Family and household diversity

Question 1

what are the trends in marriage?

Answer 1

• the UK government has collected national statistics on marriages since 1832 and the overall trend up until the 1940s was that the number of marriages increased, though there were major fluctuations around the two world wars
• since the early 1970s the number of marriages has declined, the average age at which couples marry has increased and an increasing proportion of marriages are remarriages
• traditionally, marriage in western societies has been based on monogamy, a lifelong union between one man and one woman
• however, some sociologists have suggested that we are moving to a practice of serial monogamy whereby the norm is to have only one partner at a time but individuals may have a series of marriages or long-term relationships during their lifetimes

Question 2

what are the facts and figures about marriage in England and Wales?

Answer 2

• according to the ONS 2014, marriage appears to be declining in popularity
• the number of marriages in England and Wales peaked in 1940 at 470,549 while in 2012 262,240 took place, even though the population is now much larger
• a growing proportion of marriages are remarriages in 1940 only 9% of marriages has one or both partners been married before, while in 2012, 34% of marriages were remarriages
• the majority of these involved people who had been divorced rather than widowed
• civil ceremonies have outnumbered religious ceremonies since 1976 in 2012, 70% of marriages were civil ceremonies
• there is a growing trend for couples to marry in approved premises such as hotels, stately homes and historic buildings rather than registry offices, and 60 of marriages took place in approved premises in 2012
• the proportion of men and women who have ever married has been declining over recent decades
• of those born in 1970, only 63% of men and 71% of women had married by the same age
• the mean age at marriage for men in 1972 was 26.2 years, compared with 34.0 years in 2012

Question 3

what is cohabitation?

Answer 3

-while the number of people marrying in the UK has declined since the 1970s, the number cohabiting or living together as a couple outside marriage has increased

Question 4

what are the facts and figures about cohabitation in the UK?

Answer 4

• according to the ONS 2012, the percentage of people aged 16 or over who were cohabiting steadily increased from 6.5% in 1996 to 11.7% in 2012
• this makes cohabitation the fastest-growing family type in the UK
• 39% of opposite-sex cohabiting couples had dependent children, compared with 38% of married couples, through married couples were more likely to have two or more children
• between 1996 and 2012 the over 65s had the largest percentage increase in cohabiting of all age groups, despite the small percentage of people who do cohabit in this age group
• in 2012 there were 2,893,000 cohabiting opposite sex couples in he UK and 69,000 same sex couples, though cohabitation has been increasing in popularity fastest among same-sex couples

Question 5

what did Beaujouan and Ni Bhrolchain (2011) say about the patterns of cohabitation?

Answer 5

• cohabitation before marriage has become the norm with 80% of couples who marry having previously cohabited in 2004-7, compared to around 30% in 1980-4
• couples now tend to live together longer before getting married. in the 1980s most cohabitation before marriage lasted less than two years, whereas by 2004-7 most cohabiting couples spent around 4 years living together before marriage.
• while the popularity of marriage has declined the proportion of people reaching heir early 40s who have entered into some kind of long-term relationship is similar to the mid-twentieth century, when marriage was at its most popular. there does not appear to have been a long-term flight from partnership, merely a greater proportion of those who do find partners now choosing to cohabitate rather than marry.

Question 6

what is single hood?

Answer 6

• an increasing proportion of people are remaining single although they develop different kinds of intimate relationships outside of their households
• one significant change noted by some sociologists is in attitudes to remaining single
• until relatively recently, being single was regarded by many people as a negative status in comparison to being part of a couple and terms such as old maid, spinster etc were applied to older women who remained single has come to be seen as more glamorous, assisted by media representations of young single people leading fulfilling lives on TV series like friends

Question 7

what is creative single hood?

Answer 7

• this term describes how some people now choose to remain single as a lifestyle option, rather than single hood being an unfortunate state for those who do not find a partner
• a study of never-married people by Hall et al (1999) suggested that many single people found a freedom in being solo and chose to concentrate on their careers rather than establishing a long term relationship
• not all single people live alone as heath (2004 notes the rise of kippers

Question 8

what are Kippers?

Answer 8

• kids in parents pockets
• young people who continue to live with their parents after they have completed their education, often as a way to save money, though they may be eroding their parents retirement savings
• in 2011 one in three men and one in six women aged 20 - 34 were still living with their parents, a 20% increase in 15 years
• there is some evidence that increases in rents and house prices in recent years have meant that many young people are delaying setting up their own homes and fully entering the adult world remaining in an ambiguous state of being adult-kids

Question 9

how have social attitudes towards marriage and cohabitation changed?

Answer 9

• until the 1960s there was a strong pressure on most couples to marry before setting up home together and in cases of pregnancy outside marriage, young women would be expected to marry the father or give the child up for adoption
• many sociologists argue that cohabitation and sexual relationships outside marriage generally have become more socially acceptable
• this i supported by the BSAS by park et al (2013)
• while the 1989 survey found that 71% of people agreed or strongly agreed with the statement people who want children ought to get marries, the comparable figure for the 2012 survey was 42%
• views on sex before marriage were even more liberal, with 75% in 2012 believing it was rarely wrong or not wrong at all

Question 10

what is the decline of family values?

Answer 10

• the new right thinkers, the declining popularity of marriage is seen as part of a more general weakening of what they refer to as traditional family values
• from this perspective, marriage is the bedrock of stable family life and alternatives such a cohabitation are no substitute, as cohabiting relationships are no substitute, as cohabiting relationship are more likely to break up marriages
• Morgan (2000) argues that in recent years, governments have given insufficient support through the tax and benefit system for married couples bringing up children

Question 11

what is individualisation?

Answer 11

• for sociologists such and beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1995), these changes reflect the growing trend towards individualisation in late modernity
• individuals are no longer bound by traditional social norms and loyalty to families and instead seek a lifestyle and relationships that fulfill their needs as an individual
• many therefore see alternatives to marriage such as cohabitation, living apart together or staying single as offering more freedom and less risk than conventional marriage
• Bidders (1992) presents a similar perspective, arguing that in late modernity there has been a transformation of intimacy
• individuals no longer seek the kind of romantic love associated with traditional marriage, based on the idea of lifelong commitment to a partner
• instead, there has been a growth of confluent love, where individuals enter into more temporary and fragile intimate relationships where the expectation of each partner is that the relationship will continue only so long as what they invest emotionally is returned
• however, many individuals feel they can find this kid of love outside marriage and those who do marry are more likely to break up when they feel they can no longer find confluent love
• Giddens is less pessimistic than Morgan and feels that the quality of intimate relationships is improving, especially for women who are no longer trapped in unhappy marriages by a lack of alternative choices, as they often were in the past

Question 12

What did Greer (2000) say about the changing role of women?

Answer 12

• radical feminists such as Greer (2000) therefore sees the decline in the popularity of marriage as a positive development resulting from women unwillingness to accept oppression by their husbands
• women today also have more options than in the early 20th century because they are better educated and have much better job opportunities

Question 13

What is the continuing importance of marriage?

Answer 13

• while the popularity of marriage can be seen to be declining, there is evidence that for many people it is still important
• people may be delaying marriage rather than rejecting it as an institution
• women in particular have become more career-orientated and are typically waiting until their 30s before they first embark on marriage
• many people who cohabitate subsequently go on to marry
• in 2012, around a third of marriages were remarriage for one or both partners according to ONS 2014
• the high level of divorce has clearly not deterred many people from trying marriage again
• families headed by married couples remain by far the most common type
• in 2013 there were around 18.2 million families in the UK, of which over 12.2 million were married-couple families according to the ONS 2013

Question 14

What are the types of marital breakdown?

Answer 14

• divorce is the algal ending of a marriage
• however, marriages can breakdown without resulting in divorce
• it is not possible to known how many marriages in the past broke down because up until the mid-nineteenth century, for most people, divorce was virtually impossible to obtain
• for example, many unhappily married couples would have remained in empty shell marriages, staying together to maintain outward appearances
• while there was a dramatic increase in the number of divorces in the late twentieth century in Britain, we must be cautious about assuming that this indicated an increase in the number of marital breakdowns
• what is more likely is that today couples are much more likely to turn to divorce as the proffered solution when their marriages do break down

Question 15

What are the trends in divorce?

Answer 15

• divorce can be measured statistically in different ways
• the simplest measure is that number of divorces, which is based on records from the courts complied in official statistics
• an alternative is to calculate some kind of divorce rate
• the most widely used in the UK is the number of divorces per 1,000 of the married population
• Eurostar, which collects data from EU countries, uses a measure of divorces per 1,000 of all adults, married or unmarried
• divorce rates are more useful for comparing different countries, as countries have different-sized populations
• in 2011, the UK had a divorce rate of 2.1 per 1,000 of all adults, considerably lower than Latvia, which had a divorce rate of 0.5 - Ireland did nor legalise divorce until 1995 (Eurostar 2014)
• in 1960 there were 23,868 divorces in England and Wales
• over the next three decades the number of divorces increased dramatically, reaching a peak in 1993 at 165,018
• since then, the overall trend has been for the number of divorces to decline and there were 118,140 divorces in 2012 (ONS 2014)
• the ONS estimates that 42% of current marriages will end in divorce
• for sociologists, these changes represent the most significant change in family life of the last 100 years

Question 16

What is the time line for divorce legislation in England and Wales?

Answer 16

• 1857: marital causes act
• 1937: matrimonial causes act
• 1949: legal aid and advice act
• 1969: divorce reform act
• 1984-1985: matrimonial proceedings act
• 1996-1999: family law act
• 2011: practice direction 3A

Question 17

What is the marital causes act?

Answer 17

• this set up civil divorce courts
• grounds divorce were adultery, cruelty and desertion and one partner had to prove the other guilty of one of these matrimonial offences
• divorce was still beyond the means of most people and was particularly difficult for women who, unlike men, could not gain a divorce on the grounds of adultery alone
• women did not gain this right until 1923

Question 18

What is the 1937 matrimonial causes act?

Answer 18

• this extended the grounds for divorce to include things like drunkenness, insanity and desertion
• however, spouses still had to prove an offence to get a divorce

Question 19

What is the 1949 legal aid and advice act?

Answer 19

-this provided financial help for legal fees in divorce for those who could not afford them

Question 20

What is the 1969-1971 divorce reform act?

Answer 20

• this removed the need to prove matrimonial offences such as adultery, as the basis for divorce
• instead, couples only had to show that the marriage had irretrievably broken down
• no-fault divorce became possible where a couple had been separated for two years and both agreed to a divorce or five if one objected
• this made divorce accessible to nearly everyone for the first time
• in the 190s, a special procedure was introduced that allowed judges to deal with divorce cases without the couple even attending court
• the vast majority o divorces are dealt with using this quickie divorce procedure today

Question 21

What is the 1984-1985 matrimonial proceedings act?

Answer 21

-this reduced the time for which a couple had to be marked before they could petition for divorce from three years to one year

Question 22

What is the 1996-1999 family law act?

Answer 22

• this increased the amount of time for a couple had to be married before petitioning for divorce from one year to 18 months, introduced a period of reflection with compulsory marriage counselling, and required children’s wishes and financial arrangements for children to be agreed before a divorce was granted
• this was an attempt by the government to reduce the number of couples applying for divorce, but the compulsory counselling sessions were later abandoned as they appeared to encourage more people to go through with a divorce

Question 23

What is the 2011 practice direction 3A?

Answer 23

• this directed divorcing couples to undertake mediation where a solicitor attempts to resolve disputes before they were permitted to go to court
• this was an attempt to reduce the amount of time cases took in the over-worked family courts

Question 24

How is law an explanation for the changing divorce rates?

Answer 24

• before 1857, the only way to obtain a divorce was a pirate act or parliament
• this was expensive and complicated and required friends in parliament, and so was only available to a small number of wealthy people
• over the next 150 years, divorce became simpler, cheaper and available to many more people
• changes in the law have allowed many more people the option of escaping from unhappy marriages via divorce, but these changes do not in themselves explain why so many more people are choosing this option
• moreover, changes in divorce rates have not always coincided with changes in the law, for example though the number of divorces doubled in 1971 after the divorce reform act, divorce levels were already rising in the 1960s, so the change In legislation may have simply reflected growing public demand for easier divorce
• most sociologists would therefore suggest that we need to consider changes in society in any explanation of why the popularity of divorce has increased

Question 25

How is the privatised nuclear family an explanation for the changing divorce rates?

Answer 25

• functionalise sociologists have tended to see high divorce rates as going hand in hand with a trend towards nuclear families
• Parsons and Bales (1995), for example, argue that the modern American family has become structurally isolated from extended family with the main focus on the relationship between the husband, wife and children
• this means there is less pressure from extended family for a couple to stay together and greater demands are placed on the couple’s relationship, which becomes central to the working of the nuclear family
• for functionalists this is not a problem, high divorce rates are simply the price we have to pay for living in nuclear families
• some critics, however, argue that the nuclear family is far from perfect
• for example the social anthropologist Leach (1967) argued that the nuclear family was the source of all our disconnects
• he portrayed the relationship between husband and wide as like an over-loaded circuit, having to fulfil all of the emotional needs of a couples
• leach argued that it was no surprise that nuclear families were a source of conflict for many, with divorce one possible outcome

Question 26

How are higher expectations of marriage an explanation for the changing divorce rates?

Answer 26

-another functionalise, Fletcher (1966), argued that higher divorce rates were linked to a higher value being policed on marriage as couples came to expected a more companionate relationship based on love and mutual support rather than one based on the economic and practical reasons that kept couples together in more traditional family systems

Question 27

How are changing social attitudes an explanation for the changing divorce rates?

Answer 27

• up until the 1960s there was a strong stigma attached to divorce, but more recently most people attached to divorce, but more recently most people in Britain appear to view divorce as normal and acceptable
• the British social attitudes survey 2006 (Duncan and Phillips 2008) found that 63% of respondents agreed that divorce can be a positive step towards a new life and only 7% agreed that divorce can be a positive step towards a new life and only 7% disagreed
• 78% also agreed that it is not divorce that harms children, but conflict between their parents with again only 7% disagreeing
• the decline of religious beliefs may also have contributed to the greater social acceptability of divorce
• Gibson (1994) argues that Britain has undergone a process of secularisation, whereby religious values have weakened in society, including the influence of the traditional teaching of the church about the value of lifelong marriage
• though divorce appears to have become normalised in Britain and other Western societies, Chambers (2012) highlights a range of evidence that divorce, cohabitation and lone parenthood are still viewed within dominant public discourses as signs of moral decline, despite being widespread
• for example, lone parents are often defined by the tabloid oppress as undeserving scroungers, and there is still a widespread belief that divorce leads to bad parenting
• this would suggest that the stigma attached to divorce has not entirely disappeared

Question 28

How is individualisation and reflexivity an explanation for the changing divorce rates?

Answer 28

• Beck and Beck-Gernswheim (1995), like Fletcher, focus on changing expectations of marriage, focus on changing expectations of marriage but, rather than seeing these as based on shared values, like functionality, they argue that in late modernity there is less agreement over what marriage should be like
• instead there is growing individualisation and uncertainty, meaning that the nature of relationships is open to negotiation and choice in what they describe as normal chaos of love
• this means that traditional norms and values about marriage and family life no longer constrain people, an where individuals feel that a relationship no longer serves their personal interests, they are less likely to maintain it purely because of a sense of commitment to others

Question 29

what did Allan and Crowe (2001) say about the changing role of women an explanation for the changing divorce rates?

Answer 29

• Allan and Crowe (2001) argue that the changing position of women in society has been one of the main factors influencing a rise in the number of divorces
• in the 1940s, around two thirds of divorce petitions were initiated by men
• women often did not have the financial resources to fund divorce cases and were likely to find themselves much worse off without the economic support of a husband
• in 2012, 65% of divorces were initiated by women (ONS 2014)
• since the 1970s, far more married women are employed, giving them a degree of financially worse off after divorce

Question 30

What are the trends in divorce since the 1990s?

Answer 30

• the number of marriages has declines, meaning that there are fewer potential marriages that can end in divorce
• though this would explain the decline in the total number of divorces, it Wold not explain the decline in the divorce rate per 1,000 married couples
• people are waiting longer to marry
• research suggests that couples whip marry young have a much higher chance of divorce so the increase in the average age of marriage may have reduced some of the risks of divorce
• most couples now have a trial period of cohabitation before marrying, in may cases these relationships will break up but will not be recorded as divorces
• it also seems likely that couples who do go on to marry are likely to be more committed and attach a greater value to traditional ideas of marriage than those who remain cohabiting, meaning that they have a better chance of staying there

Question 31

what did Sharpe (1994) say about the hanging role of women?

Answer 31

• Sharpe carried out two studies of working class girls in girls priorities for the future tended to be love, marriage, husbands and children
• however, when she repeated the research 20 years later in the same schools (1994), girls were more confident and ambitious and put more priority on education, careers and financial independence for men

Question 32

what did Langford (1999) say about the hanging role of women?

Answer 32

• in a small-scale study based on in-depth interviews with 15 women, Langford (1999) found that many women still fear being alone and report wanting to be wanted for themselves
• Langford suggested that love is still seen as the natural basis for relationships and a way in which individuals can transcend a meaningless, harsh and alienating world
• on the other hand she argues that this is an illusion and in reality love ends up concealing the way in which men exercise power and control women in many relationships
• her study did however, suggest that women have not given up the search for love, though this may be in the context of other kinds of relationships as well as marriage

Question 33

what did Cooke and Gash (2010) say about the changing role of women as an explanation of divorce?

Answer 33

• moreover, research by Cooke and Gash (2010) found no clear relationship between women’s employment and earnings their likelihood of divorcing
• for some feminists, the large number of women seeking to escape from marriage reflects the problematic nature of traditional marriage more than the facts that life as a lone parent is easier for women than it was in the past
• this is supported by a small scale study by Duncombe and Marsden (1995), which found that many of the women they interviewed who had been married for some years became increasingly dissatisfied with their husbands inability to take on responsibilities in marriage, leaving them to not only perform housework but also to care for the family’s emotional needs

Question 34

what are explanations for the increasing divorce rate?

Answer 34

-changing role of women (Cooke and Gash (2010))
+changing role of women (Allan and Crowe (2001))
+individualisation
+changing social attitudes
- privatized nuclear family
-high expectations
-hanging laws