The Negotiations Between Biological and Social Generations in a Family
People belong simultaneously to a biological and a social generation. While they constitute a part of the continuum extending from their ancestors to posterity, they are also members of their own age cohort.
Family is a key factor for the biological generation; it is the place where the members of the generation and their diverse experiences meet. It is a special contextual place where family practices are created and modified in the everyday life of different generations (Morgan 2011, 5–7). It is also a continuous social process to which children are socialised, from which they construct their identities, and in which they live and formulate everyday practices (Salasuo, Piispa, and Huhta 2015). Cultures and societies change, but the transfer of tangible and intangible capital, property, occupations, and skills—not to mention language, religion, and customs—from one generation to the next is a central and important feature of a community (Bertaux and Thompson 2007, 1).This is a process moving in two directions; cultural insights battle with each other in various arenas, within families, and in the public domain. The result is either an inter-generational continuum or a break in the transfer of intangible capital from one generation to the next. Despite the challenges posed by other social institutions, the importance of the family for socialisation has prevailed because its impact is long-lived (in principle for life), close (physically and emotionally), strong (supported by law), and varied (it includes mental and financial capital) (Giddens 1989, 383–415; Bertaux and Thompson 2007, 1). The family can also be seen as a social institution where the life-courses of various family members—grandparents, parents, and children—intersect (Glick 1947). Often, a special place for intersections is the shared dining table.
Thus, the family is a space and a place where both biological and social generations encounter one another (Burnett 2000, 41–58). This chapter explores the ‘dining tables’ of families in Päijät-Häme, Finland, and Thunder Bay, Canada. Besides being a special place, the dining table is also a metaphor. It describes the wide range of life situations to which grandparents, parents, and children bring their values and attitudes, teachings, and ideas about life. The table is a place for negotiations and debates. It is where identities and world-views are built. Interaction at the tables of families is reflected in the surrounding society through individuals. This is an age-old process, a mechanism used by families to secure the preservation of skills, knowledge, and traditions within the family, but where they also refute, defy, and change the world. Presumably, these places of generational negotiation differ in a Finnish-Canadian immigrant community in Thunder Bay, Canada, compared to those found in families in Päijät-Häme, Finland.