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A chronicle

of future

Forecasting TRENDS and MINDSET SHIFTS

Volume THREE APRIL 2018 THE MODERN FAMILY



01

The Modern Family

Towards a more fluid, resilient, collective

 

 

 02 

Love Hacks

Emergent family rituals

 

 

03

Nostalgia Therapy

The family antidote to today’s fear, uncertainty and doubt

 

 

04

Nurture curiousity

Bethany Koby on healthy digital habbits

 

 

05

Brand Take-Outs

Channel the joy, don’t wag the finger











“If you want to understand where society is heading, look to the family first.
This is the place where adults carve out their mini utopias, feeding from and
challenging the prevailing culture, we view it as being at the vanguard of
broader social change.”

 

— Miriam Rayman, Laura Walmsley and Anniki Sommerville, co-founders, Family
Affair

The Modern Family

Towards a more fluid, resilient collective

 

 






It’s time to rethink the family. So much attention has been placed on the
shifting needs of the individual, it’s easy to overlook the importance of kith
and kin and how much families too are changing. Across geographies, ethnicities,
income groups, even just across the road, opinions on how to run a family vary
hugely but tracking the discourse around parenting and home life does show a
shift towards the family as a more fluid, resilient collective.

 

What we’ve found through talking to experts and conducting consumer research is
that home-life is flourishing with creativity and experimentation. It may not
feel like that at 6pm on a school night but modern families are being forced
into being inventive and resourceful to counter today’s financial,
environmental, political and digital anxieties. 

 

The Age of Plurality

“As a general societal rule, we are knocking down all the taboos and this is
being seen most keenly with how we understand the family. Un-traditional is the
new traditional” says Caroline Whaley, founder of Shine for Women, who helps
women, often mums, reach their potential. “The family has become a collective,
it is not just held together by blood.” 

 

In the US, less than half (46%) of kids are living with their biological parents
in a first marriage (Pew research). In the UK a quarter of families are now
headed by a single parent (Mintel). Families fit together in all manner of ways
today.  It’s turning the concept of family into something much more fluid. And
interestingly more akin to what it was 500 years ago where homes were busy
places open to all. The medieval household for example was much more than
parents and kids, it also housed a collection of friends, relatives and even
strangers. As the historian John Gillis writes in A World of Their Own Making:
Myth, Ritual, and the Quest for Family Values, “It was often difficult to tell
which family belonged where… the constant traffic of people precluded the cozy
home life we imagine to have existed in the past.”

 

Strength in Numbers

Now just as then, families are shifting towards the structure of a collective
because it increases their chance of survival. In terms of time, money, and
resources when the economy is unstable and jobs for life or retirement and
pensions are a distant memory, the collective becomes the security blanket that
our institutions can no longer guarantee. It’s one driver behind the rise of
co-housing projects, standing at over 1500 in the US and 700 in Denmark for
example (according to The Fellowship for Intentional Community). This is where
more than one family is choosing to live together either under one roof or in
close proximity on one plot of land. Apps are now also popping up to ease this
living format such as CoAbode which links up single mothers who want to live and
raise children together. 

 

Family Resilience

This less rigid understanding of the family is making it more resilient both
physically but also, crucially, emotionally. And this is emerging as the key
life skill for our precarious and volatile times. “Exposure to news and the
trauma of the world is inescapable through social media, friends at school, and
so on,” says Bob Miglani, author of Embrace the Chaos: How India taught me to
stop over thinking and start living. “You can’t control the external
environment, you can’t cut off the TV or the bad friends. You can only control
how you react to things. And it’s forcing friends and family to have more open
and honest conversations with their children. Which in turn develops their
resilience because we show them we don’t have all the answers, and that’s ok.” 

It’s perhaps why the generation that has been weaned on 24/7 newsreels and
access to social media, those in their late teens and early 20s, come across in
the research as pragmatic, socially conscious and highly aware. Think of Gen Z
fashion icons Willow and Jayden Smith; they may look striking and have a keen
sense of style but it’s their emotional maturity which has garnered them such
attention. Take this recent post which Willow Smith, 18, broadcast to her 2.5mn
followers, “It’s okay to be sad / confused / insecure / because those feelings
are a part of life, we forget that in order to be content and happy with
ourselves and life / we MUST feel the opposite at times.”

 

The Vulnerable Parent

This focus on self-acceptance is not only permeating social media, it’s changing
the way people think about family life too. In place of the ‘have it all’ mum
ideal that brings with it pressure to excel in work, family, love, friendships
and looks, a more honest narrative which celebrates imperfection is emerging. In
a world where resilience is prized, it’s the gritty reality of home life shown
in BBC2’s Motherland or on the Selfish Mother blog that is culturally resonant.
This strikes a cord because it reveals the vulnerabilities which are inherent in
all of us and which according social scientist Brené Brown, is at the root of
human connection, “vulnerability is the glue that holds relationships together.
It’s the magic sauce.” Which is what makes this cultural shift towards sharing
our weaknesses and building emotional resilience even more pertinent. As we
progress towards automated cars and a future robotic workforce, society needs to
explore the depths of being human (as apposed to machine). Playmaker Tiu de Haan
who devises parent/child workshops amongst other practices, explains how we owe
this to the next generation “As technology replaces human endeavour in all kinds
of ways we are going to focus on what is fundamental to humans: nature, love,
joy, grief, play, imagination. That will become our currency.” 

 

 

 

“There’s only 10 minutes of productive family time at a dinner, the rest is
spent disciplining kids, so if you can’t manage to fit family dinner into normal
family life, why not time shift that 10 minutes to another time?” 

 

— Bruce Feiler, TED Speaker and author, “The Secrets of Happy Families: Improve
Your Mornings, Tell Your Family History, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play, and
Much More”

 

 

Samsung VR Stories, uses immersive technology to empower families to be creative
and connect across distances.



Interactive Storytelling, new launch from Netflix encourages family viewing.



Molecular, board game, from Inside the Box Games.



100 Questions: Family Edition, School of Life card sets.



Adventure Romantique picnic backpack by Panter & Tourron, designed ‘to share
unique moments and relationships’.



Time is Precious campaign for Nike by W&K Portland, Opens with the line “This
commercial is just 1 minute out of the 10 hours a day you spend glued to your
screens.”

 

 

 

 

 

Love Hacks  

Emergent family rituals

 

 






Our era of maximum productivity and efficiency sees clever short-cuts (aka ‘life
hacks’) as the natural solution. In family life this is no different. Families
are enriching their strength and togetherness and sense of cohesion through
clever, efficient interventions that build the love and sense of belonging even
when time is constrained.

 

Sudden Commonality Every day, 45% of us watch TV alone, while only 30% of us
watch as a family. But for that 30% that time is golden, or as media theorist
Grant McCracken puts it, it creates ‘sudden commonality’. TV is undergoing a
quiet renaissance particularly in the family home. When family members spend so
much time on personal screens, collective viewing might be the one time when
everyone is in the same room crammed on to the one sofa able to meet on common
ground. 

 

Love bombing An idea put forward by psychologist Oliver James in his eponymous
book is also referred to as ‘special time’. A technique widely accepted as
aiding family relationships, it can take place in as little as 10 minutes of
one-on-one time between adult and child. For time-strapped parents, these
intense bursts of intimacy are crucial. The adult hands over control to the kid
who is then lavished with attention and love throughout. 

 

Board Games According to the Toy Retailers Association (TRA), sales of board
games have risen by 30% this year. The sector is booming with innovative new
games from companies such as Inside the Box Games or eeBoo. Whilst the games
vary in length, they will all demand commitment, collaboration and crucially,
time away from the phone or other device. 

  

Digital Pause Families are creating physical and temporal zones around screen
time to ensure all members are fully ‘present’ for specific pockets of the day.
Google WiFi now has a Family Pause switch that suspends WiFi at dinner or
bedtime. Other apps are coming in to encourage detox such as The Lifer App which
gamifies time off the device by allowing the user to earn points that can later
be spent online.

 

Mega Reunions Taking the family reunion up a notch, mega family reunions take
place over a weekend and might include 60 or more people. These are becoming a
bit of a sensation especially in the US and Australia where Tinybeans now holds
an annual ‘Ultimate Family Reunion competition’ offering $10,000 to the winning
family. When relations are dispersed, these events cement the ties and family
history and help build a family narrative -- even if it’s just a
once-in-a-generation event.

 

Conversation Prompts School of Life Family Cards are a toolkit for conversation.
Sold internationally, families are using these cards to create beliefs around
certain topics e.g. What kind of parent would I be? They’re a great way to
practice being honest and withholding judgment.

 

 

 

 









Tall & Ginger

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Time is Precious campaign for Nike by W&K Portland, Opens with the line “This
commercial is just 1 minute out of the 10 hours a day you spend glued to your
screens.”