Demographic Changes

Question 1

Whilst there is some disagreement among sociologists about which are the most significant social changes, what changes do most commentators agree are very significant?

Answer 1

• Changes in marriage and divorce rates
• Rise of cohabitation
• Longer life expectancy
• Declining fertility
• Growth in singlehood

Question 2

What does the general trend show us about the number of marriages?

Answer 2

That they are falling. In the 1970s, there were about 400,000 marriages compared to half this figure today.

Question 3

How many of all marriages are remarriages in the UK?

Answer 3

Almost half

Question 4

When did the biggest increase of remarriages occur?

Answer 4

Between 1971 and 1982 following the introduction of the Divorce Reform Act 1969

Question 5

How many cohabiting couple are there in the UK?

Answer 5

About 2 million

Question 6

What percentage of first time cohabitation turns into marriage?

Answer 6

About 60%

Question 7

As people are marrying later, what are the average ages of first marriage for both genders?

Answer 7

32 years old for men, 30 years old for women

Question 8

What are 8 reasons for the decline in marriage rates in the UK?

Answer 8

• Changing attitudes to marriage / reduced stigma
• Secularisation
• Changes in the position of women
• Changing priorities of women
• Fear of divorce
• Rising expectations of marriage
• Expense of marriage
• The welfare system/state support

Question 9

How have changing social attitudes led to a decline in marriage in the UK?

Answer 9

Changing social attitudes see marriage as less socially desirable than in the past, therefore living outside of marriage is more socially acceptable. There is now less pressure to marry and more freedom for individuals to choose the type of relationship they want.
- There is a widespread belief that the quality of a couple’s relationship is more important than its legal status

Question 10

What did David Cheal argue about changing social attitudes towards marriage?

Answer 10

The greater choice in family situations in the UK has led to an increase in family diversity, meaning that people recognise that getting married is no longer the norm when starting a family

Question 11

What are some examples of alternatives to marriage which were once stigmatised but are now regarded as acceptable?

Answer 11

Cohabitation, remaining single and having children outside of marriage. Pregnancy outside of wedlock no longer has to lead to a ‘shot gun wedding’

Question 12

What is a statistic about society’s beliefs about having children outside of marriage?

Answer 12

In 1989, 70% of respondents to the British Social Attitudes Survey believed couples who wanted children should get married. By 2000 this had dropped to 54%, and by 2012, only 42% thought so

Question 13

Who released figures in 2016 that show the cohabiting couple family continues to be the fastest growing family type in the UK?

Answer 13

Office of National Statistics Survey

Question 14

What do figures showing that the cohabiting couple family continues to be the fastest growing family type in the UK reflect?

Answer 14

The evidence that young people are now more likely to cohabitate than older people as older couples are still more likely to think that living together outside of marriage is wrong. This highlights the relaxed attitudes that young people have towards marriage, resulting in the decline in marriage rates and the increase in cohabitation and other family structures such as Living Apart Together.

Question 15

What do some sociologists point out about changing attitudes to marriage causing a decline in marriage rates?

Answer 15

That greater freedom of choice in relationships means a greater risk of instability, since these relationships are more likely to break up

Question 16

Who theorised the neo-conventional family and what does it show?

Answer 16

Robert Chester
- Shows that there is still a high value for monogamous marriage but with greater equality of roles

Question 17

What is the neo-conventional family?

Answer 17

A dual-earner family in which both spouses go out to work
- Robert Chester argues that most people are not choosing to live in alternatives to the nuclear family on a long term basis and the nuclear family remains the ideal most people aspire for, and that many people living alone have been or one day will be part of the nuclear family

Question 18

What does secularisation refer to?

Answer 18

The decline in participation in religion and the accompanying decline in the influence religion has in society

Question 19

How has secularisation affected marraige rates?

Answer 19

Secularisation has meant that religious based morality regarding marriage has declined.
- Cohabitation is not as condemned, and relationships tend to now be more about individual and practical choices than sacred, spiritual unions

Question 20

How many religious ceremonies in the Uk today involve a religious ceremony or traditional event?

Answer 20

Less than a third

Question 21

What percentage weddings took place in a church in 2005?

Answer 21

Only 35%

Question 22

What figure suggests that religion still has the same influence over the decision to get married in modern times?

Answer 22

The majority of first-time marriages take place within a religious context

Question 23

Explain how changes in the social and economic positions of women have affected declining marriage rates

Answer 23

Women are often more sucessful than men in education, and have freer access and ability to pursue their own careers
- Due to this increased independence and the dispelling of the need to rely on the financing of the working male income, women have greater freedom not to marry, and those who do often wait until they are older and their careers are more established

Question 24

Explain Sue Sharpe’s “Like A Girl” study, and what she found about the changing attitudes of women towards marriage?

Answer 24

• Studied working class girls in London
• In the 1970s, the girls listed priorities in order of importance; ‘1. Love, 2. Marriage, 3. Husbands, 4. Children, 5. Jobs/Careers’
• When she returned 20 years later in 1990, she found proprieties had changed significantly changed to ‘1. Job, 2. Career, 3. Being able to support themselves’.
• Found that as society progressed further towards equality, girls’ priories no longer centred around traditional expectations of love, marriage and children, and instead focused on their education and career prospects

Question 25

What term did Wilkinson use to describe the change in female attitudes towards marriage and family life?

Answer 25

‘Genderquake’

Question 26

Explain the term genderquake

Answer 26

Wilkinson (1994) noted that female attitudes towards marriage and family life have undergone a ‘genderquake’, with young females no longer prioritising marriage and children as their mothers and grandmothers may have
- They instead want to put educational opportunities to use and take advantage of the feminisation of the labour force

Question 27

What is the feminist view of why fewer women are getting married?

Answer 27

Marriage is an oppressive patriarchal insinuation that may dissuade women from getting married, with men benefitting from their wives ‘triple-shifts’ of paid work, domestic work, and emotional work

Question 28

What is the average cost of a wedding in the UK?

Answer 28

£31, 974 (2019, National Wedding Survey conducted by Hitched)

Question 29

Why has the fear of divorce impacted marriage rates?

Answer 29

As divorce rates also rise, an increasing number of people have seen those around them getting a divorce. This can put them off marriage, especially if their parents went through a ‘messy’ divorce

Question 30

What do New Right thinkers tend to believe about the decline in marriage rates?

Answer 30

That government policy has not supported marriage and that the welfare system encourages people not to marry

Question 31

What was Sheila Lawlor’s claim about the welfare system and declining marriage rates, and when did she make it?

Answer 31

Claimed that paid materiality leave should be scrapped because it encouraged women to go back to work part-time, where they then claimed in-work tax credits because they earned low wages. She argued that young women depend on the state to pay for their children. (2012)

Question 32

What did Charles Murray link welfare payment to and when?

Answer 32

• Unmarried women
• Illegitimate births
• Crime
• Absent fatherhood and the refusal of young men to get jobs because they no longer need to be responsible for the children they father

Question 33

Explain how Postmodernists view marriage and consumerism.

Answer 33

Postmodernists explain the decline in marriage as a result of the move to postmodern consumer society characterised by greater individual choice and freedom. We are used to being consumers and picking and choosing, and so marriage is now a matter of individual choice.

Question 34

What are reasons for the increase in the divorce rate in the contemporary UK?

Answer 34

• Changes in the law
• Decline in stigma and changing attitudes
• Changes in the social and economic positions of women
• Secularisation
• Rising expectations of marriage

Question 35

Why have changes in the law led to an increase in the divorce rate in the contemporary UK?

Answer 35

Divorce was almost impossible for legal, cost and social reasons until the 1940s, and still difficult until the 1970s. However, during this time period, changes in the law have gradually made divorce easier to obtain

Question 36

When was divorce first made available through the courts in the UK rather than the church?

Answer 36

1857

Question 37

When were the grounds for divorce made equal for both men and women, and what had the grounds been prior to this?

Answer 37

1923, only possible to obtain divorce on grounds of adultery

Question 38

When was legal aid introduced to lower the cost of divorce?

Answer 38

1949

Question 39

What were the grounds for divorce widened to in 1950?

Answer 39

• Adultery
• Cruelty
• Desertion

Question 40

Explain the impact of the 1969 Divorce Reform Act

Answer 40

Introduced ‘No Fault’ divorces based on the ‘irretrievable breakdown’ of a marriage, which had to be proven by two years of mutually agree separation or five years if only one person agreed
- Did not come into law until 1971, but removed the need to prove ‘matrimonial guilt’

Question 41

Explain and evaluate the trends in divorce rate related to changes in the law

Answer 41

At times when changes in the law have been introduced, there have been clear increases in divorce rates as it becomes increasingly more accessible and financially workable with the assistance off legal aid.
- However, divorce rates have also risen significantly in periods where there have been no legislative changes, meaning that while an obvious reason, changes in the law are not the only reason for the high divorce rate

• Furthermore, these legislative changes are only able to explain why more people are able to get divorced, not why they choose to

Question 42

What do the New Right argue about changes in the laws surrounding divorce? Evaluate their viewpoint

Answer 42

The New Right argue that it is too easy to divorce and this results in casual attitudes to marriage, which is a symptom of a crisis in family life in the UK.
- However, given that fewer people are choosing to marry, the probability is that few people marry in the assumption that they can or will divorce if marriage does not work

Question 43

Explain how changing attitudes and declining stigma has affected divorce rates in the UK

Answer 43

Traditionally divorce was frowned upon for both religious reasons and its contrast in comparison to traditional societal values such as the nuclear family.
- However as the 20th century went on, people become more tolerant to the idea of divorce and felt more comfortable with the idea of getting a divorce if people were not happy in a relationship, rather than staying together for the sake of common expectations.
- The stigma and high levels of shame surrounding divorce has significantly decreased, and it no longer hinders a person’s career or social life, and people do not feel that they have to tolerate being in a failing or unhappy marriage.

Question 44

Explain what Postmodernists feel have contributed the decline in stigma and changing attitudes towards divorce to.

Answer 44

Rising influence of individualism
- Feel the high divorce rate is an indicator that individuals have more freedom in society to choose how they construct their lives to suit their needs, and therefore now have the power to end a relationship when it does not fulfil them .

Question 45

What did Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim find in 2001?

Answer 45

The norms which define appropriate behaviour in society are becoming less powerful, meaning that people feel liberated from the restrictions society placed upon their behaviour.
- A high value is placed on self-expression, self-fulfilment, and independence, and marriage can place a strain on this individualism. Postmodernists feel that it is due to this strain that people may divorce.

Question 46

Evaluate the viewpoint that changing attitudes have caused the rising divorce rate in the UK?

Answer 46

Despite these changing attitudes, family patterns tend to continue to be fairly traditional. Most people still live in a family, most children are brought up by couples, and most couples marry, with many divorcees remarrying

Question 47

Explain how secularisation has contributed to the high divorce rate in the contemporary UK.

Answer 47

As the influence of religion in society has declined, people have become less likely to be influenced by religious teachings when making decisions about their lives, including those about divorce.
- The traditional opposition churches have to divorce carries less weight in society as a decline in religious beliefs leads to religion playing less of a role within marriage.

• Moreover, some churches have begun to soften their views on divorce, leading to it becoming more acceptable even amongst some religions.

Question 48

According to 2001 Census data, what percentage of young people from different religions were cohabiting?

Answer 48

• 43% of those with no religion
• 34% of Christians
• 17% of Muslims
• 11% of Hindus
• 10% of Sikhs

Question 49

What do some sociologists point out when questioning whether secularisation is occurring on such an influential scale in relation to marriage and divorce?

Answer 49

• The high number of first-time marriages that take place in a religious context, and the changes the Church of England made to allow divorced people to remarry in their churches. - This suggests that there is still a high demand for religious marriages, even amongst those who have been divorced before.

Furthermore, in many cultures and ethnicities where religion is much stronger than in the Western world divorce is still rare and not widely accepted.

Question 50

Name one of the functionalists who argued that the higher expectations people place on marriage today are a major cause of rising divorce rates

Answer 50

Roland Fletcher (1966)

Question 51

Explain how functionalists feel higher expectations have contributed to a rising divorce rate

Answer 51

Higher expectations make modern couples less willing to tolerate an unhappy marriage, with a common belief existing throughout society that ‘soulmates’ exist for everyone, meaning that people search for ‘Mr/Mrs Right’ rather than following through with failing marriages.

• This belief follows the idea that if love dies out in the marriage, then there is no longer any reason to be together, whereas in the past people had little choice in who they married as the reasons for marriage were mainly economic or as a duty to their family. The rising expectations placed upon relationships have therefore contributed to rising divorce rates in the contemporary UK.

Question 52

Who termed the trend of ‘confluent love’ and when?

Answer 52

British sociologist Anthony Giddens (1992)