U.K. clothing and housewares retailer Matalan has a new ad campaign to highlight their tag line, “Made for Modern Families,” and they’ve included a pair of lesbian moms and a gay male couple among the diverse families they’re profiling.
Buzzfeed interviewed one of the members of each couple. Karen Tunnicliffe-Young, a psychiatric nurse who lives in Worthing with her partner Helen, and their four-year-old son and baby daughter, talked about reactions to the campaign, their family life, and their thoughts about the risk of their kids being bullied. On the latter, she explained that kids get bullied for many different, reasons, but “The main thing for us is to give a child resilience, to be able to cope with that. Also, to give them answers to questions other children who might not understand may ask.”
In addition to the Buzzfeed interview, you should go have a look at some of the family portraits on the Matalan website. It’s one of the best collections of family diversity I’ve seen, with families of different races, ethnicities, religions, and composition, including single-parent families, families with involved extended family members, and many others.
The company also invites people to upload or Tweet photos of their families with the hashtag #MatalanModernFamilies to be in the running for a £250 gift card.
The campaign includes a research report on “The Changing Face of Family Life.” Among other things, it notes that while family life in the U.K. today may be “complicated,” “This doesn’t mean that the idea of family has become any less important … it simply means we’re seeing that family today comes in many different shapes, sizes and forms.” Hear, hear.
It’s a great campaign. My only quibble is, as I’ve said before, that same-sex-headed families (and pretty much every other family type, I’d assume) aren’t really that new and modern, but have been around for some time. The difference now is that different family types are becoming more visible and accepted—a notable happening, but one that shouldn’t hide our long track record of strength, survival, and offspring as well adjusted as any others.
Watch the short behind-the-scenes video below; Karen and Helen are at about 0:59. The first TV ad of the campaign follows.