a diverse population, where almost 40% of all children in Sweden under the age of 18 is either born outside of Sweden or have at least one parent born outside of Sweden (SCB, 2022), it seems to be difficult to live up to normative expectations of Swedishness. In addition, regarding social and/or income class, not having to much or to little seems to be in line with the master narrative in Sweden.

Hiding my identity

The second least frequent theme, found in 16 narratives (9.5%), was Hiding my identity. The participants whose narratives were coded to this theme told of hiding parts of themselves and feeling as though they deviated so strongly from what was expected and accepted that they had to hide part of their identity, otherwise they would suffer negative consequences. For example, they felt afraid of being judged or felt as though no one would understand if they tried to reveal their identity. This theme was divided into two subthemes: Hiding from my family and Hiding my family.

Hiding from my family

Several participants wrote of hiding something from their family or of having different opinions from their family’s and feeling as though there would be negative consequences if they were open with them. These potential consequences connected these stories to the theme of having different opinions or views from those of their family, but what distinguishes this theme is that the narrators expressed a need to hide their different opinions. A 16-year-old woman described how the context of honor in her family forced her to hide parts of her identity:

Have to be as good as possible, not make a lot of mistakes, because then rumors will spread, which isn’t good for us, since rumors are a big thing in my family. … This is what causes a lot of us to live in a bubble full of lies, when you can’t take a stand and say how you feel because rumors will spread, how you always have to determine whether it’s the right choice because you don’t want to hurt the people around you.

The participants described how being unable to tell their families about their identities was both difficult and painful. Being able to talk to family about negative events and emotions furthers one’s self-development (Marin et al., 2008), and not being able to do so is a great loss for people who have to hide their thoughts and feelings from their families.

Hiding my family

Some participants wrote about hiding themselves and their families from others, feeling ashamed of their families, or not knowing whether other people would understand their family situation if they described it. A 20-year-old woman explained this as follows:

[It was] When I was in a problematic situation in my childhood that I felt like an outsider. I felt shame about my life circumstances and had difficulties being open towards others. No one knew about my background then, which made me feel left out. My childhood was filled with anxiety because I had to try and hide my background and my family issues.

The narratives in this subtheme reflect how strong the family identity can be, and therefore also the need to hide it. The family situation and the family background are seen (by the participants themselves and others) as a big part of the identity, whether they want it to be or not.

In sum, the Hiding my identity theme is an important one because it illustrates how feeling different and deviating from the norm can feel so difficult, shameful, and frightening that it feels impossible or too risky to be open with people. When people experience deviation from the master narrative, they are likely to search for others who deviate in the same way, to feel a sense of community (Syed & McLean, 2022). A lack of connection to others, in such a marginalized position, can lead to confusion and inability to integrate this aspect into their identity (Syed & McLean, 2022), as might be a risk for some of the participants hiding their identities.

The normative family

The last theme found in the sample included only five narratives (3%) about not deviating at all, but rather the experience of aligning with the family master narrative and seeing oneself as a normal person with a normal family. A 17-year-old woman wrote: “My view of myself has never been that I’m abnormal actually. I’m happy with my childhood, growing up in a good family.” This participant describes her family as good and the satisfaction with her childhood, which according to her, is connected to her view of herself as normal. The family seem to be an important factor to being perceived as normal and to feel normal.

Although the least frequent theme, The normative family is interesting and important as it also mirror the master narrative to some extent. The participants in this theme give examples of what makes them normal, and family is a central part of all of these narratives. Besides playing football, having average grades in school and having an average weight, the participants also describe having a good upbringing, coming from a family neither rich nor poor, aligning with the family’s expectations as important factors to a normal life. Regardless of deviation or alignment, the individual has to relate and position themselves with or against the family master narrative (McLean, 2015; McLean et al., 2018).

Differences in identity centrality between family-related narratives and non-family-related narratives

Family-related narratives had a mean score of 5.42 (SD = 1.61) for centrality, with narratives scoring >4 (out of 7) being interpreted as important, indicating that family-related narratives were central to participant identity. When answering RQ2 about the identity centrality of family-related narratives versus other narratives, the independent-sample t-test (see, Table 2) indicated a significant difference in identity centrality between family-related and non-family-related narratives (t[429] = 4.74, p< .001, d = 0.47, 95% CI [0.27, 0.67]). The mean score for family-related narratives (M = 5.42, SD = 1.61) was significantly higher than the mean for non-family-related narratives (M = 4.59, SD = 1.87), with a mean difference of 0.83, indicating that family-related narratives were more central for identity than were non-family-related narratives.

The finding that narratives of deviation were rated as very central for the participants’ identities corresponds with earlier research that has argued that deviation from master narratives intensifies identity-formation processes that lead to increased identity centrality in the domain where the deviation is situated (Galliher et al., 2017; McLean et al., 2018). However, that family-related narratives were found to be more central than other narratives of deviation was unexpected. The importance of family-related narratives was reinforced by the fact that up to a third or more of the narratives examined here were family related.

Differences in identity centrality between types of family-related narratives

To answer RQ3 about differences in identity centrality between the types of family-related narratives, the non-parametric Kruskal–Wallis test was performed. The results indicated no significant difference between the themes regarding the measure of identity centrality (H[4] = 4.12, p = .532), indicating that the various themes were all equally central to the participants’ identities (see, Table 2). This finding indicates that the family is central to the identity, regardless of the theme.

General discussion

The purpose of this study was to examine the content of family identity and its importance for identity as a whole by looking more closely at stories deviating from the master narrative in contemporary Sweden. The results showed a broad variety of themes, and even though Sweden often is depicted as relatively free from traditional family norms (Haerpfer et al., 2022), our results suggest that many traditional family norms still shape what is seen as expected and accepted, although this does not always concur with people’s lived experience in Sweden (see, e.g., SCB, 2021d). Additionally, the results indicated that the family-related narratives were more central to the participants’ identities than were other narratives of deviation.

The present results indicated six types of family-related narratives when studying deviations from the master narrative in Sweden. These narratives concerned deviations related to family adversity, family structure, perceived social norms, family heritage, and participants hiding their identities. Seeing this large variety of themes of deviation related to family was quite surprising, as Sweden is often viewed as a country having fewer traditional family norms than other countries (Haerpfer et al., 2022). Still, the identified themes indicate that there is a strong master narrative concerning the family system and that these norms may operate at different levels, some in relation to the family, some in relation to social context, and others on a broader societal level. As people deviating from the master narrative are likely to search for others, to feel a sense of community, not being able to achieve this, can lead to negative consequences for identity development (Syed & McLean, 2022).

The themes relating to family structure, family adversity, and family heritage indicate that the prevailing master narrative in Sweden portrays a happy, white, secular, middle-class, heteronormative nuclear family. Even so, divorce and living with non-biological family members are quite common in Sweden (SCB, 2021d), and there is great ethnic diversity among people in Sweden (SCB, 2022). For example, although almost 40% of all children in Sweden under the age of 18 is either born outside of Sweden or have at least one parent born outside of Sweden (SCB, 2022) and the fact that Sweden has been ranked to have the most integration-promoting policies in the world (Solano & Huddleston, 2020), there were many narratives of deviation concerning family roots and heritage. These narratives portrayed difficulties in being viewed as “Swedish enough” due to the participants’ family background, where several participants had experienced racism and negative attitudes directed toward their families. Previous research has highlighted the difficulty living up to a normative expectancy of what is viewed as “Swedish enough” (e.g., Gyberg et al., 2018; Johansson & Olofsson, 2011; Scuzzarello & Carlson, 2019; Svensson et al., 2018) and there is also an increased nationalist rhetoric in public debate emphasizing monocultural ideals (Mulinari & Neergaard, 2019). Norms related to the family system are likely to be highly influenced by representations in public debate, but also influenced by movies, books, and magazines portraying ideals of what families should be and look like, and that these norms and ideals are then internalized in people’s identities (see, e.g., Slater, 2007). The master narrative in Sweden concerning the family may be greatly influenced by the same norms and messages as in many other Westernized societies, so it would also be interesting to conduct a cross-country comparison to see whether any of the themes identified here are unique to the Swedish context. Notably, some narratives were about having what some participants described as “a normal family,” but these were very few. Nonetheless, these narratives of being normal play an important role in describing master narratives concerning family in a Swedish context.

In addition, many of the themes found here overlapped with other areas of life, illustrating how family identity is connected to and spans several other identity domains. For example, we found stories about perceived social norms, where having, for example, unpopular opinions were brought up by the participants, which may be important aspects of the ideological identity domain (e.g., Fadjukoff et al., 2005), and stories about family roots and heritage, which in turn are important aspects of the ethnic identity domain (e.g., Phinney et al., 2000). Not only do these results indicate that identity domains seem to overlap, but also that the family seems to have a broad impact on who we are.

The fact that narratives of deviation were rated as very important for the participants’ identities was unsurprising, since earlier research has argued that deviation from master narratives intensifies identity-formation processes that lead to increased identity centrality in the domain where the deviation is situated (Galliher et al., 2017; McLean et al., 2018). The importance of family-related narratives was reinforced by the fact that up to a third or more of the narratives examined here were family related. We also found no significant difference in identity centrality between the different themes. The present results illustrate how the family’s role in people’s lives can mean many different things, and this study broadens our understanding of the family’s impact on people’s identity formation. It is remarkable that there has been so little research into the family-related content of identity that is not solely about the parental perspective (see, e.g., Gyberg et al., 2019; Pleck & Stueve, 2004), given its importance for identity. Furthermore, the findings further emphasize that the family is very central for people even after adolescence (see, e.g., Bohanek et al., 2008; Fivush, 2008; Komter et al., 2011), and this should be considered when meeting people in both practical and clinical settings. Specifically, the family perspective could be useful to integrate not only in family therapy, but also in individual therapy and interventions as well, especially since there are reasons to believe that a narrative understanding of oneself can be changed through therapy (see, Adler, 2012).

Limitations and future directions

Few studies have studied family narratives at as large a scale as has this study, although a major limitation is the skewed distribution of gender among the participants. Earlier research has had similar issues with skewness in that more women than men tend to respond to prompts asking for narratives (see, e.g., Fivush et al., 2012). Also, women seem to focus more often on interpersonal domains in narratives and share more developed narratives than do men (Bartoszuk & Pittman, 2002; Fivush et al., 2012; Gyberg & Frisén, 2017; McLean & Breen, 2009). Future research should therefore focus on ways to reach men and capture their family-related narratives as well. Another limitation is that we collected no background information about social class, socioeconomics, or geographical origin, so we cannot analyze the results regarding those variables. We might have found different types of narratives of deviation if more participants from rural areas and from outside the university setting had been included, for example, as people start families at a lower mean age in smaller cities (SCB, 2021b). Future research could also benefit from investigating potential age effects when studying narratives of deviation and centrality, including more evenly distributed age groups allowing for comparisons, which we did not do. In addition, it would have been interesting to include a Relational Analysis (Robinson, 2011) to see if and how domains and themes overlapped in the narratives, not only focusing on the most salient ones. Doing this could bring an even further insight to the role family plays in the lives of these participants. This would be an exciting avenue for future research studying master narratives.

Conclusion

This study provides novel and important information regarding the content of family identity among people in Sweden. Not only do the present findings emphasize the importance of family for people’s identities, where deviating narratives about family were found to be more central compared to other stories of deviation, but they also illustrate the complex and multilayered aspects of family identity. These findings have implications regarding the importance of better integrating the family perspective in individual therapy and other clinical settings. Furthermore, the identified themes indicate that family-related narratives of deviation from the master narrative can take various forms that often overlap with other identity domains. 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.

This study was not pre-registered before publication.

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.

Additional information

Funding

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