Taking as its starting point the "problem" of how the family has been mediated in popular film, television, literature and social policy over the last 50 years, explores the ways in which struggles over sexuality, identity, gender and power have informed the conceptualization and representation of the family as an institution and as a site of discursive complexity. unpacks the family, looking in detail at the different generational and identificatory components: motherhood, fatherhood, adolescence and childhood. Using theoretical and critical frameworks from cultural studies, sociology, textual analysis and cultural history, and drawing on original research, case studies and critical analysis from a range of sources from around the world, the book examines the relationship between the intersecting discourses of: · youth · childhood innocence · post-war companionate marriage · bad families · entrepreneurial femininity in the 1980s in order to interrogate the representation · and reinvention of the family. is an important intervention in debates about family relationships and will be essential reading for scholars and students of cultural, film and media studies, sociology and cultural history.