Families, Households, Marriage, Cohabitation and Divorce: Recent trends
You won’t need to know many statistics for your exam, but you should have a good grasp of the general trends and the main explanations given for them. But it won’t harm you to know a few statistics either - such as the percentage of single person households or the average household size, the average age of marriage for women and so on.
According to the 2008 edition of Social Trends (published by the Office of National Statistics - ONS) the latest figures show that 30% of UK households are single person households, while lone parent households and households containing one family account for 10% and 56% of the total households respectively. The remainder consist of multi-family households (1%) and 3% of households are occupied by two or more unrelated adults.
Another important shift in lifestyles has been the dramatic growth of cohabiting – living together without being married. ONS found that 21% of a sample of women aged between 25 and 29 interviewed in 2001 reported that they had cohabited before they were 25. For women aged 55-59 however, interviewed at the same time, the corresponding figure was 1%. This gives some indication of the sea-change in attitudes over the last half of the twentieth century. Around the middle of the twentieth century, living together with a partner without being married would not have been seen as respectable and would have been described as ‘living in sin’. Data from the General Household Survey of 2005 found that 39% of single (i.e. unmarried) individuals aged 25-34 were cohabiting. Of course, many of these people do go on to get married, as many recent studies testify; although marriage is in decline, a majority of those who cohabit, still see marriage as desirable. In 2009 Social Trends reported that around 15% of families consisted of cohabiting couples, based on data from the Labour Force Survey. There is a methodological point to be made here though; cohabitation is difficult to measure accurately, since couples who live together do not have to register their relationship or tell anyone if they split up. Finding out about married couples on the other hand, is easier for the sociologist, since it is possible to check marriage records.
Civil partnerships are another important aspect of social change in the UK. The Civil Partnership Act of 2004 made it possible for same-sex couples to gain legal recognition of their status as a couple, very similar to that given to married couples. In 2007 8,700 couples formed civil partnerships in the UK.
Marriage, Children and Divorce
Marriage too has been an area of social life where the trends have changed. There was a time – back in the nineteenth century and even earlier – when women would have got married in their early twenties and settled down to a life of childrearing and housework, with some variations depending on social class. But particularly after the mid-twentieth century, women started to play a much greater role in the workplace and consequently the age at which men and women get married has gradually increased. Nowadays the trend for many young women (again with some class differences) after education is to get a job, work for a while and marry later on, after having gained a foothold in a profession.
Since the 1970s the average age at which men and women have been getting married has gradually risen. 71% of women born in 1956 were married by the time they were 25 in 1981, but only 16% of women born in 1981 were married 25 years later in 2006. According to ONS, the average age at marriage for women in 2009 was 29.8, and the average age at which women had their first child has also been rising and was 30.3 in 2009. And there are now a higher percentage of women over 35 having children, accounting for 20% of births in 2009. Social Trends notes that this is not unprecedented, but the last time it happened in recent history was in 1945. One might reasonably suggest that in 1945 it was the disruption of war which was responsible for the trend. Now it seems that the desire or need to work is the key factor.
These trends might be part of the reason – but only part – why there was an increase in divorce rates over the twentieth century.
Demography
All of these changes leave less time to have children; the total fertility rate (TFR) in the UK in 2005 stood at 1.82. The TFR gives an average number of children women are likely to have. The decline in the UK fertility rate in recent years should not be understood simply as reflecting the increased participation of women in paid employment: it also reflects changes in medical technology (the contraceptive pill) and changing attitudes and values.
Most demographers (the name for people who study population) consider that a TFR of at least 2.1 is needed to ensure that a population renews or reproduces itself. Of course though, population growth is affected by migration and the death rate, so despite this low TFR, the UK population in the first years of the 21st century has actually increased a little.
The death rate over the end of the last century declined by more than 22%, falling from a rate of 12.1 per 1000 in 1976 to 9.4 per 1000 in 2007. This change can be explained as the result of improved living standards and better healthcare provision and improvements in medical technology.
The upshot of all this is that the UK has an ageing population – more old people and fewer young people. This can put a stress on a country, since economically it depends on young people to work in order to generate income, as well as to have their own children so that the workforce is replenished. Given that we are also witnessing the development of smaller families and more individuals living alone, various social problems may develop in the UK in the future, but two of the key ones would seem to be increased costs of social welfare and a need for more accommodation for single people.