Topic 2- Changing patterns of marriage, cohabitation, separation, divorce, child-bearing and the life course, including the sociology of the personal life, and the diversity of contemporary family and household structures

Topic 2- Changing patterns of marriage, cohabitation, separation, divorce, child-bearing and the life course, including the sociology of the personal life, and the diversity of contemporary family and household structures

1. Divorce

   • The number of marriages likely to end in divorce is about 5 times higher than it was 50 years ago
   • About half of new marriages today are likely to end in divorce
   • The UK has one of the highest divorce rates in Europe
   • Reasons
     • Availability: Changes in the law
       • Men & women gained equal rights in divorce
       • Access to the courts became cheaper because of legal aid
       • After 1969 it was no longer necessary to prove one partner guilty of a matrimonial offence or fault in some way: It simply had to be demonstrated that a marriage had broken down beyond repair
     • Acceptability/Practicality: Changes in society making divorce more socially acceptable and practical
       • The Growing equality of women- Around two thirds of divorces are initiated by women
         • Women are less willing to accept the patriarchal nature of marriage and the family which feminists identify
         • Women work more in paid employment, reducing their financial dependence on men. Welfare benefits can help divorced lone parents
       • Rising Expectations of Marriage
         • Functionalists like Parsons and Fletcher argue that the divorce rate has risen because couples (especially women) expect and demand more love, companionship, understanding, sexual compatibility and personal fulfilment in their relationships today.
       • Wider availability of safe and effective contraception- Exposes relationships to greater instability
       • Growing secularization
       • Growing individualization and changing social attitudes
         • Postmodernists such as Giddens, Beck and Beck-Gernstein
         • Lives are now subject to more choice, negotiation and decision making and are governed more by self-interest than by traditional controls of morality, social expectations and norms
         • Giddens- Confluent Love
       • Less social stigma
       • Increasing Life Expectancy- Marriages have more time to break down before one partner dies
       • The reduced functions of the family and structural differentiation- Parsons- Marriage has become less of a practical necessity

2. The Decline in Marriage and More Cohabitation

   • In the last 50 years, the marriage rate in England and Wales has declined by around two thirds
   • Cohabitation before marriage is now the norm, and about 80% of first-time marriages have been preceded by a period of cohabitation
   • Reasons
     • Changing role of women
       • More economic independence
       • Higher expectations of relationships and rejection of patriarchal features of marriage e.g women's domestic labour, segregated roles, the triple shift and domestic violence
     • Reducing Risk
       • Beck's 'risk society'- Individuals face increased risks and uncertainty as they are constantly making choices no longer controlled by traditional norms of what is socially acceptable
         • More people are avoiding the risk involved in long-term legal commitments like marriage
     • The reduced functions of the family
     • Changing social attitudes and reduced social stigma
     • Growing secularization

3. Remarriage and the growth of the reconstituted, step- or blended family

   • Around a third of marriages now involve a remarriage for one or both partners
   • Stepfamilies account for around 11% of all couple families with dependent children

4. Living apart together relationships

   • Levin- Three main reasons why people actively chose LATs over marriage or cohabitation
     • Existing responsibilities and care for other people
     • Practical reasons e.g working or studying in different places
     • Risk avoidance- Want to avoid re-creating the same conditions that lead to the break-up of former marriages or cohabitations

5. Changes in Child Bearing

   • Reasons
     • The changing role and independence of women
     • The rising costs of raising a family
     • Growing Individualization- More people are reluctant to trade their future life-course options for the lifetime commitment involved in having children

6. More Births outside of Marriage

   • Nearly half of all births in England and Wales are outside of marriage- about five times more than the proportion in 1971

7. Lone Parenthood: the growth of the lone parent family

   • In Britain, the percentage of lone parent families has tripled since 1971
   • Around 1 in 4 of all families with dependent children were lone parent families in 2015
     • 90% of these are headed by women
   • Reasons
     • The greater economic independence of women
     • The wider availability and approval of safe and effective contraception and easier access to safe and legal abortion
       • Fathers may feel less obligation to marry or cohabit with women and support them should they become unintentionally pregnant
     • Reproductive Technology
     • Changing social attitudes
     • The rising divorce rate
   • The New Right and lone parenthood
     • Views it as one of the major signs of the decline of conventional family life and marriage
     • Views it as a source of social problems e.g. juvenile crime and educational underachievement
     • As arising from the generosity of the welfare state which encourages women to have children they could not otherwise support and creates a dependency culture
     • Criticisms
       • 88% of lone-parent families with dependent children arise from divorce, separation or widowhood
       • Feminists- New Right attacks on lone parents are a patriarchal attempt to force women back into the traditional roles of mother and homemaker

8. Family and Household Diversity

   • In 2015, 28% of households contained a couple with children, 28% contained a couple without children, 11% of households were lone-parent families and 29% of households consisted of one person living alone
   • Family structures and organisation are diverse e.g. dual-worker families, extended families and beanpole families
   • Cultural, Social class and regional diversity
   • Many more 'adult-kids' are living with their parents far longer
   • Functionalists & New Right: See nuclear family with gendered division of labour into instrumental and expressive roles, as the most desirable and normal type of family for children to be raised in and they regard it as the dominant type of family form in modern societies
   • Postmodernists- Argue there is growing individualization and uncertainty in postmodern societies. People have more choice in their relationships which are no longer controlled by tradition and norms of what is socially acceptable.
   • This diversity suggests the Functionalist/New Right ideology of the 'typical' cereal packet nuclear family does not conform with the reality in which most people live their lives today
   • Alternative living arrangements and 'families of choice'
   • African Caribbean Families in the UK
     • Berthoud- Only 39% of British- born African Caribbean adults under the age of 60 are in a formal marriage compared with 60% of White English Adults
     • Chamberlain & Gulborne (1999)- Over 50% of African Caribbean families with children are one-parent families
   • Asian Family Life in the UK
     • Victor et. al (2014)- Interviewed 110 Asian families living in the South of England- 90% lived in multigenerational families with two or three generations under the same roof

9. The Sociology of the Personal Life

   • More of an interactionist approach to families compared to structural theories such as functionalism, Marxism and Feminism
   • Rather than examining social structures, it focuses on the meanings people give to the intimate experiences and relationships which form their personal lives
   • Explanations for the growing diversity of families, households and new forms of personal relationships
     • The Individualization Thesis
       • Postmodernists such as Giddens, Bauman, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim suggest that traditional rules governing people's personal relationships have weakened, become more fluid, unclear and uncertain and are losing their influence over the lives of individuals
         • People have more individual personal choice and opportunities to decide for themselves how to shape their lives, guided by self-interest, not traditional social norms or family ties
     • The growth of confluent love and the pure relationship
   • Criticisms
     • People are still influenced by factors like social class, gender and ethnicity and the value passed down by culture, history, their parents and their communities
     • The family is not declining but is simply more diverse, fluid and changing
     • All these personal relationships contribute to the formation of people's identity. People are still committed to long-term, lasting relationships based on emotional bonds, shared possessions, homes and family memories that have meaning for them
     • The difficulty with this approach of including all personal relationships as potentially family-like is the risk of forgetting the lasting significance of kin links based on blood or marriage