Women and the new conservative family: paternalism, identity and value change

This thesis aims to reveal how family values have undergone social transformation by examining the process of identity construction and family life of upper middle class conservative women in the face of paternalistic practices towards the creation of a contemporary ideal family. It addresses the family not as a tool used by the state to control society or as a means of reproduction, but as one of the links of the power network that constructs the social structure. Within the scope of this thesis, the attitudes of women, who are ideally positioned within the family, towards the paternalistic approach and the tactics they produce in everyday life are analyzed. As a result of in-depth interviews conducted with upper middle-class women in Istanbul, the family was analyzed as a three-layered structure in terms of the formation, transformation, and transmission of values as a realm of necessities, a realm of possibilities, and a future project. As a result of the research, it has been revealed that conservative women, who perpetuate the values they received from the family they grew up in and transmit them through their children, are not docile objects of paternalism, but active subjects of social transformation through their everyday life decisions.