The family and post modernism

Post modernism is the belief that there is no absolute or total truth that can be known in the world today, only the truths that we find ourselves to explain the meanings of our own lives. As a result of this post modernist sociologists suggest that the collapse in ultimate truth and meaning in our lives means that we cannot say that one type of family is better than another because ther is no absolute truth anymore. There fore we are free to choose the lifestyle that we want and this is the only way that we can find meaning in our meaningless lives because society is so fragmented and broken up claims of what is 'normal' and 'natural' are no longer relevent. According to post modernist sociologist it is difficult to even say what makes up a 'family' today.

People are having fewer children and having them later in life.

A clear change in British family life is the decrease in the average number of children people have.

1. People are having fewer children. The average number of children per family was 2.4 in 1971 compared to 1.63 in 2001 (the lowest ever recorded).


2. Women are having children later. The average age of women at the birth of their first child was 24 in 1971 compared to 27 in 2001.


3. More people are not having children at all, 9% of women born in 1945 were childless at the age of 45 compared to 15% of women born in 1955.

Social changes have influenced these trends. Contraception is more readily available and women's roles are changing. Children are expensive and time consuming, and couples may choose to spend their time and money in other ways. The conflict beween wanting a successful working life and being a mum has made many women put off having kids until later.

The UK has one of the highest divorce rates in Europe

1. There's been a steady rise in the divorce rate in most modern industrial societies.


2. The divorce rate is defined as the number of people per 1000 of the population who are divorced. In 2000, Britain's divorce rate was 2.6 compared to the European average of 1.9.


3. Actual divorces in the UK rose from 25,000 in 1961 to 146,000 in 1997.


4. For every two marriages in Britain in 1991, there was one divorce.


5. The proportion of population who were divorced at any one time was 1% in 1971 and 9% in 2000.


6. The average length of a marriage before it ends in divorce has remained about the same - 12 years in 1963, 11 years in 2000.


7. Although the divorce rare is increasing, divorced people are marrying again. In 2001, 40% of all marriages were re marriages.

There are several social, cultural and political factors.

1. Divorce has become easier to obtain.


2. Divorce is more socially acceptable.


3. Women may have higher expectations of marriage, and better employment opportunities may make them less financially dependent on theor husbands.


4. Marriages are increasingly focused on individual emotional fulfilment.


5. The New right believe that marriage is less supported by the state these days.

Just because divorce rates were lower in the past in doesn't mean they were happier. A marriage can break down but the couple stil stays married and living together. This is called empty shell marriage.

Fewer people marry and more people live together instead.

In 2001 the lowest number of marriages took place in the UK since records began.

An increase in the number of adults living with a partner (cohabiting). In 2001-2 quater of all non married adults aged 16-59 were cohabiting.

Social trends statistics show that living with a partner doesn't mean you won't get married- it's often just a delay tying the knot. A third of people who cohabited with a partner went on to marry them.

The majority of people in the UK do marry but the proportion who are married at any one time has fallen.

Reasons why these trends have developed are that men tend to die before women. Elderly widows make up a lot of single person households. There are more old people these days, so this helps explain why there are so many single person households. New right theorists believe that the decline in marriage means a decline in traditional family values. However, evidence suggests cohabiting families actually have similar norms and values to married ones. Postmodern theorists say the role of intimate relationships has changed - the emphasis is less on having kids and more on self-expression and emotional fulfilment. Giddens (1992) says that people are getting more likely to have a series of cohabitations rather than a lifelong marriage, this is known as serial monogomy.

Class, Ethnicity and sexuality

Eversley and Bonnerjea (1982) found middle class areas in the UK have higher than average proportion of nuclear families. Inner city working class areas are more likely to have a higher proportion of lone parent households.

Lesbian and gay families have been hidden from the statistics. The official definition of a couple has only included same sex copules since 1998.

The study of ethnic minorities by Modood et al (1997) found that whites and afro- carribeans were most likely to be divorced. Indians, Pakistanis, Banglaedeshis and African Asians were most likely to be married. Carribean households were most likely to be single parent families.

South Asian families are traditionally extended families, but there are more nuclear family households than in the past. Extended kinship links stay strong and often reach back to India, Pakistani or Bangladesh.

Theres diversity within each ethnic group though.

Social trends indicate more variety of families and households

There's now no such thing as 'the British family' as there are several family structures that exist.
In 2002 there were 24.4 million households in the UK which had gone up sice 1971. The average size of household is getting smaller and the number of households made up of 5 or more has fallen from 14% in 1971 to 7% in 2002. The percentage of households which are nuclear famillies has fallen from 33% in the 1971 to 25% in 2002. Two of the biggest increases have been in single person households and lone parent family households. This explains why the average size of households has got smaller. There has also been an increase in the proportion of families which are reconstituted (also known as step families). There are more step families now that there is more divorce. In 2001-2, 8% of all households were reconstituted families.

There's been an increase in the diversity of families in the UK. There are more different kinds of family. Nuclear families are still the most common type of family, even though the proportion of nuclear families is going down. In 2002, 78% of children lived in nuclear families.

Diversity of the family

Marriage rates are falling in the UK. They differ in relation to ethnicity and class is the UK. The likely hood is that most of us will marry at some stage in our lifestyle.
Cohabitation has become increasingly common in England and Wales. Also having children outside of a marriage has become increasingly common in England and Wales. The UK has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe: however, it is still far lower than in the USA. There has also been a long term trend for increasing divorce rates in England and Wales, although this trend seems to be less certain than before, with recent figures displaying a falling divorce rate. Reasons suggest for this trend include the high value placed on marriage, conflict between spouses in the privatized nuclear family, attitudes and legislation.