Constructing of „marital I”. A family as a space of spouses’ support and learning equality

Abstract

The aim of the article is to analyze the functioning of a contemporary family as a space for building equality between spouses, based on the mutual support of women and men in carrying out many roles at the same time. I also reconstruct the needs of the support that families overloaded with work disclose, largely as a result of a myth of a “normal” family still strong in our culture, identified as a family of stereotypical roles for women and men. Meeting those needs would facilitate the building of spouses equality. I regard this process as active constructing of “marital I” by the spouses – part of the identity in a collective form (Kaufmann, 2004). In my analysis, I refer to the concepts of: J. C. Kaufmann (2004), P. Berger and H. Kellner’s “biographical fusion” (1964) and biographical learning of adults by P. Alheit (2002).

Keywords

• małżeństwo
• rodzina partnerska
• wsparcie
• równość kobiet i mężczyzn
• uczenie się dorosłych