The Domestic Domain: Chances, Choices and Strategies of Family Households.

As a setting, the closing months of the twentieth century provide a significant challenge for authors mapping and analysing household behaviour. Increased longevity and changed patterns of working, of working lives and of the expectations household members have for their economic, social and emotional existence have transformed older certainties and conventions. Post‐modern urban contexts have made us conscious of the diversity of household forms and, perhaps, of their relative transience. Finally, worldwide diversity in household patterns should remind us of the profound difficulties of shaping meaningful general models from on‐going transformations based on different starting points and time‐frames.