Family Diversity

Question 1

Trends in Family Diversity since the 1980s

Answer 1

Allan and Crow - Continuing Diversification

• Now far greater diversity in peoples domestic arrangements so there is no longer a clear ‘family cycle’ people pass through
  ↳ Most people no longer pass through a routine series of stages in family life (leave home, get married, move in together, have children)
  ↳ follow a more unpredictable family course, complicated by cohabitation, divorce, remarriage, living alone etc
• Based on increased choice: able to exercise choice and personal volition over domestic and familial arrangements (options no longer constrained by convention/economic need)
• Demographic changes: rising divorce rates, increasing lone parent households & step families, more cohabitation and declining marriage rates

Elizabeth Beck-Gernshein - Individualisation, Diversity and Lifestyle choice

• Relationships and family life are so diverse that there are no longer any clear norms about what a modern relationship should consist of and what. a modern family should look like
• People call their relationships different things: fewer ‘married’ couples and more ‘partners’ or just ‘couples’
  ↳ Today it is less clear what being part of a ‘couple’ or living with a ‘partner’ actually means
  ↳ Being ‘coupled up’ doesn’t necessarily involve living together - eg Living Apart Together relationships testifies to
• The increase in divorce and higher rates of breakdown amongst cohabiting families has resulted in the rise of the ’patchwork family’ (adults go through life with a series of different partners which adds to the complexity of family life)
  ↳ like Judith Stacey’s Divorce Extended Family
  ↳ One person may regard particular family members as forming part of their family, while other members living in the same household may define their family as consisting of different people
• Modern reproductive technologies are changing our ideas about family life altogether: women freezing their eggs in their 30s allows them to have children in their 40s/50s once they are financially secure
  ↳ more single parents by choice
• Increasing individualisation has resulted in such an array of relationships and family forms that it is impossible to define what the family is/should be
  ↳ Makes a return to the norm of the traditional nuclear family very unlikely

Question 2

Increase in Single Person Households in the UK

Answer 2

• By 2013, 29% of households contained 1 person
• Growth in people living alone aged 65+ (partly due to ageing population)
• Affordability of living alone may have resulted in a fall in 16-44s living alone
• 13% of men aged 35-49 live alone compared to 7% of women
• From age 55+ numbers of women living alone outnumber men and the ratio gets larger as the population ages

Characteristics of middle-aged men and women living alone

• Women who live alone are much more likely to be educated than men
  ↳ Women aged 35-64 are much more likely to have degrees (38% compared to 25%)
  ↳ Men aged 35-64 are twice as likely to have no qualifications (27% compared to 15%)
  ↳ Possibly, we’re now living in a society where millions of educated women (34-49) are living alone because they don’t want to settle for an uneducated male partner
  ↳ Men are living alone not by choice but because their more educated female peers don’t see them as a viable prospect
• Men are living alone due to long term increase in divorce and the fact children are more to go and reside with their mother
• For 35-64 year olds, an average of 15% of men living alone have at least one dependent child compared to only 2% of women: reflects the fact that hardly any women with dependent children live apart from them

Question 3

Eric Klinenberg - Explaining the Rise of Solo Living

Answer 3

• Many people chose to live alone
  ↳ Mainly younger people who have never settled down into a longer term cohabitating relationship and have no intention of doing so & older people who have come out of relationships
  ↳ Older people living alone = mainly women as they are wary of getting involved in relationships because doing so will probably mean being someone’s cared or moving back in their children would mean they will become an unpaid domestic and child-sitter
• Not all people living alone are happy about it: mainly men on low wages who are unable to get married and live in ‘single from occupancy facilities’ often suffering from various addictions and practice ‘defensive individualism’ to cope.

4 reasons for increasing single person households

1) Increasing wealth - Wealth generated by economic growth and the social security provided by the modern welfare state: many can afford to live alone and so more of us choose to do so
↳ Scandinavia: nearly half of the adult population live alone due to this

2) Communications Revolution: for those who want to live alone, the internet allows us to stay connected
↳ Just because we are increasingly living alone, this doesn’t mean we are becoming a ’society of liners’

3) Mass urbanisation - subcultures thrive in cities which tend to attract nonconformists who are able to find others like them in the dense variety of urban life
↳ Essentially, it’s easier to connect with other singles where people live closer together

4) Increased longevity - people are living longer & women often outlive their spouses by decades (rather than years)
↳ Aging alone has become an increasingly common experience

Question 4

Trends in Lone Parent Households

Answer 4

• The number of lone parent fathers has grown at a faster rate than lone parent mothers between 1999 and 2019 (22%)
• 2019: 2.9 million lone parent families (14.9% of families in the UK)
  ↳ London has the highest proportion compared to South West England
• 1999-2019: 14.5% increase
• 2019: Lone parent mothers remained the most common type of lone parents accounting for 86% of this family type
• 2019: the number of lone parents with non-dependent children has increased by 17.5% while number of lone parents with dependent children has decreased by 9.8%

Question 5

Causes of single parenthood

Answer 5

Demographic Reasons

• Allan and Crow: due to increase in divorce and increase in births to unmarried mothers (cohabiting couples have higher rates of relationship breakdown)

Changing Attitudes

• Allan and Crow: reflects an increasing acceptance of diversity and individual choice - less stigma about being a single parent compared to the 1960s where single mothers were often treated as outcasts in society and pressurised into giving up their baby for adoption due to shame
• Stigma hasn’t completely disappeared as 61% of people think two parents are best to bring up a child
• Burghes and Browne: single parents do not perceive their own situations as ideal as none of them planned to become single parents and all of them attributed their single parent status to the fact their male partners had either been violent or too immature for parenthood

Charles Murray: Welfare Benefits

• Increase in lone parenthood is due to the generosity of welfare payments
• MPs have adopted social policies explicitly designed to get lone parents into work
  ↳ 2010: government introduced measures to encourage lone parents to seek work when their children were 7 or risk losing their benefits (used to be 9)
• Evaluations (Allan and Crow): image of lone parents as teenagers deliberately getting pregnant to get benefits is misleading as lone parents do not have priority over two-parent families and less than 1% of lone parents were under 20 (2011), being on benefits is not normally a desirable life options as it means you will be living in poverty (you do not get enough to exist rather than to have a comfortable life - under £60/week for 16-24s), surveys show that most single parents who are out of work would rather be employed, it is simply misleading to assume single parents have a different set of values to mainstream society

Question 6

Consequences of single parenthood

Answer 6

Social Stigma

• More likely even if attitudes are changing

Poverty

• It’s nearly impossible for those with children to work full time and look after a child alone
• Single parents are more likely to work part time or be forced into relying on benefits
  ↳ Single parents are twice as likely to be in poverty compared to dual-parent households

Problems for Children? (New Right)

• Children from single parent families are more likely to suffer from emotional and behavioural problems
  ↳ Spencer: found a much more significant correlation between poverty and these problems rather than family structure
  ↳ policies to tackle single parenthood should focus on reducing poverty experienced by single parents rather than trying to get single parents back into two parent relationships
• Cashmore: it’s preferable for a child to live with one caring parent than with two parents in a dysfunctional relationship
  ↳ single parenthood can have attractions for the parent (particularly mothers) due to the dark side of family life and how the nuclear family benefits men
  ↳ 25% of women who have experienced DA, 23% of single parent families (90% of which are headed by mothers)
  ↳ increase in single parent families is because more women are breaking free of abusive relationships

Question 7

How family life varies by ethnicity

Answer 7

• Asian family life was more likely to be characterised by extended families, arranged marriages and traditional gender roles
• Black Caribbean households were much more matrifocal with more than 50% of households consisting of single parents
• Ballard: most South Asian families had a much broader network of familial relations
  ↳ Ideal model of family life in Asia is patriarchal: tight control of women, collectivist and obsessed with maintaining family honour (because it’s crucial to do business in the wider community)
  ↳ Stressed the importance of honour and its patriarchal nature: for a women to challenge her husbands/fathers authority shamefully punctures his honour
  ↳ to sustain male izzat, wives, sisters and daughters must be seen to behave with seemly modesty, secluding themselves from the world of men
• Bhatti: many Asian families were keen to maintain links with relatives abroad and most would return back home when they could afford it
  ↳ most mothers also believed very strongly in the importance of the traditional motherhood role (expressive) while fathers identified themselves as breadwinners and saw themselves as ‘heads of households’
  ↳ open conflicts emerged over the fact that the elder son had decided to marry an English girl rather than someone of his own kin and the parents felt as failed their duty
  ↳ Marriage is still seen as a key milestone in Brit-Asian as over half of Bangladeshi, Indian, and Pakistani households contained a married couple compared with 37% of those headed by a White British person
• Forced marriages are more common amongst Asian Families: up to 3000 third and fourth generation Asian women are subject to forced marriages which can lead to other issues such as honour based violence/killings
• Divorce today is more common among Asian couples: divorce has been traditionally been seen as shameful in Asian culture however today there is a soaring British Asian divorce rate now that young Asian men and especially women are better educated and increasingly going into professional careers
• Single Parent Families are more more common amongst African-Caribbean Families: in 2007, almost half the black children in Britain were being raised by single parents, 48% of black Caribbean families had one parent as did 36% of Black African households
  ↳ single parent families were less common among Indians (10%), Bangladeshis (12%), Pakistanis (13%), Chinese (15%) and Whites (22%)
  ↳ Rates of teenage motherhood are significantly higher among young black women
• Driver: Caribbean single mothers are often well-connected to other people in their communities
• Growth in the number of interracial relationships: almost 1 in 10 people living with someone from outside their own ethnic group, 1 in 25 white people have settled down with someone from outside their own racial background

Question 8

How Family Life Varies by Social Class

Answer 8

• Marriage is more common amongst middle classes: the proportion of people in the highest social class who are married has increased to more than 2/3rds in the last 10 years
  ↳ Fewer than 45% of working class people are married
• Rates of family breakdown and single parent households are more common amongst the lower classes: Cohabiting families are more likely to breakdown than married families
• Middle class women have their first babies 10 years later than working class women: 1/2 of women born in 1858 who obtained no educational qualifications had a child by 22, while for those with degrees the age was 32
• Poor teens are much more likely to get pregnant and have babies than rich teens: teenage motherhood is 8x more common amongst those from manual social backgrounds as for those from managerial and professional backgrounds
  ↳ 11 per 1000 girls 13-15 compares to 6 per 1000 in the region with the lowest rate (underage conception rate)

Question 9

How Family Life Varies by Sexuality

Answer 9

• 2004 Civil Partnership Act
• 2013 Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act
• Weeks: same sex couples often look upon their households as being ‘chosen families’
• Roseneil: heteronorm (heterosexual relationships are the norm) are breaking down & gay and lesbian relationships are an expression of this
• Number of civil partnerships has decline since same sex marriage was made legal
• Same sex relationships appear to be more stable than heterosexual relationships
• Children adopted by gay or lesbian couples are just as likely to thrive as those adopted by heterosexual couples
• 25 years ago 65% of the british public opposed same-sex relationships because they believed they were morally wrong but now only 20% of people disapprove of gay or lesbian relationships in principle
• In 1983, 90% of people opposed gay couples being allowed to adopt children but now 48% are in support of it

Question 10

Explaining the overall increase in family and household diversity

Answer 10

Changing patterns of marriage, divorce and cohabitation

• People are getting married later: explains Kidult and single person households
• Divorce involving children: likely to create single parent households
• Relationship breakdown is more common amongst cohabiting rather than married families and the cohabiting family household is the fastest growing family type in the UK
• Higher divorce rates = increase in multigenerational households as single mothers move back in with their parents
• Evaluation: this explanation doesn’t go deep enough as there are underlying factors such as changing attitudes in society, individualisation, changing gender roles, economic factors and social policies which lie behind changes

Decline in stigma against non-nuclear families

• Social attitudes to non-nuclear families are changing and we are moving away from the ideology of the cereal packet family
• Less stigma attached to being in step families, single person families or being single for your whole life so there is less social pressure to couple up, get married, have kids and stay together if the relationship doesn’t work
  -Evaluation: There are still deeper social processes that explain these changes

Increasing Choice and Individualisation

• Postmodernists: increasing family diversity reflects the decline of tradition and religion and increasing choice
  ↳ Allan and Crow & Beck-Gernsheim: increasing individual freedom gives people more choice over family arrangements
• Beck: this reflects individualisation as people are less likely to get involved in committed relationships in the first place and more likely to end committed relationship if it isn’t working for them, even if children are involved
• Giddens Pure Relationship: it exists to meet the partners needs and couple stay together because of love, happiness and sexual attraction took rather than tradition/duty
  ↳ 1950s: people tended to see relationships and marriage as about commitment and duty
• Evaluation: Personal Life Perspective argues that many people do not choose to go into alternative family structures ie single parents don’t always plan to be

Changing gender roles

• Liberal Feminists: increasing number of women going into work means they have more financial independence and are focused on building a career before settling down and starting a family
  ↳ growth in number of never-married women who choose to have babies on their own & more fragile relationships
• Evaluation: it is important not to overstate the extent of women’s liberation

Economic factors

• Long term increase in wealth and overall standards of living leads to higher proportions of single person households (mainly wealthy people)
• Cost of living/housing increasing = recent increase in multigenerational households and kidult households at the lower end of the social class scale
  ↳ Millions of young adults who cannot afford to buy or rent their own houses so they stay living with their parents

Social Policies

• 1969 Divorce Act: made divorce easier to o gain
• 1972 Equal Pay Act: laid foundations for women’s increased financial independency
• New Right: welfare policies have created a ’perverse incentive’ making it to easy for people to raise children on their own

Other Factors

• New Reproductive Technologies: contraception, IVF and egg freezing allow people to have more choice over whether/when to have children resulting in donor families
• New Communications Technologies: internet and social media allow people to live alone without being cut off from social life and dating apps allow people to meet their sexual needs free from commitment
• Expansion in higher education: tripled the number of undergraduate students since 1970 meaning more young adults are not in work and economically independent on their parents for longer
• The ageing population: half of all one person households are people of pensionable age
  ↳ many women in their 70s and 80s live alone because there are too few partners available in their age group (women marry older men and men die younger)

Question 11

To what extent is family diversity increasing?

Answer 11

• Rapoports, Allan and Crow and Beck-Gernsheim: there is no way back for the nuclear family and trends towards family diversity will continue
• Chester: the Rapoports we’re exaggerating the decline of the nuclear family, arguing changes to family life were much less dramatic - ’neo-conventional family’ replaces the nuclear family (a dual earner family in which both spouses go out to work)
  ↳ most children are still reared by two natural parents
  ↳ most marriages still continue until death
  ↳ cohabitation may have increased, but for most couples it was a temporary phase before marrying
  ↳ Supporting evidence: numbers of single parent/person households, multi person households and reconstituted families are all on the increased but couple households remain the most common (57%)
• Most people still have a preference for the traditional nuclear family household
  ↳ 42% of people still believe that couples should get married before having children
  ↳ only 39% think that single parents can do just as good a job of raising children as two parent families
• There are still norms about family life: people still value stable relationships and a typical couple will cohabit for. a few years in their late 20s, get married in their early 30s, have children shortly afterwards and stay together till death
• Incredibly diverse array of family types and even within normal dual earner married households, there is a lot of diversity in the way people understand their relationships partly because there is a lot more choice today