Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Gender Studies and Sexuality, 2024
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Working Misunderstandings of Contemporary Family and Marriage
Dr. Judit Flóra Balatonyi
ABSTRACT:
Based on my anthropological research in my paper focuses the dominant political discourses, everyday counternarratives and lived experiences about contemporary family and marriage in Hungary. Although the romantic partnership is a personal alliance, but marriage is not entirely a private or family affair. Contemporary marriage has long been central to how states have sought to regulate their populations and to influence feelings of national belonging. The connections between marriage, family and nationhood are particularly apparent in the case of Hungary. While marriage rates worldwide fell significantly during the pandemic, in Hungary the number of marriages increased. The demographic correlation can be explained mainly by the recently introduced policy measures offering favorable terms for loans. Being married and planning to have a child are necessary conditions for accessing these. The political narrative of marriage and family primarily highlights traditional gender roles (“mother is female, father is male”, anti-LGBTQ propaganda etc.) and articulates “beauty of love and care for others”, and the motherhood as a woman’s purpose in life. So, the dominant political narrative emphasizes that women and man continue to assume conservative and more unequal gender roles. This notion of marriage and family also is “symbolic glue” that holds together domestic political ideology and positions it against neoliberal Western societies. The everyday counternarratives and lived experiences of family and marriage showed a substantial difference. Other motivations, complex, modern-individualistic, and conservative ideologies prevailed. Presumably, “working misunderstandings” are at the background.
keywords: gender and public policy; gender equality; politics of sexuality; working misunderstanding