This article represents a resume of a PhD dissertation about narrative analyses of elderly women´s role in family life in Denmark in a modern, historial context. The text includes two intermingling parts; the presentation of an analysis of family history in a Danish context and the explanation of the methodology applied, an ethnopoetic methodology within narrative and literary studies entitled cultural tropes.
The study shows that family culture has changed in Denmark during the 20.century, leaving a tradition coined a family centre, including and taking responsibility for family members of all ages, in preference for a modern conjugal family pattern. This has excluded elderly members of the notion of ”family”. The family centre should not be perceived as a romantic haven for a harmonius family life, but the transformation has also effected a change in family ethics, proving space and ability to distancing and criticism of especially the role of elderly (grand)mothers, who are now supposed to keep a distance in order to abstain from dominating the younger family members. Futhermore, a deeper contention seems to be given to biological familyhood than previously, yielding a new center stage role to the old members of kin in a more symbolic way.