02 Family ch02.pdf - Sociology Central

Defining thefamily group

Preparing theground

The first thing we need to do is define ‘afamily’ given that, in order to relate thefamily to social structure and social policy,it would be useful to know what itinvolves.

WARM UP: FAMILY DEFINITIONS

To get you started, in small groups, think about and discuss among the groupwhat a family means to you. Make a note of the kinds of things you believe itinvolves.Once you have done this, as a class, compareyour notes and identify the common features(if any) of a family.

At a guess, I’d say your definition of a familywill probably involve two basic ideas,considered in terms of family.

• Characteristics: You will have identifiedcertain features of a family (such asdifferent generations sharing a commonresidence) that make it different to othersocial groups.

• Relationships: This involves the ideafamilies share particular social relationships(for example, that someone is a mother orgrandfather to a child) that clearly markthem out as a distinctive group in society.

As I am sure you have discovered, however,defining a family is not quite as easy as youmight have first thought, for a couple ofreasons.

• Is there such an institution as ‘the family’in any society? In other words, is thereonly one family type or is it possible totalk about many different types?

• If there are a variety of types, are they

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2.Families and households

INTRODUCTIONAs you have probably guessed, this chapter deals with family life in all its many forms, and the main aim ofthis opening section is to explore ‘different conceptions of the relationships of the family to the socialstructure, with particular reference to the economy and to state policies’. To do this successfully we need to:

• outline different perspectives on family life

• examine how these perspectives see the role of the family in society

• explore how economic and social policies impact on family structures and relationships.

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AS Sociology for AQA

really different or are they simplyvariations on a basic theme? For example,if our definition of a family involved theidea of ‘two adults and their children’, is afamily consisting of ‘one adult and theirchildren’ a different form of family?

Although they may not seem too importantat the moment, how we answer thesequestions is going to be central to our initialexploration of family life.

If we look at some sociological definitionsof families, we can begin with a classic oneprovided by George Murdock (SocialStructure, 1949):

The family is a social group characterisedby common residence, economiccooperation and reproduction. It includesadults of both sexes, at least two of whommaintain a socially-approved sexualrelationship, and one or more children, ownor adopted, of the sexually cohabiting adults

As an initial definition, it is useful for acouple of reasons: firstly, it is both a starting-point (we have to begin somewhere) and,speaking personally, a definition most of uswould recognise as being ‘a family’.Secondly, whether we go with it or not, it isuseful for highlighting a couple of generalpoints about families. It tells us, for example:

• Social relationships are a key concept toconsider (families are not necessarilylinked to the concept of marriage, forexample).

• Functions: Family groups seem to exist tofulfil a number of purposes, the main onesbeing reproduction and theraising/socialisation of children.

There are, however, a few debatable areas toconsider.

• Adults and children: This definition

Discussion point:classic oroutdated?

Is Murdock’s definition too restrictive in theway it defines the family?

Can you identify any groups that mightconstitute a ‘family’ without conforming tohis definition?

Murdock’s definition was originallyproduced in the USA in the 1940s.

Do you think the world has changed and, ifso, what implications does this have for theway we can define a family?

suggests families do not have to bemonogamous (for example, one manmarried to one women), they can also bepolygamous – where one man is married toa number of women (polygny) or onewoman married to a number of men(polyandry). However, it also suggests afamily involves children – which raisesthe question, how do we classify achildless couple? Are they a family (and ifnot, what are they)?

• Sexuality: Does this definition allow forthe possibility of homosexual families?

• Common residence: Do family membershave to live together to considerthemselves a family?

If Murdock’s definition raises more questionsthan it answers, perhaps we need toinvestigate a slightly different way ofdefining the family group – and one wayinvolves introducing the concept of kinship.This involves relationships based on biology(so-called blood relationships – such asbetween a mother and her child – where

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there’s a genetic link between the two) oraffinity (relationships created throughcustom – such as two adults living together –or relationships created by law, marriagebeing an obvious example here).

Weiss (‘Family support and educationprograms’, 1988) uses this concept to definethe family group as, ‘A small kinshipstructured group with the key function of . . .socialisation of the newborn’. Giddens(Sociology, 1993) suggests family groups canbe defined as, ‘A group of persons directlylinked by kin connections, the adultmembers of which assume responsibility ofcaring for the children.’

However we decide to define a family, it isclear we need to distinguish this group from aconcept used with increasing frequency,namely a household. This, at its most basic,involves a single person or group livingtogether in the same location (such as friendssharing accommodation). In this respect, wecan note most families are households, butnot all households are families.

Growing it yourself: families or households?Using the following table as a template (and working individually, in small groups or as a class)what advantages and disadvantages can you identify to the use of concepts like families andhouseholds?

Families Households

Advantages ofthis concept

Disadvantages ofthis concept

Advantages ofthis concept

Disadvantages ofthis concept

Identifieskinship assignificant

Difficult to define Includes all groupswho live together

A household canbe different to afamily

Further advantages and disadvantages?

Digging deeper So far we have seen that defining a family isnot unproblematic (that is, there arearguments over how best to define it), whichshould alert us to a key characteristic offamily life in our society, namely its diversity(considered in terms of both different familystructures and relationships). We willdevelop these ideas in a moment, but fornow we can note we have identified adistinction between two types of definition:

• Exclusive definitions (such as thatproduced by Murdock) where the focus ison the specific characteristics of a familythat make it different to other socialgroups (such as a household or a schoolclass). This type has the advantage ofbeing clear about what is – and is not – afamily group but, as we have seen, it isperhaps difficult to produce a definitionthat applies to all possible types of family.

• Inclusive definitions (such as those ofWeiss or Giddens) where the focus is ondefining a family group in terms of thegeneral relationships (such as kinship or

Families and households

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affinity) that make it different from othersocial groups. One advantage to thisdefinition is that it covers a variety ofdifferent family forms, but if thedefinition is drawn too broadly it mayinclude family-type groups (such ashouseholds) that are significantlydifferent to families in terms of theirrelationships.

Each type of definition has, therefore, certainadvantages and disadvantages for thesociological researcher and, whicheverdefinition you choose to use, it is ultimately justthat – a choice reflecting your personal ideas,interests and preoccupations; there is, in effect,no correct way of defining a family group.

Thus, rather than see families as aparticular type of social group it might bebetter to think about them in terms of whatJohn Goldthorpe (Family Life in WesternSocieties, 1987) calls ‘a network of relatedkin’; in other words, as a social process basedon relationships involving a particular set of:

• labels – such as mother, father, son anddaughter

• values – such as the belief parents shouldraise their own children

• norms – such as living together (throughmarriage or cohabitation)

• functions – such as primary socialisation.

By adopting this view we start to capture thepotential richness of family relationshipsand, by extension, reflect the diversity offamily experiences in our society.

However we eventually decide to define‘the family’ (something, as I’ve suggestedabove, that is actually quite difficult to do) itis probably safe to say that family groups areimportant to us – the majority of us, afterall, spend at least some of our lives

surrounded in various ways by ‘family’ ofsome description. This being the case,therefore, it would be useful to examine howdifferent sociologists have explained thesocial significance of these groups.

Familyperspectives

Preparing theground

Family groups, considered mainly in term ofwhat they exist to do, are generallyconsidered by sociologists to be importantinstitutions in any society. However, as youmight expect, there are disagreements overhow we interpret the role of the family groupand, in this section we can introduce somedifferent perspectives on the relationships offamilies to social structure. Functionalistperspectives start from the observation thefamily group has existed – in one form oranother – in all known societies (in otherwords, the family is considered to be a‘cultural universal’ because it has existed inall known cultures in one form or another).For this reason, families are seen as crucial tothe functioning of any social system (you willrecall, no doubt, functionalists consider thefamily to be one of the four major functionalsub-systems in any society). To put thisanother way, the family group is consideredfunctional – and therefore essential – for anysocial system because it has a couple of vitalpurposes, namely:

• Socialisation: Families are the maininstitution for the initial socialisation ofchildren and any institution charged withthis responsibility plays a significant part

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The New Right view of a traditional family

in the reproduction of cultural norms andvalues.

• Social order: The family acts as astabilising force in society. Great stress isplaced by functionalists on things likeemotional and sexual stability, economicco-operation and so forth.

New Right perspectives, although closelyrelated to functionalism, involve moredirectly political (rather than sociological)ideas about the significance of families. ForNew Right theorists, whether we definethem in terms of personalities (politicianssuch as Margaret Thatcher in the UK,Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush in theUSA) or practices (issues such as anti-abortion, anti-immigration, anti-Europe andliberal economic policies), the family groupis the cornerstone of any society.

The New Right particularly like topromote the idea of ‘traditional familyrelationships’ – families should consist oftwo, heterosexual, adults, preferably married(to each other) with clearly defined gender

roles and relationships (which normallymeans men as family breadwinners andwomen as domestic workers).

Marxist perspectives on family life reflecttheir conflict view of society, where theyrelate what the family group does(socialisation, for example) to how itbenefits powerful groups, whether this be ona group level – how a ruling class benefitsfrom various ‘free family services’, such asraising children to be future employees – ora personal level, such as how men dominateand exploit women.

For Marxists, it is not what the familydoes that’s important, but why it does it.One argument here is the family helps tomaintain and reproduce inequalities bypresenting them as ‘normal’ and ‘natural’within the socialisation process.

Feminist perspectives have, traditionally,focused on the role of the family group in theexploitation of women. In this respect,attention has mainly been given to identifyinghow traditional gender roles within the familyhave been enforced and reinforced, mainly forthe benefit of men. The family group, therefore,has tended to be seen as oppressive of women,trapping them in a fairly narrow range of rolesand responsibilities (domestic labour and childcare, for example) that defines female roles interms of the kind of service functions just noted.

In modern families, the notion of women’sdual role or double shift (women as both paidworkers and unpaid housewives) has beenemphasised as has, more-recently, the idea ofwomen performing, according to Duncombeand Marsden (‘Love and intimacy: TheGender Division of Emotion and “EmotionWork”’, 1993) a triple shift – the thirdelement being the idea of emotional labour(that is, investing time and effort in thepsychological well-being of family members).

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Postmodern perspectives reject the kindsof views we have just noted (since they all,in their different ways, are seen as puttingforward narrow (or prescriptive) views aboutwhat families are and how they should be).The key ideas of this perspective in relationto family life and relationships are diversityand choice, two concepts that reflectpostmodern ideas about behaviour andlifestyles.

From this viewpoint, sociologicalperspectives such as functionalism, Marxismor feminism are hopelessly outdated in theirview of societies and individuals. A family –in short – is whatever people want it to be(whether it involves adults of the oppositesex, the same sex, own children, adoptedchildren or whatever). From thisperspective, therefore, the relationshipbetween families and the social structure is alargely meaningless question for two reasons.Firstly, they reject the idea of socialstructures – which makes trying to identifyand isolate any relationship between familygroups and something that doesn’t exist(social structures) a fairly pointless exercise.Secondly, they reject the idea we can talk,in any useful way, about ‘the family’; all wehave, in effect, is a variety of people livingout their lives and lifestyles in ways theybelieve are acceptable and appropriate tohow they want to live.

Digging deeper In thinking about families and theirrelationships to social structure we have twodistinct viewpoints to consider; on the onehand, we have traditional sociologicalperspectives (such as functionalism) thatemphasise how the structure of societyimpacts (for good or bad) on family forms

and relationships. On the other, we havepostmodern perspectives that suggest thequestion of any relationship (of whatevertype) between families and social structuresis not worth posing (let alone trying toanswer).

Whatever your position in relation tothe above, we need to dig a little deeperinto the different perspectives we have justoutlined, if for no better reason than this isan AS textbook designed to provide a rangeof views for you to personally evaluate,accept or reject. In this respect, therefore,functionalist sociology has tended to lookat the family as the initial, essential,bedrock of social integration in any givensociety. This involves the idea that wayshave to be found to make people feel theybelong to the society into which they wereborn – to believe they have something incommon with the people around them.Ronald Fletcher (The Family and Marriagein Britain, 1973), in this respect, hasidentified the core functions of the family asbeing:

• procreation and child-rearing (the‘having sex and its consequences’ bit –which includes, of course, the initial,general, socialisation process)

• regulation of sexual behaviour (betweenadults, for example, by defining the limitsof sexual freedom)

• provision of a home (in the widest senseof the word).

In addition, Fletcher argues families performcertain non-essential functions, many ofwhich provide linkages with the wider socialstructure. These include:

• consumption of goods and services• basic education

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• health care (both physical andpsychological)

• recreation.

For Talcott Parsons, on the other hand, themodern family has become increasinglyspecialised. He argues it performs only twoessential functions:

• Primary socialisation: Families are‘factories whose product is thedevelopment of human personalities.’

• Stabilisation of adult personalities,which involves adult family membersproviding things like physical andemotional support for each other.

Marxist perspectives have been generallymore critical of the role of the family group,seeing it in terms of:

• A safety valve for (male) frustrations: Themajority of men are relatively powerless inthe workplace and this condition isdisguised by allowing males to be powerfulfigures within the family group. This servesas a safety value for the build-up of tensionand frustration at work and directsfrustration away from criticism of employers,workplace conditions and so forth. In thisrespect, we could also note the family is afairly violent institution in our society: TheHome Office, for example, through itsCrime Reduction Service (‘DomesticViolence’, 2004) documents the range, riskand consistency of family-related violencein terms of the fact that: ‘Every year, around150 people are killed by a current or formerpartner. One in four women and one in sixmen will suffer from domestic violence atsome point in their lives.’

• Channelling and legitimising theexploitation of women. Within the

family, for example, many women are stillgenerally expected to do the majority ofdomestic labour tasks (a situation thatmirrors, the exploitative workrelationships experienced by many men).This situation is, to some extent,considered right and proper or, at leant,legitimate by many men and womenbecause it is seen as being part of thefemale role in (patriarchal) society.

• Free services: The basic idea here is thatthe majority of children raised within afamily group will grow-up to be futureworkers who will, according to thisperspective, be taking their place amongstthose exploited by capitalist owners. Thecosts of replacing ‘dead labour’ (a conceptthat includes both those who literally dieand those who become too old or sick towork anymore) are, in the main taken onby the family group in a couple of ways.• Economic costs involved in raising

children to adulthood fall on thefamily group. Employers make little orno contribution to these general familycosts.

• Psychological costs are also involvedsince the family group is an importantsocialising agency. If children are to befuture workers they need to besocialised in ways that orientate themtowards seeing their future in suchterms.

Complementing the idea of free services,we can note how Marxists relate suchideas to that of the family group as a:

• Stabilising force in capitalist society.This idea reflects the argument that theresponsibilities people take on when theycreate family groups locks them intocapitalist economic relationships. In

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other words, family members have towork to provide both the basic necessitiesof life – food, clothing and shelter – andthe range of consumer goods that goeswith modern lifestyles (Personalcomputers, DVDs, the family car and soforth). The requirement to takeresponsibility for family members (bothadults and children) also acts as anemotionally stabilising force in society.Finally, in this respect, we can note theidea of the family group as:

• Consumers of products: Marxists notehow the family group has, historically,moved from being active producers ofgoods and services to passive consumersof these things – someone, after all, has tobuy the things that make profits for aruling class and the family, with all itsexpenses and expectations represent anincreasingly important source ofconsumption.

Feminist perspectives on family life tend tostress things like:

• Service roles: Women, by and large, takeon the role of ‘unpaid servants’ to theirpartner and children. This is sometimesdone willingly – because they see it as partof the female role – and sometimesunwillingly because their partner will not,or is unable, to take it on. This type of role –especially when it’s part of a female doubleshift involving both paid and unpaid work –contributes, according to feminists, to:

• Exploitation: In this respect, feministspoint to the idea women in our societyincreasingly suffer from dual forms ofexploitation: • patriarchal exploitation as domestic

labourers within the home

• capitalist exploitation as employees inthe workplace.

• Reserve army of labour: MaryMacintosh (‘The State Oppression ofWomen’) argues that women are calledinto the workforce at various times whenthere is a shortage of male labour andforced back into the family when there isa surplus. Women are a marginalisedworkforce, forced into low pay, low status,employment on the basis of sexualdiscrimination.

• Oppression: Feminists also point to theidea that women’s lives within the familyare oppressive when considered in acouple of ways. Firstly, in terms of the‘housewife role’ effectively forced onwomen. Even though many women seemto perform this role willingly it could beargued this willingness to identifydomestic labour with femininity is a resultof both socialisation and patriarchalideologies. Secondly, in terms of violencewithin the family. Dodd et al (‘Crime inEngland and Wales 2003/2004’), for

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example, note ‘16% of all violentincidents were incidents of domesticviolence’. They also report just over two-thirds (67 per cent) of the victims ofdomestic violence were women.

Postmodern perspectives, on the otherhand, tend to view family groups inindividualistic terms – as arenas in whichpeople play out their personal narratives, asit were. In this sense, we can identify twobasic forms of individualistic experience:

• Choice, in the individual sense of theword, whereby people are increasinglyable to make decisions about theirbehaviour – from the basic choice ofwhether or not to form a family group tothe variety of extended choices nowavailable in terms of how people expresstheir ‘lived experiences’ in familyrelationships. Think, for example, aboutthe multitude of different family formsand relationships in our society – fromchildless couples, through step-families, to gay couples with children and beyond. This notion of choice links intothe idea of:

• Pluralism as the defining feature ofpostmodern societies. In other words,such societies are increasinglycharacterised by a plurality of familyforms and groups which coexist –sometimes happily and sometimesuneasily. Within this context of familypluralism, therefore, Postmodernists argueit’s pointless to make judgements aboutfamily forms (in the way we’ve seen othersociological perspectives make suchjudgements about the form and functionof family groups). From this perspectivetherefore, each family unit is, in its ownway unique and involves people working

out their personal choices and lifestyles inthe best ways they can.

As Judith Stacey (‘Fellow Families?’, 2002)puts it when discussing same-sexrelationships, ‘Under the postmodernfamily condition, every family is analternative family.’ Because of thisuniqueness, as we have seen in the previoussection, one of the problems we encounterwhen discussing families is the difficultyinvolved in trying to precisely define thisgroup; exclusive definitions appear muchtoo narrow and restrictive, in the sense theygenerally fail to account for all types offamily structures, whereas inclusivedefinitions may be so widely drawn in termsof what they include as a family as to besomewhat less than useful for students ofAS Sociology (and their teachers, come tothat). In this respect, David Elkind(‘Waaah, Why Kids Have a Lot to CryAbout’, 1992) has suggested the transitionfrom modern to postmodern society hasproduced what he terms the permeablefamily which, he notes, ‘encompasses manydifferent family forms: traditional ornuclear, two-parent working, single-parent,blended, adopted child, test-tube, surrogatemother, and co-parent families. Each ofthese is valuable and a potentiallysuccessful family form’. In this respect heargues: ‘The Modern Family spoke to ourneed to belong at the expense, particularlyfor women, of the need to become. ThePermeable Family, in contrast, celebratesthe need to become at the expense of theneed to belong.’

While Elkind doesn’t necessarily see thislatter state – the idea individual needs anddesires override our sense of responsibility toothers (and, in some respects, the ‘denial of

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Family andsocial policy

Preparing theground

We can begin this section by defining socialpolicy which, according to Susan and PeterCalvert (Sociology Today, 1992) refers to:the main principles under which thegovernment of the day directs economicresources to meet specific social needs.’

We can add some flesh to the bare bonesof this definition by noting SusannahMorris’s observations (Social Policy: From theVictorians to the Present Day, 2004) thatsocial policy involves the governmentidentifying and regulating:

• social problems – such as an increase inthe level of crime

• social needs – such as those of theunemployed

• social conditions – such as the provisionof health care through something like aNational Health Service.

WARM UP: SOCIAL POLICIES

Although you may not be aware of it, youalready know a great deal about how socialand economic policies impact on family life. Using the following table as a starting point(and working initially in small groups,adding any further family areas as required),identify as many things as you can thatimpact on what you’re allowed/not allowedto do in the context of family life.Once you have done this, get together as a classto combine the things you have identified.

Discussion point:is the family

dead?Do you agree or disagree with theargument Suematsu puts forward that, insome respects, families have outlived theirusefulness?

What arguments could you put forward toeither support or reject this idea?

self ’ in favour of one’s children and theirneeds) – as generally desirable DyskeSuematsu (‘Postmodern Family’, 2004) isnot so sure: ‘A family is essentially a unit ofsupport. There were days when humanbeings could not survive without it. Thosedays are over.’

Whatever your personal perspective onfamily life, whether you see yourself as afamily traditionalist, looking forward toproducing 1.6 children – the current averagefamily size in the UK – in a loving,heterosexual, relationship or as apostmodern free-spirit ready-and-willing toindulge whatever sexual craving takes yourfancy,(with whoever takes your fancy), in aloose-knit family-style relationship, itremains true that governments – the makersof social policy – tend to have quite specificviews about what constitutes a family.

The technical term for this idea is anideology (a set of related beliefs aboutsomething) and, in the next section, we canexamine some ways social and economicideologies and policies impact on familystructures and relationships.

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Some of the areas we’re going to look atlater (such as divorce) may also provideexamples of policies.

As should be apparent, from the workyou’ve just done, social and economic policyis a potentially vast area to cover (even if werestrict ourselves to considering only thosepolices directly affecting families), since itinvolves both a:

• Historical perspective: identifying, forexample, polices from both the distantpast – such as the various Factory andChild Labour Acts of the nineteenthcentury – and the recent past – such asthe Child Support Agency, created in 1993to ensure parents living apart met ‘theirfinancial responsibilities to their children’.

• Future perspective: thinking about policesnow being proposed – such as limits on thesmacking of children – and polices whoseimpact cannot be adequately judged, as yet.

Rather than trawl through this vast sea ofpolicy, therefore, this section focuses on twomain areas, namely:

• identifying a selection of governmentpolicies that impact on family life

• reviewing a sample of recent social andeconomic policies to give you a flavourfor this area (and your further research ifso desired).

Before we look at these ideas, don’t forgetfamily life is also covered by general socialpolicies relating to the criminal law;although we tend to talk about things likedomestic violence as if they were somehow aspecial legal category, it is actually a form ofcriminal assault. Areas such as child abuseand bigamy are also covered by crimepolicies.

Digging deeper Rather than simply list a selection of recentsocial and economic policies that haveimpacted on family life, a more interestingway to think about this information mightbe to use a biographical approach. Thisinvolves creating an imaginary individualand showing some of the ways social policies

Family Area What can you do? What can’t you do?

Marriage Marry someone of theopposite sex

Marry someone of same sexMarry a close relative(brother or sister) Marry someone under 16

Divorce You can get divorced Marry someone else whilealready married

Sexuality Have a sexual relationship Have a sexual relationshipwith someone under 16

Children (0–12) Paid employment

Teenagers (13–16) Paid employment: a limitednumber of hours each day

Adults Cohabit (with people ofsame/different sex)

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impact on their life – from birth toretirement. You should also remember whatfollows is just an illustration – it is designedto give you a general overview of how socialpolicy impacts on family life. Having dulynoted this proviso, we can begin ourbiological approach with:

• Conception: Until recently,contraceptive devices were available ‘free’(paid for out of general taxation) fromthe National Health Service (NHS);however IVF (fertility treatments) arenow available for those unable toconceive ‘naturally’.

• Pregnancy: Working women areentitled to maternity leave, statutorymaternity pay and, once they havegiven birth, they have a right toresume their former job. From 2003,fathers also have the right to a periodof paternity leave (up to two weeks),during which they can claim statutorypaternity pay from their employer(currently £100 a week or 90% ofaverage weekly earnings if this is lessthan £100).

• Birth/infancy: The NHS provides freemedical services, the level and range ofwhich depends on government fundingpolicies and decisions made by RegionalHealth Authorities. In general, thelower the social class of your parents,the greater the chance of you notsurviving childbirth (child mortality) orthe first few years of life (infantmortality), as the following tableillustrates:

Highermanagerial(non-manual)

Semi-skilledmanual

2.7 per 1,000live births

7.5 per 1,000 livebirths

Table 2.1 Infant Mortality rate 2002 (forbabies born inside marriage) by father’soccupation (Standard OccupationalClassification 2000)

If, for whatever reason, your parents can’tcare for you, the government (throughlocal councils) makes provision forfostering/adoption.

• Pre-school: Nursery facilities are notprovided by the government (althoughtax credits are available for nurseryplaces), which restricts the ability of one

Here’s one I made earlier.

• Abortion is also available for a period of24 weeks (under the Abortion Act, 1967)after conception. Whether or not you areconceived will depend upon a range offamily circumstances governed bygovernment policy (child care facilities,employment prospects for your parentsand so forth).

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parent to work and affects family livingstandards. If your mother works, you aremost likely to be looked after by agrandparent (one-third of children under15 in 2002). If you are abused orneglected, you may be taken into localauthority care – something that happenedto 40,000 children in 2002.

• Education: Between the ages of 5 and 16you must, by law, receive formal tuition,either through attending a state(free)/private school or by a private tutor(who can be your parents). Theeducation you receive may depend onyour parents’ income (if they can affordto send you to a private school) or wherethey live (children who attend schools ininner city areas achieve fewer GCSE andA-level exam passes than those whoattend schools in suburban areas). Suchthings may affect your future employmentprospects and may affect the decisionabout whether or not you remain withinthe family home.• You may be eligible for free school

meals and there is the possibility youcould be suspended or excluded fromschool.

• A range of health/welfare services andbenefits are provided by the state, butthese no longer include things like freeprescriptions or dental and eye care.

• Early adulthood (16–18): Once youreach the minimum school-leaving age, arange of government policies come intoeffect. You can legally marry (as long asyour parents agree) and you can havesexual intercourse (as long as your partner– of whatever sex – is at least 16). If youget a job, you have to be paid the legalminimum wage for your age. Your

earnings, however, will be subject toIncome Tax and National Insurancedeductions.

• Adulthood (18�): Adult family membersare affected in numerous ways by socialand economic policies. • You can get married (subject to various

restrictions – incest, bigamy, age ofprospective partner and so forth),cohabit (live with someone) anddivorce.

• If you start your own family, yourhousing options may be limited. In thepast 20 years the government hasdiscouraged the building of low-rent(subsidised) housing and localauthority (‘council’) housing has beenprogressively sold to private ownersand housing associations.

• Your ability to afford a mortgage isaffected by your employmentprospects, which relate to things likeyour level of education and where youlive (the South East has lower rates of

Old age – the happiest days of your life?

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unemployment than the north ofEngland, Scotland and Wales).

• In 2002, the average house price was£128,000 (although regionaldifferences apply; living in London, forexample, is more expensive – adetached house, on average, will setyou back £385,000 in 2004). Thesefactors may result in childrencontinuing to live within the familyhome (see above).

• Mortgage tax relief was abolished in2002.

• Between the ages of 18 and 24, if youclaim the Job Seeker’s Allowancecontinuously for six months you willhave to enter the New Deal scheme; ifyou can’t find a job through thisscheme you will be required to do oneof the following: subsidisedemployment; work experience with avoluntary organisation/environmentaltask force or full-time education. If yourefuse to do one of these options yourJob Seeker’s Allowance will bestopped.

• The government provides a range of(means tested – they depend on yourlevel of income) social security benefitsfor adults and families. These includeworking families’ tax credit/incomesupport; council tax benefit; incapacityor disability benefits and housingbenefit. In addition, child benefit ispaid to all families with eligiblechildren, regardless of income.

• Old age/retirement: State pensionscurrently start at 65 for men and 60 forwomen (although this may change by2010 with the retirement age for all set at65). Pension payments depend on the

National Insurance contributions youhave – or have not – paid throughoutyour working life (many women in oursociety, for example, have not paidenough contributions to qualify for a fullstate pension).• Pensioners who rely solely on a state

pension are one of the most likelygroups to experience poverty (roughly20% of all pensioners are classed aspoor). Means-tested income support isavailable for pensioners who, at 52%,are the largest recipient group of socialsecurity expenditure (the next largestgroup – 26% – are the sick anddisabled).

• As a pensioner, you may receive somefree services (the bus pass!), but youhave to pay VAT (at 17.5%) onheating costs (although thegovernment does make provision for‘bad weather payments’). Hypothermia(death through lack of heat) is one ofthe greatest causes of premature death

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in our society. Medical services are stillfree, but the elderly are oftenconsidered a low priority in terms ofhealth provision. You may have towait months or years for non-essentialsurgery.

• Services such as home helps, districtnurse/health visitor, day centre care,social workers and meals-on-wheels arealso provided for those aged 65 andover.

• If you reach a stage where you areunable to adequately care for yourself,you will be faced with the choice ofentering a private nursing home(which will be expensive and largelyunsubsidised – which may affect anyinheritance for your children) or, morelikely, you will be forced to rely onyour children for care andaccommodation (‘care in thecommunity’). If you have no childrenor no means of support you will receivesome form of state care.

In this section we have looked at a range ofsocial policies affecting family life andexperiences in our society which, as Iindicated earlier, involves a sense ofhistorical development and continuity.Continuing this general theme, therefore,we can turn next to an examination ofchanges to family and household structuresand their relationship to processes ofindustrialisation and urbanisation.

Family andhouseholdchangesIntroduction As I have just noted, the focus of thissection is an examination of changes infamily and household structure and theirrelationship to industrialisation andurbanisation. To understand the nature andextent of such changes we need to do twomain things: firstly, we have to outline whatwe mean by:

• family and household structure• industrialisation• urbanisation.

Secondly, we need to examine how familyand household structures have changedhistorically in our society and how suchchanges can be related to processes ofindustrialisation and urbanisation.

WARM UP: FAMILY GENOGRAMS

A genogram originally developed byMcGoldrick and Gerson (Genograms inFamily Assessment, 1985) is a way ofdescribing family relationships and theirstructure. It is similar to a family tree, but alittle more sophisticated in terms of theinformation it contains.Draw a genogram for your family (using theexamples of McGoldrick and Gerson’snotation over leaf ). Start by identifying your immediate familyand work outwards from there . . . Males are indicated by squares, females by

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Preparing theground

Family/household structure is based on theidea we can identify differences in the waypeople relate to each other; in other words(going back to the work we did on theconcept of structure in Chapter 1) familyand household structures are differentiated (ordifferent) from each other on the basis ofthe different lifestyles, values and normssurrounding people’s relationships. Thefollowing examples of different family andhousehold structures make this a little moreunderstandable:

• Nuclear families consist of twogenerations of family members (parentsand children) living in the samehousehold. Contacts with wider kin(aunts and cousins, for example) areusually infrequent and more likely toinvolve ‘impersonal contacts’ such asthe telephone or email. For this reason,this family structure is sometimes calledan isolated nuclear (reflecting itsisolation from wider kin and it’s‘economic isolation’ from the rest ofsociety) or conjugal family – a self-contained unit where family membersare expected to support each othersocially, economically andpsychologically.

• Extended families, as the name suggests,involve additional family members. Thisstructure comes in three basic flavours:• Vertically extended consists of three

or more generations (grandparents,parents and children) living in thesame household (or very close to eachother). Matrifocal families are a

circles. Marriage/cohabitation is shown byan unbroken line.The person drawing the genogram isindicated by a double box. Put the birth dateof each family member at the top left.Links between living family members can beindicated as a broken line. Indicate therelationship (uncle, for example) beneaththe line.Marriage dates are recorded above the linkline.A separation is recorded by a slash (withdate) along the line.Divorce is recorded as above, except twolines are used.Remarriage (or ex-marriage) is indicated toone side with a smaller shape.

45

79

m. 90

m. 90, s. 94

81

44

m. 90, s. 94 d. 96

m. 1990, d. 96 m. 99

Remarriage

(Either partner)Parents

ChildStep brother/

Step sister

Step Parents

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variation on this type of familystructure in that they involve (or arefocused on) women (a femalegrandparent, female parent andchildren). Conversely, patrifocalfamilies (quite rare in our society) arefocused on men.

• Horizontally extended involvesrelations such as aunts, uncles, cousins,etc. (relations of the same generation asthe parents). These ‘extensions’ to thebasic family group branch out withingenerations – a wife’s sister and herpartner, for example, living with thefamily group. Polygamous families(where one man lives with many womenor vice versa) sometimes take this form –the parents may, for example, be drawnfrom the same generation.

• Modified-extended refers, according toMichael Gordon (The Nuclear Family inCrisis: The Search for an Alternative,1972) to the idea that wider familymembers keep in regular touch with eachother. This may be both physically (inthe sense of visiting or exchanging helpand services) and emotionally (contactsby telephone, email and the like).Related to this idea is a distinction drawnby Peter Wilmott (‘Urban Kinship Pastand Present’, 1988) when he talks aboutlocal extended families, involving ‘twoor three nuclear families in separatehouseholds’ living close together andproviding mutual help and assistance;dispersed extended families, involvingless frequent personal contacts; andattenuated extended families involving,for example, ‘young couples before theyhave children’, gradually separating fromtheir original families.

• Single-parent families involve a singleadult plus their dependent children.Although this is more likely to be afemale parent, a significant proportioninvolve a male parent. This type of familyis sometimes called a broken nuclear family,because it often – but not always – arisesfrom the break-up of a two-parent family.

• Reconstituted (or ‘step’) families (usuallynuclear in form) result from the break-upof one family (through things like death ordivorce) and its reconstitution as a uniquefamily by remarriage or cohabitation. Itmay, therefore, involve children from aprevious family as well as the new family.

A reconstituted (step) family

• Homosexual families: Usually nuclear inform, this type of family involves adults ofthe same sex plus children (own oradopted). Homosexual couples cannotcurrently legally marry in the UK (aLabour Government Bill to recognise‘Civil Partnerships’ – giving each partnerlegal rights similar to marriedheterosexual couples – was rejected bythe House of Lords in June 2004). Gaycouples can, however, legally cohabit.

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Household structures in our society,involve the following:

• Single households consist (as you mighthave guessed) of an adult living alone.Traditionally, death and relationshipbreakdown have been the main reasonsfor this type of household, although thereis increasing evidence people arechoosing to live this way (in 2003, forexample, 13% of all households consistedof a single person).

• Couple households consist of two peopleliving without children. In 2003, 25% ofall households were of this type, makingit the second most common householdtype after couples with dependentchildren (38% of all households).

• Shared households are not particularlycommon and involve, for whatever

reason, a group of people living together.This may be a temporary arrangement(such as students sharing a flat) or apermanent arrangement wherebyfamilies/individuals live together as acommune.

We can complete the first part of thissection by briefly outlining what we meanby the concepts of:

• Industrialisation – a process wherebymachines are extensively applied to theproduction of goods in society(mechanisation). One result of this processis the development of factories and theability to mass produce consumer goods(clothes, cars, mobile phones). Related tothis process is the concept of:

• Urbanisation, which involves the idea ofpopulation movement away from rural(village) living to larger communitiesbased in towns and cities. This issometimes called social migration fromthe countryside (rural areas) to towns –urban areas which developed asindustrialisation and factory productiondeveloped.

Digging deeper Having familiarised ourselves with somebasic concepts about family and householdstructures, industrialisation and urbanisation,we need to explore the relationship betweenthese ideas. To do this, we need to framedebates about possible changes in thisrelationship within a sociological context,one that involves thinking about therelationship between social change and socialbehaviour in a historical context – and toexplore possible historical changes withinboth society and family structures, we need

Tony Barlow and Barrie Drewitt, who havelived together since 1988, paid anAmerican surrogate mother to carry twinsartificially conceived using one of thepartner’s sperm.

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to do two things: firstly, establish aframework for our analysis of social changeand secondly examine historical changes insociety and how they link to economicchanges over time. Since we want to look atthe effects of industrialisation, we canorganise the framework in terms of thecharacteristics of three ‘historical types’ ofsociety, namely:

• pre-industrial (or pre-modern)• industrial (or modern) and • post-industrial (or postmodern).

The table below identifies a range ofsignificant social and economic features ofeach of these basic types. When referring tothis table, keep the following in mind:

• Types of society: These are not ‘hard-and-fast’ categories – pre-modernsociety didn’t end abruptly, to bereplaced by modern society. The tablesimply helps you identify some possibledifferences between different types ofsociety.

• Post-modernity: There are argumentswithin sociology about whether we now

live in a postmodern/post-industrialsociety. I have included it as a type heremainly because it’s easy to make themistake of thinking ‘industrialisation’ issomething that happened a long timeago. Whatever we want to call presentday society (postmodern or late modern,for example) the important thing is torelate family and household change toboth an understanding of the past and thepresent.

• Mass production refers to the idea thatmachines were used to produce goods to astandard design, cheaply enough to makethem available to large numbers ofpeople.

• Service production refers to the idea thatproviding services to people (eitherphysically – as in McDonald’s – orthrough things like banking, insuranceand knowledge-based systems) is thedominant form of economic activity inpostmodern society.

• Feudal refers to a political systeminvolving a major social distinctionbetween the Nobility (large

Pre-modern Modern Post-modern

Time Pre-18th century 18th-late 20thcentury

Late-20th century topresent

Features ofeconomicproduction

Pre-industrialAgricultureTools

IndustrialMass productionMechanisation

Post-industrialService productionAutomation

Scale Local National Global

Politicalsystem

Feudal Capitalist Late capitalist

Table 2.2 Selected characteristics of types of society in Britain

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landowners) and the Peasantry (largelylandless). Family and

householdchanges

Preparing theground

In terms of the question just posed, there aretwo basic positions we need to examine.The first argument suggests industrialisationand urbanisation were important factors inthe promotion of family and householdchange. These processes, as they developedover a couple of hundred years between thelate seventeenth and late nineteenthcenturies, radically changed the nature ofwork and economic production as Britaingradually moved from an agrarian(agricultural) to an industrial (factory-based)society. This change in the nature andorganisation of work – from the land-based,rural, agricultural, family-centred,organisation of pre-industrial society to thecapital-intensive, urban, industrial, factory-centred, organisation of industrial society –produced, from this viewpoint, radicalfamily and household changes. The basicargument here is that family structureschanged from the predominantly extended-family organisation of pre-industrial societyto the predominantly nuclear familyorganisation of industrial society. The mainreason for this was that industrialisation sawthe development of factories and, in turn,the rapid growth of large urban centres(towns and cities) to support and supplylabour for factory-based production.

To accommodate such changes, the oldextended families of pre-industrial society

Feudal system

Church

King

NoblesTaxes

Military

Knight Knight

PeasantsPeasants

Serfs/Slaves

Land

Pro

tect

ion

• Capitalist refers to a political systembased on a class distinction betweenowners (employers) and workers(employees).

In the table I have suggested significanthistorical changes in our society based onthe idea of economic changes to the waygoods are made and services provided. Thereis, in this respect, little doubt Britain todayis a very different place to Britain 500 yearsago and it would not be difficult to establishchanges in, for example, personalrelationships (family or otherwise) betweenthese two periods. However, the crucialquestion we need to explore next is theextent to which the social changes createdby industrialisation and urbanisationproduced changes in family and householdstructures.

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(ideally suited to the demands of a family-based, subsistence form of farming) werebroken down into nuclear families that fittedthe economic requirements of:

• geographic mobility – the need forfamilies to move to towns and factories

• labour flexibility – the need to move towhere jobs were located.

Industrialisation, therefore, was seen as themotor for family change – people wereforced to change the way they lived toaccommodate new forms of economicproduction.

If we trace this idea into the latetwentieth/early twenty-first century, asimilar pattern emerges, but this time theemphasis is on family fragmentation anddiversity. The nuclear family structurescreated by industrialisation and urbanisationare disrupted by the needs of globaleconomic systems and work processes,processes of de-industrialisation (a decline inthe economic importance of manufacturing)and of de-urbanisation (a move away fromtowns and cities to the countryside).

The second, alternative, argument alsoinvolves thinking, initially, aboutindustrialisation and urbanisation. Theargument here is that these occurred inBritain (the first country to industrialise)because pre-industrial family structureswere mainly nuclear and thus ideallypositioned to take advantage of neweconomic opportunities requiring familymobility and flexibility; in other words,pre-industrial family structures – with fewunbreakable physical or emotional tieswith extended kin – are seen as the motorfor subsequent industrial development.

In addition, the relatively large number ofextended households in pre-industrial times(which included, for example, servants whohad few, if any, emotional or economic tieswith their employers) also representedflexible structures that could adapt relativelyeasily to the changed economic world. Thisidea of flexibility translates relatively easilyto post-modern society, which, so thisargument goes, requires highly flexiblefamily and household structures if neweconomic opportunities are to be graspedand exploited. Our society, it is suggested,has already evolved fragmentary family andhousehold structures (throughindustrialisation and changes to legalrelationships – the easy availability ofdivorce, the growth of single-parent familiesand single-person households etc.) that arewell-suited to taking on board globalisedforms of work (living and working indifferent countries, working at home usingcomputer technology and so forth).

Having identified two opposing sides tothe debate, therefore, we need to examinethe historical evidence to help us decidewhich, if any, of these two arguments bestdescribes the relationship between changesin family and household structures,industrialisation and urbanisation.

Digging deeper Evidence for the first argument (generallyknown as the ‘Fit Thesis’ because it proposeda close fit between changes in familystructures, industrialisation andurbanisation) has been put forward byFunctionalist writers such as Parsons (‘TheSocial Structure of the Family’, 1959) andGoode (World Revolution and Family Patterns,1963) as well as, in a slightly different way,

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required as many people as possible towork the land.

• Geographic mobility: The ability to moveaway from the family group was severelylimited by poor communications (norailways or cars, basic road systems and soforth). This meant, in effect, familymembers – even if they had wanted to –were physically unable to move far fromthe family home.

• Society: In pre-industrial society therewas no well-developed welfare system(few hospitals existed, for example)which meant family members relied ontheir own resources when it came tolooking after and caring for the sick, theelderly and so forth.

The development of industrial societyproduced, according to this view, a structuralfamily change – nuclear families becamedominant because of the demands of factoryforms of production and the opportunitiesthis system created.

• Geographic mobility: People had to bemobile to find and keep work in the newindustrial processes. There was a huge – ifgradual – movement away from ruralareas to the developing towns and, insuch a situation, the extended family ofpre-industrial society gradually brokedown.

• Social mobility: New opportunities arosefor social mobility and economicadvancement as different types of workdeveloped – people were no longer simplysubsistence farmers. However, to seizethese new opportunities, families had tobe ready and willing to move to thoseareas where the chances of economicadvancement were greatest.

the social action theorist Max Weber (TheProtestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism,1904).

In basic terms, extended family structureswere seen as the norm for pre-industrialsociety because they were:

• Multi-functional: A wide family networkperformed a range of different functionsrelated to the economic and social well-being of family members.

• Kinship-based: Members of the extendedfamily group shared not only ahousehold, but a common economicposition that involved working togetheras a social group (mainly as subsistencefarmers but also in various craft trades –brewing and baking, for example – withinthe home).

• Economically productive: People livedand worked within a family group thatprovided the only viable means for theirphysical survival.

This situation arose, according to thisargument, for three main reasons.

• Agriculture: Labour-intensive farm work

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• Nepotism (favouring your relations overothers) was no longer a significant socialasset (as it was in extended families),since the new industries demanded thedemonstration of skills and knowledgerather than family connections.

If we extend this argument to post-industrialsociety we can identify significant changes toboth family and household structures.

• Family structures: One feature of post-industrial society is the increasing diversityand fragmentation of family life –notwithstanding Chester’s observation(The Rise of the Neo-conventional Family,1985) that the majority of people inBritain still live at least part of their lifewithin some form of nuclear familystructure. Just as, in the industrial period,family structures changed toaccommodate new forms of economicorganisation, so too, in the post-industrialperiod, further changes have occurred.New forms of working (especially throughcomputer technology and networking)open up opportunities for homeworkingwhich, in turn, means single-parentfamilies are, potentially, no longerexcluded from the workforce. Therelatively small size of nuclear familiesand improved communications (such asthe ability to stay in close contact withextended family members relatively easy)makes this family group increasinglymobile – both in terms of national andinternational movement.

• Households: One of the features of post-industrial society is the increase in thenumber of single-person households,indicative, according to this argument, ofthe way economic changes have impacted

on people’s behaviour. The single-personhousehold is, of course, potentially themost geographically mobile of allfamily/household structures and reflectsthe changing (increasingly global) natureof work.

Having outlined the evidence for the firstargument, we can turn to an alternativeinterpretation of the relationship betweenfamily and household structures andindustrialisation.

Pre-industrial societyCarlin (‘Family, Society and PopularCulture in Western Europe c. 1500–1700’,2002) argues, ‘most households in earlymodern Western Europe were nuclear familyhouseholds, i.e. all the blood relations theycontained were one couple and theirchildren’. Although extended familiesexisted, the main reasons for this type offamily not being more common seem to be:

• Life expectancy: Average life expectancywas low (around 35–40 years) and,consequently, parents didn’t always livelong enough to become grandparents.Although this may have been a reason formany families remaining nuclear, weshould note calculations of average lifeexpectancies in pre-modern societies maybe biased by high rates of infant and childmortality (large numbers of childrendying drags the average down).

• Choice: Carlin (2002) notes that someparts of Western Europe, with similarbirth and death rates to Britain, containedmore vertically extended (sometimescalled stem) families. This suggests, at leastin part, people in Britain were choosingnot to live in extended family structures.

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• Retirement: Demographic evidence(information about how people live) fromareas where people did survive into oldage suggests they were expected to retireinto households separated from theirchildren.

• Extended households: Peter Laslett (TheWorld We Have Lost, 1965 and Householdand Family in Past Time, 1972) notes thatupper-class households frequentlyincluded both wider kin and servants(mainly because there was sufficient roomfor them to live within the household).Lower-class households, althoughfrequently nuclear because of highmortality rates among the elderly,probably contained ‘lodgers’ (who arelikely to have been kin) stayingtemporarily within the family group.Laslett, however, estimates only 10% ofpre-industrial households contained morethan two generations of kin.

• Modified extended structures: MichaelGordon (1972) suggests arguments thatthe extended family was dominant in pre-industrial society confuse temporaryextensions to a family (such as a relativeliving within a nuclear family for a shortperiod) with the idea of a permanentextended family structure which, he argues,‘is seldom actually encountered in anysociety, pre-industrial or industrial’.

According to this argument, therefore, themainly nuclear pre-industrial family wasactually necessary for industrialisation.

IndustrialisationHarris (‘The Family and Industrial Society’,1983) argues nuclear family structuresdominated pre-industrial society becauseindustrialisation required:

• An inheritance system thatconcentrated wealth, making capital(investment money) available torelatively small numbers of people. Aclose-knit, nuclear structure allied to asystem of primogeniture (inheritance, bythe first-born son, of a family’s totalwealth) made this possible. In addition,it forced those who didn’t inherit tomove away from the family home.Wegge’s (really quite fascinating)research into peasant populationmovements in Germany (‘To Part or Notto Part’, 1999) supports this idea whenshe notes, ‘it is the primogenitureinstitution which better promotesemigration’.

• Population growth: According to theOffice for National Statistics, thepopulation of England and Wales trebledbetween 1700 (6 million) and 1851 (18million), indicating the existence of alarge, landless, potential workforce. Thisis significant because it suggestsgeographic mobility wasn’t arequirement for the development ofindustrialisation since what we see hereis a population explosion in urban areas,rather than migration from thecountryside to towns.

• Migration: If ideas about populationgrowth are valid, it suggests urbanisationdidn’t result from the break-up andmigration of extended rural families;rather, it occurred as the result of thepopulation growing rapidly during theearly industrial period.

Rosemary O’Day (Women in Early ModernBritain, 2000), for example, notes that alarge rural class of agricultural labourersexisted in the seventeenth century. They

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owned no land and lived by selling theirlabour outside the family group.

In terms of this argument, therefore, MichaelAnderson (Approaches to the History of theWestern Family, 1995) points out there were‘many continuities’ of family structure duringthe change from agricultural to industrialforms of production, during which no singlefamily or household structure was whollydominant. Thus, although we have focusedon extended/nuclear family and householdstructures, this doesn’t mean other types(with the possible exception of gay families)were not in evidence. Both reconstituted andsingle-parent family structures, for example,existed in pre-industrial societies, mainlybecause of high adult death rates, especiallyamong the lower classes.

However, the historical evidence doessuggest that, at least during some part of theindustrialisation/urbanisation process,changes to family and household structuresdid occur, especially in relation to socialclass and the increasing diversity of familyand household structures. Anderson (1995),for example, notes the working classes,during the process of industrialisation,developed a broadly extended familystructure which resulted from:

• Urbanisation: As towns rapidlydeveloped around factories, pressure onliving space (and the relativeunderdevelopment of communications)resulted in extended family livingarrangements.

• Mutual aid: The lack of state welfareprovision meant working class familiesrelied on a strong kinship network fortheir survival. During periods of sicknessand unemployment, for example, familymembers could provide for each other.

• Employment: Where the vast majoritycould barely read or write, an ‘unofficial’kinship network played a vital part insecuring employment for family membersthrough the process of ‘speaking out’(suggesting to an employer) for relativeswhen employers needed to recruit moreworkers.

• Child care: Where both parents worked,for example, relatives played a vital partin child care. In addition, high deathrates meant the children of dead relativescould be brought into the familystructure. In an age of what we wouldnow call child labour, young relativescould be used to supplement familyincome.

Middle-class family structures tended to benuclear, mainly because of:

• Education: The increasing importance ofeducation (for male children) and its costmeant middle class families wererelatively smaller than their working classcounterparts.

• Geographic mobility among the classfrom which the managers of the newindustrial enterprises were recruitedweakened extended family ties.

Upper-class family structures, according toRoger Gomm (The Uses of Kinship, 1989)have historically been a mixture of nuclearand extended types, although extendedfamily networks, even up to the present day,are used to maintain property relations andfor mutual economic aid amongst kin.

In addition, wealth meant extended kin(such as elderly grandparents) could berelatively easily accommodated within thefamily home and the evidence suggests itwas – and still is to some degree – relatively

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common for the vertically-extended familyto exist among the upper classes.

Post-industrial societyFamily and households structures in the latetwentieth/early twenty-first centuries are,arguably, more complex, fragmented anddiverse than at any time in our history, ideaswe can briefly examine in the followingterms.

• Diversity: As we have seen earlier, oursociety is characterised by a wide range ofdifferent family and household structures(nuclear, reconstituted, single-parent, gayand extended) apparently co-existing. Itis, however, difficult to disentangle thisdiverse range of family structures, for tworeasons.• Nuclear family structures seem to be

the dominant family form, althoughthey clearly involve a range ofdifferent family relationships; a single-parent family contains a different set ofrelationships to those in areconstituted family, for example. Thequestion here, therefore, is the extentto which either or both these familystructures can be characterised asnuclear families.

• Definitions of nuclear and extendedfamily structures determine, to somedegree, your view of their relationship.For example, Willmott’s (1988)concept of a dispersed extended familyappears to plausibly characterise manytypes of family relationship in oursociety – what we have here, therefore,is a basic nuclear family structuresurrounded and supported by extendedfamily networks (and whether or notyou count this structure as nuclear or

extended depends, as I have suggested,on how you define such things).

• Social changes: Relatively easy access todivorce (resulting from legal changes overthe past 50 years) has led to greaternumbers of reconstituted/single-parentfamilies and single-person households.

• Social attitudes: Whatever the origins ofsuch changes, it is clear lifestyle factors,in terms of greater social acceptance ofsingle-parent and homosexual familystructures, has played some part increating family structural diversity. TheOffice for National Statistics (2000), forexample, recorded 26% of all familieswith dependent children as containing asingle adult parent.

• Life expectancy: Increased lifeexpectancy, a more active lifestyle andchanges to the welfare system (which inrecent years has encouraged the de-institutionalisation of the elderly) hascreated changes within family structures,giving rise to the concept of a newgrandparenting (grandparents play agreater role in the care of grandchildren,for example, than in the recent past).These trends have led to what JuliaBrannen (‘The age of beanpole families’,2003) calls the beanpole family structure –a form of inter-generational (differentgenerations of family members),vertically-extended family structure withvery weak intra-generational (people ofthe same generation – brothers andsisters, for example) links. Similarly, Bengston (‘Beyond the nuclearfamily’, 2001) speculates about the extentto which the phenomenon of increasingbonds between different generations offamily members (as represented, for

Growing it yourselfHaving looked at the two arguments aboutthe relationship between family andhousehold structures, industrialisation andurbanisation:

1. Create a list (based on the followingtable) of what you think are the threemost important strengths andweaknesses of each argument.

2. Based on the strengths and weaknessesyou’ve identified, write a brief (500–600words) comparison of the two arguments.

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2003, for example, this household typewas the single most common family orhousehold structure in our society –according to the Office for NationalStatistics (Social Trends 34, 2004), 29%of families and households in the UK nowinvolve a single person, marginallyoutstripping ‘couples with no children’(28% of all family and householdstructures).In turn, on current projections(‘Complicated Lives II – the Price ofComplexity’, Abbey, 2002), the ‘Couplewith no children’ household will soon bemore common in our society than the‘Couple with children’ family – at present,according to the Office for NationalStatistics (Social Trends 34, 2004), eachof these types constitutes 28% of allfamily and household structures.

example, by the new grandparenting)represents ‘a valuable new resource forfamilies in the 21st century’.

• Ambivalence: Luscher, (‘Ambivalence:A key concept for the study ofintergenerational relations’, 2000) on theother hand, suggests that people arebecoming increasingly uncertain(ambivalent) about family structures andrelationships in the light of familychanges. Increases in divorce, forexample, have led to the widespreadcreation of single-parent andreconstituted families. These may haveresulted in a weakening of familyrelationships as family members seek tocreate new social spaces for themselvesand their (new) families away from therelationships that previously existed intheir lives. One result of these changes,perhaps, is families seeking ‘to putgeographical distance between differentfamily generations’.

Argument 1 Argument 2

Strengths Weaknesses Strengths Weaknesses

1.

2.

3.

• Households: Finally, one of the moststriking features of our society is thegrowth of lone person households. In

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In this section we have looked at the debatesurrounding the significance of historicalfamily and household changes and, in thenext section we can bring things a littlemore up to date by looking more closely atboth the diversity of contemporary familystructures and changing patterns of familyrelationships.

Family andhouseholddiversity andchangeIntroductionIn the two previous sections we have lookedat the complexities of family life by

considering, firstly, how this social group canbe defined and, secondly, how differentfamily structures have developed in oursociety across the centuries. We can build onthis work in two main ways. Firstly, byinvestigating in more detail ‘the diversity ofcontemporary family and householdstructure’ (in other words, the differenceswithin and between family and householdgroups). Once we’ve done this we can thenexamine ‘changing patterns of marriage,cohabitation, separation, divorce and childbearing’.

WARM UP: DISCUSSING FAMILY DIFFERENCES

One way of thinking about diversity is todiscuss your family experiences with others. Ihave identified some questions to get youstarted in the table below. In small groups,discuss and record your answers to thesequestions – and any others that spring tomind during the discussion.

Yourplans?

Division oflabour

Rules Parents andchildren

Structure

Do youplan tomarry, havechildren, acareer?

Who doeswhat in yourfamily – paidwork,domesticwork, childcare, etc.?

Who makesthe rules, whatare they, howare theyenforced (andby whom)?

What’s therelationshipbetween youand yourparents?Do you havebrothers andsisters?Natural orstep-parents?

Is your familynuclear,extended,single-parent,etc.?

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Preparing theground

The previous exercise will have sensitisedyou to a range of differences – some minorand others quite major – between thefamily/household groups in which we live.We can develop this ‘sense of difference’ byidentifying five main types of family andhousehold diversity in contemporary Britain,using a general framework suggested byRhona and Robert Rappoport (Families inBritain, 1982):

Organisational diversityThis refers to differences in family life andexperiences both within and between familygroups. In this respect we could think, forexample, about differences in:

• family structures: nuclear and extended,for example

• roles: in terms of things like thehousehold division of labour – who doeswhat within the group?

• status of the family members: married orcohabiting, natural or step-parents etc.

• relationships: in terms of things likecontact with extended kin, the extent towhich the group is patriarchal (maledominated) or matriarchal (femaledominated).

Cultural diversityThis refers to differences within andbetween different cultural (or ethnic) groupsin terms of things like:

• size: the number of children within thefamily

• marriage: for example, whether the

marriage is arranged by the parents or‘freely chosen’ by the participants

• division of labour: considered in terms ofwhether family roles are patriarchal (forexample, the male in paid employmentand the female as housewife) orsymmetrical (where roles andresponsibilities are shared equally amongfamily members).

Richard Berthoud’s analysis of diversityamongst White British, Black Caribbean andSouth Asian families (Family formation inmulti-cultural Britain, 2004) highlights anumber of key differences within and betweenthese broad ethnic groups. For example:

• Black Caribbean families arecharacterised by:• Low rates of marriage.• High levels of single parenthood. In

2001, 43% of Black or Black Britishfamilies with dependent children wereheaded by a lone parent (SocialTrends 34).

• High rates of separation and divorce.• Relatively high levels of mixed

partnerships (living with someonefrom a different (usually white) ethnicgroup).

• Absent fathers (not living within thefamily home but maintaining familycontacts).

• South Asian (Indian, Pakistani andBangladeshi) families are characterised by:• High rates of marriage.• Low rates of separation/divorce/single-

parenthood. In 2001, 11% ofAsian/Asian British families were headedby a lone parent (Social Trends 34).

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• Lower rates of mixed partnerships.• Greater likelihood (especially among

Muslims and Sikhs) of arrangedmarriage.

• Majority of Pakistani and Bangladeshiwomen look after home and family fulltime.

• High fertility rates among Pakistaniand Bangladeshi women.

• Larger family size (four or morechildren).

• Grandparents more likely to live withson’s family.

• Patriarchy – power and authority morelikely to reside with men.

� If you want to review Berthoud’sresearch, you can find a moredetailed description at:www.sociology.org.uk/as4aqa.htm

Class diversityThis refers to divisions between social classes(upper, middle and working, for example)and within these broad groupings. Forexample, a distinction (identified originallyby Goldthorpe et al’s ‘Affluent Worker’(1965) study) is sometimes made withinworking class families between the:

• traditional family, characterised bysegregated conjugal roles (family membershave different household and work roles,develop different leisure and friendshippatterns and so forth) and the

• privatised family, which involves a ‘homeand child-centred’ focus, characterised bythe family partners having joint conjugalroles (where both partners may work andtake responsibility for domestic labourtasks such as childcare) and common

leisure and friendship networks (which isa sociologist’s way of saying they dothings together and have friends incommon).

Diversity between social classes involvesthings like:

• Relationships between the sexes(whether the family group is patriarchalor symmetrical, for example). Middle-class families are more likely to be thelatter.

• Socialisation of children (upper- andmiddle-class families, for example, tend tostress the significance of education andthe importance of qualifications). Diane Reay (‘Activating Participation’,2004) has also highlighted the importanceof middle-class women’s emotional labour,which is invested in their children’seducation; she notes, for example, theactive educational involvement of manymiddle-class women in terms of helpingtheir children, monitoring school progress,questioning teachers about their children’sschool performance and so forth.

• Kinship networks and their importance,considered in terms of the different leveland type of help (financial, practical andthe like) family members can provide.

Life-cycleThis refers to differences occurring atdifferent stages of a family’s lifetime. Thismay include factors such as:

• Age: The family experience of a youngcouple with infant children is quitedifferent from that of an elderly couplewith adult children who may have lefthome and started a families of their own.

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• Attachment: For example, families withchildren of school age may become dual-income families, with both partnersworking for at least part of the day. Thisfamily’s experience will be very differentto that of a single-parent family.

Generational differences These may be in evidence in terms of howpeople of similar generations have broadlyshared experiences. For example, familymembers who were raised during the 1940shave the experience of war and post-warausterity (hardship – things like theexperience of rationing, for example); familymembers who grew up during the 1980s, onthe other hand, may well have developedvery different attitudes and lifestyles.

The extent to which the generations arelinked (such as the relationship betweenparents and children, grandparents andgrandchildren) is also relevant here.

Although family diversity is clearlyimportant, we also need to keep in mind theincreasing significance of household diversityin our society. We can, for example, developsome ideas about the ‘non-family’households we identified earlier in thischapter.

Single person households have someinteresting features:

• Proportion: One-person households inour society have doubled in the past 40years (from 14% in 1961 to 29% in2003).

• Age: Within this group, an importantdemographic change is the proportion ofpeople under retirement age living insingle person households – just over 50%in 2003, up from 33% in 1961.

• Region: This type of household is more

Couples with no children are a significanthousehold type, although over the past 40years their proportion has remained largelyunchanged (at 30–35% of all householdsand 28% of all families and households).Within single-person/couple households wecould note differences in:

• Economics: Important distinctions can bemade between employed and unemployedsingle people, for example, as well asbetween dual and single-income couples.Each group’s economic situation willimpact on their lifestyles andrelationships.

• Age and lifestyle: a young single person,for example, is likely to have a verydifferent lifestyle from an elderly singleperson.

• Region: Urban areas such as Brighton,Manchester and London have large gaycommunities which contributes to theirhigh percentage of single-personhouseholds.

Shared households cover a range ofdifferences, from the not uncommon (a

Discussion point:single people

Brighton and Manchester are two areas inthe UK that have the highest proportion ofsingle households, whereas NorthernIreland has the lowest.

What single factor might explain thisdifference? (For the answer, see belowunder Region.)

likely to be found in urban areas,especially large cities such as London andGlasgow.

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group of friends living together – short orlong term – to share rent and living costs) tothe less common communal livingarrangements we find in some societies (thekibbutzim of Israel, for example). Again, thelifestyles and experiences of these diversegroups are likely to be very different.

Digging deeper When we start to think about the extent offamily and household diversity – and itspossible social implications – there are anumber of observations and explanations weneed to consider. Before we do so, however,it is important to note that when thinkingabout the extent of such diversity in oursociety a pertinent question might be ‘Howdeep do you want to go to discoverdiversity?’

In other words, if you drill down deeplyenough you’ll find differences between everyfamily or household relating to how they’restructured and organised in terms of rolesand relationships. There comes a pointwhen sociologists have to draw some sort ofline about diversity – but, unfortunately,there are no guidelines to tell us where todraw such a line. Keeping this idea in mind,however, we can make the followingobservations about diversity in terms of:

• Family structures: Although we haveidentified a range of diversity here, wecan note that, depending on how youdraw your definition, nuclear familystructures are the general norm in oursociety (if you assume the majority ofsingle-parent families were originallynuclear and would like – given suitableopportunities – to be nuclear or will, atsome point in the future, becomenuclear).

On the other hand, we could probablymake a convincing argument that sometype of modified extended family is thenorm, given many families enjoy someform of contact with extended kin.

• Family processes: The idea of diversity infamily relationships may be overstated.The ‘cereal packet family’ (consisting ofmarried adults with one male and onefemale child living in a lovingrelationship where dad earns the moneyand mum does the housework) beloved ofmedia and advertising may not be arealistic representation of family life, but,following Chester’s (1985) argument,most people are, at some point in theirlife, either living in nuclear-typearrangements or, perhaps moresignificantly, wanting to live in that typeof arrangement.

ExplanationsIt is one thing to observe the idea of familyand household diversity (however we chooseto define it), but it is quite another toexplain it. It is possible, though, to identifyfactors that contribute to diversity, in termsof demographic changes, that relate tothings like:

• Life expectancy: As the following tableillustrates, people in our society aregenerally living longer.

Average Lifeexpectancy (years)

1926 2001

Women 59.3 80.4

Men 55.4 75.7

Table 2.3

In addition, the overall population isgenerally ageing; that is, there areproportionately more elderly than young

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people in the population (a consequenceof longer life expectancy and a decliningbirth rate). These ideas are significant forfamily diversity in a couple of ways.Firstly, couples are potentially livingtogether for longer (especially after theirchildren have left home) and the longer arelationship has to last, the more likely itis, statistically, to end in separation ordivorce. Secondly, it raises the increasedpossibility of grandparents becominginvolved in the raising of theirgrandchildren (allowing both parents tohave paid work, for example).

• Relationships: Apart from things like arelative decline in the number of peoplemarrying, an increase in the numbercohabiting and an increasing likelihoodof people choosing to remainsingle/unattached throughout theirlifetime, the average age at which menand women marry is increasing, as thefollowing table demonstrates:

families (the average size is now 1.6children, compared with 2.3 in 1950 and4 in 1900) releases adults from childcareresponsibilities and increase theopportunities for both partners to havepaid work outside the home.

Economic changes include ideas like:

• Female independence: According toAbercrombie and Warde (ContemporaryBritish Society, 1992), ‘One of the mostsignificant changes in the labour marketin the 20th century is the risingproportion of married women returning towork after completing their families . . .Greater participation by women in paidwork and changes in family structure thusseem to be closely related’.

• Affluence: The relationship betweenpoverty and family size is welldocumented (poorer families tend to havemore children), so it is little surprise tofind a relationship between increasingaffluence and smaller families.

• Globalisation: As our society becomesever more open to influences from othercultures, we’re presented with a greaterrange of choices about how to behave.This has a couple of dimensions: firstly,family and household arrangements fromone society may be introduced intoanother (different ideas about male andfemale roles, for example) and, secondly,it opens up the potential for ahybridisation of family and householdcultures – that is, a situation in whichtwo different cultural family formscombine to produce a new and slightlydifferent form.

Attitude and lifestyle changesinvolve a range of different factors:

Average age atfirst marriage

1971 2001

Men 24.6 30.6

Women 22.6 28.4

Table 2.4

Some consequences of this particulartrend include smaller families andincreased opportunities for women toestablish a career before marrying andthen returning to that career aftercompleting a family.

• Immigration: Diversity has beenincreased by different forms of familyorganisation and relationships amongimmigrant groups.

• Family size: The trend towards smaller

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• Religion: The decline in the power oforganised religion amongst some ethnicgroups – known as secularisation – mayaccount for increases in cohabitation, thedecline of marriage, the availability ofremarriage after divorce and so forth.Conversely, among some ethnic groupsthe reverse may be true – their religionmay put great emphasis on marriage anddisallow divorce.

• Femininity and masculinity: Changes inthe way we view our bodies (and oursexuality) create changing meanings formale and female lives. Women in thetwenty-first century are less likely todefine their femininity in terms of child-

rearing and domestic labour than theirgrandmothers, for example. Similarly,changing perceptions of masculinity haveresulted in changes to how some menview family roles and relationships.

Legal/technological changes make importantcontributions to diversity in terms of:

• Divorce: Legal changes relating to boththe availability and cost of divorceencourage diversity through thedevelopment of different family structures.Similarly, changes in attitudes to divorce,step- and single-parenting have resultedin less stigma (social disapproval) beingattached to these statuses.

• Medical: The availability ofcontraception (enabling couples to plantheir families) and abortion change theway people relate to each other in termsof starting and continuing families.

In this section we have outlined a number ofobservations about family and householddiversity and suggested a range of social andeconomic factors contributing to thisprocess. As you should be aware however,the concept of diversity does not simplyinvolve listing examples and offering generalexplanations; sociologically, it has a moraldimension, in the sense it would be useful tounderstand the social and psychologicalimplications of family diversity.

In this respect, Bren Neale (‘TheorisingFamily, Kinship and Social Change’, 2000),poses the question, ‘How are we to view thediversity and fluidity of contemporarypatterns of partnering, parenting andkinship?’, and answers it in terms of twofurther questions: ‘Should we view thesetransformations with optimism or, at least,accept the reality of them and attempt to

• Sexuality: Increasing tolerance of‘alternative sexualities’ (homosexuality,bisexuality, transsexuality and the like)and lifestyles (such as transvesticism)serves to increase household diversity.

The popular comedian Eddie Izzard are we,as a society, more tolerant of alternativesexualities such as Transvesticism than inthe past?

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work with them, or should we view them asa cause for concern?’

To complete this section, therefore, itwould be useful to outline some of the viewsassociated with these two basic perspectiveson diversity, beginning with a perspectivethat generally views family diversity as a‘cause for concern’.

New Right perspectivesThese perspectives on family diversity canbe summarised in terms of how they viewfamily structures. The traditional(heterosexual) nuclear family is seen as moredesirable than other family structures – suchas single-parent families, for example –because it provides a sense of social,economic and psychological stability, familycontinuity and primary socialisation. It is,for New Right theorists, an arena in which,according to Neale’s (2000)characterisation, ‘traditional family values’are emphasised and reinforced, therebycreating a sense of individual and socialresponsibility that forms a barrier against‘rampant, selfish, individualism’. In otherwords, within the traditional family childrenand adults learn certain moral values thatare continually reinforced through theirrelationship with family members. In thisrespect, family relationships are seen as acrucial source of both individual happinessand, perhaps more importantly, socialstability because of the moral core at theheart of such relationships – a sense ofmorality that includes things like:

• caring for family members• taking responsibility for the behaviour of

children• economic provision for both partners and

children

• developing successful interpersonalrelationships.

Patricia Morgan (Marriage-Lite, 2000), forexample, argues a marriage – rather thancohabiting – is a more desirable relationshipstate for both individuals and societies. ForMorgan, this is not just a moral argumentbut also one based on the notion thatcohabitation is not simply, to paraphrasePenelope Leach (Children First, 1994),‘Marriage without a piece of paper’. On thecontrary, Morgan asserts cohabitation is:

• Unstable: She notes, for example, thefragility of cohabiting relationships interms of the idea that they ‘are alwaysmore likely to fracture than marriagesentered into at the same time, regardlessof age and income’. In addition,cohabiting couples tend to behave in amore sexually promiscuous way thanmarried couples (‘Cohabitants behavemore like single people than marriedpeople’, as she puts it) – another reason,she argues, for the instability of this typeof family relationship.

• Fragmentary, in the sense that theirinstability means cohabitating coupleswith children who marry are statisticallymore likely to divorce. Of those whonever marry, ‘50% of the women will belone unmarried mothers by the time thechild is ten’. One reason for this, Morganargues, is that, unlike marriage,cohabitation for women is ‘not so muchan ideal lifestyle choice as the bestarrangement they can make at the time’.

• Abusive: both women and children,Morgan notes, are at greater risk ofphysical and sexual abuse ‘than theywould be in married relationships’.

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Neale summarises the general New Rightposition on family and household diversityin terms of:

• Community: Stable family relationships –such as those created within married,heterosexual, dual-parent nuclear families– provide significant emotional andpsychological benefits to family membersthat override any possible dysfunctionalaspects. In addition, a sense of personaland social responsibility is created whichis translated into benefits for thecommunity in general, for example,children being given clear moral andbehavioural guidance within traditionalfamily structures.

• Commitment to others, both in terms offamily and the community, is encouragedby the sense of moral duty created throughstable family relationships. Within thetraditional family, for example, each adultpartner plays a role – such as breadwinneror domestic worker – that involves a senseof personal sacrifice and commitment toother family members.

• Morality: Developing from the above, thenotion that any type of family structure isjust as good – or bad – as any other (whatNew Right theorists call ‘moralrelativism’) is not only mistaken butdangerous since it questions the conceptof moral commitment to others – bothfamily and community – which, for theNew Right, sits at the heart of socialresponsibility. They emphasise, in thisrespect, the need for a moral consensusthat encourages ‘beneficial’ forms offamily structure and ‘discourages’ forms –such as single-parenthood – that are seenas damaging to both individuals andcommunities.

An alternative interpretation of familydiversity suggests it should be embraced,either because it points the way forward toan optimistic realignment of family roles andrelationships or, not to put too fine a pointon it, because it is going to happen whetherwe want it to or not.

Postmodern perspectivesThis view of the world is neatly summarisedby Zeitlin et al (Strengthening the Family:Implications for International Development,1998) when they note: ‘The post-modernworld is shaped by pluralism, democracy,religious freedom, consumerism, mobility,and increasing access to news andentertainment. Residents of this post-modern world are able to see that there aremany beliefs, multiple realities, and anexhilarating but daunting profusion of worldviews – a society that has lost its faith inabsolute truth and in which people have tochoose what to believe’.

As you might expect, a number of ideasabout family diversity follow from this typeof view, which we can identify andsummarise in the following terms.

• Economic changes: Global economicchanges impact on national and localeconomies in numerous ways, one ofwhich, according to Zeitlin et al, is thebreakdown of ‘economic forces underlyingsocial conformity’. For example, in thepast women generally needed to marry (asadvantageously as they could) becausethey were either barred from theworkplace or consigned to low-pay formsof work which made their financialsurvival problematic without malesupport. In addition, inheritance lawsfocused on the need to produce children

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within marriage if they were to inheritland and property. Increasing economicindependence and gradual changes inlegal norms relating to inheritance nolonger makes marriage an economicnecessity for women.

• Political changes: One feature ofglobalisation – as it relates to politicalideas – is the ‘questioning of the oldorder’ as people are increasingly exposedto new and different ways of doing things.In situations where the possibility ofchoice develops, it is hardly surprising tofind people exercising such choices intheir personal relationships and lifestyles– which, as the established political andlegal order changes, results in family andrelationship diversity.

• Cultural changes: Related to the abovechanges, the media contributes torelationship diversity by both exposingpeople to new ideas and, in some ways,endorsing or failing to condemn newtypes of family relationship. Peoplebecome, in this respect, generally moreaccepting of single parents, surrogatemothers and gay and lesbian families.

For writers such as Jagger and Wright (‘Endof Century, End of Family?’, 1999) attemptsto ‘turn back the tide of family diversity’ and‘recapture an idealised “nuclear” version offamily life where time stands still andtraditional values are re-vitalised’ is nolonger a possibility or an option(presupposing, of course, it ever was). Familyrelationships reflect the wider economic,political and cultural changes in our societythat have, according to differentpostmodernist writers, become characterisedby things like:

• Choice: Just as when we go to thesupermarket we expect a choice of thingsto buy, so too do we increasingly expectour personal relationships to be governedby choice.

• Uncertainty: Smart and Neale (‘Goodenough morality? Divorce andPostmodernity’, 1997) draw our attentionto the idea that, although the downside ofincreased choice is uncertainty (‘Have Imade the right choice?’) we should notsimply assume marriage, as opposed tocohabitation for example, involves greaterpersonal certainty because it is legallysanctioned (it is legally more difficult tobreak away from a marriage than from acohabiting relationship). On the contrary,perhaps, it is our knowledge of uncertainty– that a family relationship is not backedup by legal responsibilities and sanctions –that makes people work harder withinsuch relationships to make them work.

Finally, we can note how Neale (2000)summarises the general postmodern position,in terms of a ‘relational approach’ tounderstanding family and householddiversity that involves:

• Commitment: Family (and otherpersonal) relationships are increasinglyplayed out in micro networks. That is,people are increasingly likely to negotiatetheir relationships with other individualsin ways that take more account ofpersonal needs and responsibilities, ratherthan, perhaps, worrying about what‘others in the community might think’.

• Morality: In situations where a widediversity of family roles, relationships andstructures exist, notions of social morality(that one way of living is better than any

Growing it yourself: thinking about marriageWhat changing patterns of marriage can you identify in the following table?

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other) become much weaker. In thisrespect, society in general becomes ‘lessjudgemental’ about how others choose toform family relationships (the idea of gayfamily structures, for example, being acase in point).

Family andhouseholdchangesIntroductionThis section examines ‘changing patterns ofmarriage, cohabitation, separation, divorceand child bearing’ and this involves, firstly,establishing what these respective patternsare (using a variety of statistical material)and, secondly, offering a range ofexplanations for why these patterns exist.

Marriage

Preparing the groundWhen examining changing patterns ofmarriage we have to keep in mind that thepicture is complicated by serial monogamy(in our society people can marry, divorceand remarry), which makes simplecomparisons between past and presentdifficult. However, this doesn’t meanmarriage statistics tell us nothing ofimportance.

Look at ‘Growing it yourself ’, below. Fromthis we can note a number of broad changes:

• First marriage: A steady and absolutedecline in the number of people marryingover the past 50 years.

• Second marriage: Conversely, remarriage(which includes second and subsequentmarriages) peaked in the 1980s and has

Year Allmarriages(000s)

Firstmarriage(000s)

Remarriage(000s)

Remarriageas % of allmarriages

UKpopulation(Millions)

1901 360 – – – 38

1950 408 330 78 19 49

1960 394 336 58 15 51

1970 471 389 82 17 53

1980 418 279 139 33 53

1990 375 241 134 36 55

1999 301 180 128 43 56

2000 306 180 126 41 57

2001 286 180 106 37 58

Table 2.5 UK patterns of marriageSource: Social Trends 34: 2004

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• Lifestyle: The decision not to marry mayhave become something of a lifestylechoice. Among women especially,increased financial, career and personalindependence may be reflected indecisions about alternative relationships –something related to both male and femaleexpectations of marriage (questions ofwho, for example, is expected to performchild care and domestic labour roles).The argument here is that women areincreasingly less likely, for a range ofreasons, to enter into a relationship (suchas marriage) that restricts their ability towork and develop a career. As AndrewOswald (‘Homes, Sex and theAsymmetry Hypothesis’, 2002) argues:

Women are now more highly educated andcan look after themselves financially. Theydo better at school than boys. They go touniversity in equal proportions to men andoften go into better jobs. Their skills are indemand in the workforce. Nobody needs

Does the increasing popularity of non-Church weddings indicate a decline in thereligious significance of marriage?

since slowly declined. Remarriage, as apercentage of all marriages, has doubledin the past 50 years.

• Marriage was most popular just after theSecond World War and during the 1970s,since when it has rapidly declined.

Digging deeper There are a number reasons we can considerfor changes in the popularity of marriage.

• Alternatives: In contemporary society themain alternative option is cohabitation(see below); this has increased inpopularity in recent years and, althoughmany cohabiting couples eventuallymarry, many do not.

• Social pressures: There is less stigmaattached to both being unmarried andbearing/raising children outside marriage.These ideas, coupled with the easyavailability of contraception (allowingsexual relationships outside marriage tobe relatively free from the risk ofconception) mean social pressures tomarry have declined.

• Secularisation: For some (but by nomeans all) ethnic groups, the influence ofreligious beliefs and organisations hasdeclined (secularisation), leading tochanges in the meaning and significanceof marriage. If people fail to see marriageas special or important, this opens theway to the development of other forms ofpartnership (such as cohabitation).

In addition, if some men and women areincreasingly choosing to remain childless,the legal and moral aspect of marriagemay lose its significance, making it lesslikely for people to marry.

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brute strength any more, and certainlyhaving brutes in a high-powered white-collaroffice, where teamwork matters, is worsethan useless. In a sense, the modern worldof work is better suited to females. In 2002a lot of women do not depend on men.

• Risk: Ulrich Beck (The Risk Society:Towards a New Modernity, 1992) has arguedthat, in contemporary society, people’sbehaviour is conditioned by theirknowledge of risk – in other words, weincreasingly reflect on and assess the likelyconsequences of our actions. In this respect,knowledge about the statistical likelihoodof divorce – with all its emotional, legaland economic consequences – may leadpeople to the simple step of avoiding therisk by not marrying.

• State support: Until recently, the stateoffered a range of tax incentives (MarriedMan’s (sic) Tax Allowance and MortgageInterest Relief, for example) for couplesto marry; these are no longer available.

Although the type of explanations for thedecline in the popularity of marriage justnoted are significant – either alone or incombination – we need to consider datareliability and validity. In terms of thereliability of contemporary (or recent) data,we can note two things.

• Internal reliability: All marriages arerecorded by law and the definition of amarriage hasn’t changed over the past 50or so years, so we can be reasonablyconfident that marriage statistics accuratelymeasure what they claim to measure.

• Longitudinal changes (changes overtime) in marriage can be accuratelytracked using official statistical data – butonly up to a point.

The historical picture of marriage in oursociety is, however, complicated by:

• divorce – it wasn’t, for example, availableto most people 150 years ago

• data availability – marriage statistics werenot collected as accurately in thenineteenth century, for example, as theyare now.

These two factors make tracking long-termhistorical changes in the popularity ofmarriage both difficult and potentiallyunreliable.

When assessing the validity of marriagestatistics, we need to keep in mind howpopulation changes may affect their validity.To understand the significance of this ideawe need to note two main ways in whichmarriage is measured.

• Raw number measures involve a simplecounting of the number of peoplemarrying in any given year. For example,in the previous table (UK Patterns ofMarriage) we saw there were 286,000recorded marriages in the UK in 2001.This type of measure, however, createsproblems when we take into accountdifferences in population size (in terms ofboth historical and cross-culturalcomparisons). An obvious example hereis any attempt to validly measure therelative popularity of marriage betweenthe UK and the USA, using a ‘rawnumber’ measure, would have to take intoaccount the large difference in populationsize (in 2001, for example, the UKpopulation was approximately 58 million,while that of America was approximately275 million).

• Marriage rates (as in the following table)can be both a more valid way of

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measuring marriage and used as the basisfor comparing both historical and cross-cultural changes in the popularity ofmarriage.

However, we need to keep in mind boththese forms of measurement are sensitive topopulation changes, which we can illustratein two ways.

Firstly, in terms of the overall number ofpeople living in a particular society at aparticular time, which we can illustrate byusing the concept of a ‘babyboom’. During theSecond World War in Britain people, forvarious reasons, delayed starting a family. In1950, the average span for family completion(from the birth of the first to the last child)was 10 years and this compression of familyformation is important because it produces apopulation bulge – a rapid, if temporary,increase in the number of children in society(a so-called baby boom). As these childrenreached adulthood in the 1970s and 1980s wesaw an increase in the number of peoplemarrying. For this reason, we shouldn’t simplyassume a rise in the number of people marryingmeans marriage has become more popular.

Having said that, the fact there are morepeople in a particular society doesn’tnecessarily mean there will be moremarriages. For example, in the UK in 1901,

there were 360,000 marriages for a totalpopulation of 38 million; in 2001, in apopulation of 58 million, there were 286,000marriages. This would indicate a significantdecline in the popularity of marriage,something seemingly confirmed by lookingat marriage rates over the past 20 years – anear 32% decline in the UK.

Secondly, therefore, we need tounderstand how the validity of marriagestatistics can be sensitive to changes in thecharacteristics of a population, which we canillustrate in terms of marriageable cohorts.This is the idea that, in any givenpopulation, some age groups (cohorts) aremore likely than others to marry. We cansee the significance of this idea – in relationto questions of whether or not marriage hasdeclined in popularity – in a couple of ways.

Firstly, in any population there are ‘peakperiods’ for marriage (the age range at whichmarriage is more likely – in 2001, forexample, the average age at first marriage formen was 30 and for women 28). The morepeople there are in this age range (as a resultof baby booms, for example) the greater thenumber of likely marriages (and vice versa,of course).

Secondly, the relationship between thismarriageable cohort and other age-related

1981 1989 1993 2001 2002

UK 7.1 6.8 5.9 5.1 4.8

France 5.8 5.0 4.4 5.1 4.7

Ireland 6.0 5.0 4.4 5.1 5.1

Germany 5.8 6.4 5.5 4.7 4.7

Denmark 5.0 6.0 6.1 6.6 6.9

Spain – – – 5.2 5.1

Table 2.6 Marriage rates (per 1000 population): Selected European countriesSource: Social Trends 30–34

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cohorts in a population is also significant.For example, if there are large numbers ofchildren or elderly people in a population,this will affect both raw marriage numbersand, most importantly, marriage rates; in thecase of children, for example, they are notlegally allowed to marry and, in the case ofthe elderly, they are less likely to marry. Thesize of these cohorts (both in absolute termsin the case of raw marriage numbers and inrelative terms for marriage rates) does,however, affect the validity of marriagestatistics.

If, however, we control for these groupsand focus our attention on the ‘marriageablepopulation’ rate we can note that, for thiscohort, there was a decline from 7.1marriages to 6.8 marriages between 1981 and1989 – a decline in the popularity ofmarriage on a much smaller scale than thatsuggested by either raw marriage numbers or rates.

CohabitationPreparing theground

Unlike marriage and divorce data,information about cohabitation is not legallyrecorded, so anything we say about thenumber of couples ‘living together’ outsidemarriage in contemporary Britain will alwaysbe limited by data reliability. As Gillis (ForBetter, For Worse: British Marriages, 1600 tothe Present, 1985) notes:

Couples living together ‘as husband andwife’ have always been difficult to identifyand quantify. Informal marriage, however, isnot a new practice; it is estimated thatbetween the mid-eighteenth and mid-

nineteenth centuries as many as one-fifth ofthe population of England and Wales mayhave cohabited.

Keeping this in mind, we can note trendsabout cohabitation in our society in terms of:

• Gender: Haskey (‘Trends in marriage andcohabitation’, 1995) notes that in themid-1960s, approximately 5% of singlewomen cohabited. By the 1990s, this hadrisen to 70%, a figure confirmed byErmisch and Francesconi (‘Patterns ofhousehold and family formation’, 2000).However, they observed that, on average,such partnerships lasted only two years,were largely ‘experimental’ and notintended to develop into long-termrelationships.Haskey (‘Cohabitation in Great Britain’,2002) also notes that, of women marryingin the late 1960s, 2% had previouslycohabited with their partner. By the late1990s, this had risen to 80% of all womenmarrying. According to the GeneralHousehold Survey (2004), cohabitationamong women aged 18–49 rose from 11%in 1979 to 32% in 2001.

• Age: According to Social Trends (2004),13% of adults aged 16–59 reported livingin a cohabiting relationship that hadsince dissolved. Twenty-five per cent ofthe 25–39 age group reported cohabitingat some point, compared with 5% ofthose aged 50–54. In 2002, 25% ofunmarried adults aged 16 –59 reportedliving in a cohabiting relationship. Ferri et al (Changing Britain, ChangingLives, 2003) noted a trend for youngerpeople to cohabit, not simply as a preludeto marriage (approximately 60% of

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cohabiting couples subsequently marry)but also as a possible alternative. TheGeneral Household Survey (2004)confirmed that 25–29 year olds representthe main age group for cohabitation inour society. Among older age groups, Berrington andDiamond (‘Marriage or Cohabitation’,2000) found cohabitation was most likelyin situations where one or both partnershad been married before. The likelihoodof cohabitation is also increased insituations where one or both partners hadparents who cohabited.

Digging deeper Given that cohabitation (or consensual unionas it is often termed) is a similar form ofliving arrangement to marriage (and theonly form currently available – until or ifcivil partnerships are recognised in law – tosame-sex partners) it is not too surprising tofind the reasons we have examined inrelation to changing patterns of marriage(lack of stigma, secularisation, lifestylechoice, risk avoidance and lack of incentivesto marry) all apply to cohabitation. Havingnoted this, however, we can briefly explorereasons for cohabitation in a little moredepth Smart and Stevens (‘CohabitationBreakdown’, 2000) interviewed 40 separatedparents and identified the following reasonsfor cohabitation.

• Attitudes to marriage: These rangedfrom indifference to marriage to beingunsure about the suitability for marriageof the person with whom they werecohabiting.

• Trial marriage: For some of the mothersinvolved, cohabitation represented a trialfor their partner to prove they couldsettle down, gain and keep paid work andinteract successfully with the mother’schildren.

• Legal factors: Many cohabiting parentswere either unwilling to enter into alegal relationship with their partner(often because they were suspicious ofthe legal system) or they believed iteasier to back away from a cohabitingrelationship if it didn’t work out as theyhad hoped.

• Opposition to marriage as an institutionwas also a factor, with some parentsbelieving cohabitation led to a moreequal form of relationship.

Table 2.7 summarises the different‘commitments to cohabitation’ identified bySmart and Stevens.

Finally, we can note Lewis et al(‘Cohabitation, Separation and Fatherhood’,2002) found three distinct orientations tocohabitation in their sample of 50 parentswho had cohabited, had a child and thenseparated.

• Indistinguishable: Marriage andcohabitation were equally preferable.

• Marriage preference: One or bothpartners viewed cohabitation as atemporary prelude to what they hadhoped would be marriage.

• Cohabitation preference: Each partnersaw their relationship in terms of a moralcommitment on a par with marriage.

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Growing it yourself: marriage and cohabitationCopy the following table and then individually, in small groups or as a class, identify as manyadvantages and disadvantages of marriage and cohabitation as possible.

The following statements from Lewis et al’s respondents might help get you started:

• ‘My commitment to a relationship is the same, regardless of the piece of paper.’ (Father)

• ‘I don’t honestly see a lot of difference between marriage and cohabitation . . . what mattersis the relationship and whether it works or not.’ (Mother)

Marriage Cohabitation

Advantages Disadvantages Advantages Disadvantages

Contingent commitment involved couplescohabiting ‘until they were sure it was safeor sensible to become permanentlycommitted or married’.

Mutual commitment involved the couplefeeling as committed to each other and theirchildren as married couples.

Characteristics of contingent commitment• the couple have not known each other for

long• legal and/or financial agreements are

absent• the children are not planned (although

they may be wanted)• pregnancy predates the cohabitation• there is a requirement for significant

personal change if the relationship is towork

• there is no presumption that therelationship will last – only a hope

Characteristics of mutual commitment• the relationship is established before

cohabiting• there are some legal and financial

agreements• children are planned and/or wanted by

both parents• both parents are involved in childcare• there are mutually agreed expectations of

the relationship• there is a presumption that the

relationship will last

Table 2.7

Digging deeper We can start by noting that the samepopulation changes affecting the validity ofmarriage statistics also apply to divorcestatistics. If more people marry, for example,this increases the chances of a rise in thenumbers of people divorcing. We canhowever suggest some reasons for changes inpatterns of divorce.

• Legal changes: Whenever we examinehistorical changes to the number ofpeople divorcing in our society, we alwaysneed to be aware of potential reliabilityproblems with divorce statistics. The legaldefinition of divorce, for example, haschanged many times over the pastcentury (as Table 2.10 shows) and, eachtime divorce is made easier, the numberof people divorcing increases.

Legal changes, although significant, arenot necessarily a cause of higher divorce;rather, an increase in divorce after legalchanges probably indicates the number ofpeople who would have divorced – giventhe opportunity – before the change. Thisincludes, for example, couples who hadseparated prior to a change in the law andthose living in empty-shell marriages –couples whose marriage had effectivelyended but were still living togetherbecause they could not legally divorce.

• Economic changes: for example, in 1949,Legal Aid was made available fordivorcing couples for the first time. Thiscreated opportunities to divorce for thoseother than the well off.

• Social changes cover a range of possiblereasons.

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DivorcePreparing theground

In ‘A Brief History of Marriage’ (2002),Samantha Callan notes: ‘The first divorce[in Britain] took place in 1551 and, over thenext 187 years, 300 marriages were dissolvedby private acts of parliament . . . ’.

In 1857, the Divorce Act allowed divorcefor adultery (but only for men – and richmen at that). It wasn’t until the mid-twentieth century that divorce (as opposedto separation) became a possibility for bothmen and women, rich or poor.

This brief – and highly selective –overview tells us that, for most of ourhistory, divorce has been beyond the reachof most people. However, as ‘Growing ityourself ’, on page 102 shows, once it wasavailable, people seem to have takenadvantage of it in ever increasing numbers.

In terms of the trends illustrated by thesetables, over the past:

• 40 years divorce has become increasinglypopular and rates for both sexes haveincreased

• 30 years divorcees, both male and female,have been getting older (reflecting,perhaps, the later average age of modernmarriage partners)

• 20 years divorce peaked and thenreturned to its previous level (a result ofthe baby boom bulge)

• 10 years we have witnessed a slightdecline (and flattening out) in thenumbers divorcing.

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Growing it yourself: reasons for divorceIn small groups, identify as many reasons as possible why people may want to divorce.

Once you have done this, look at the following tables and cross off any reason on your list thatwould have applied equally to the dates in the table (for example, ‘not being in love any more’or ‘adultery’ would have applied equally in 1921 and 2001).

As a class, write any remaining reasons for divorce on a white board/flipchart.

Read the ‘Digging deeper’ section and match your reasons to those I have provided.

Year No. of divorces (000s) Average age at divorce

Males Females

1921 3 – –

1941 7.5 – –

1947 47 – –

1951 29 – –

1961 20 – –

1971 80 39.4 36.8

1981 160 37.7 35.2

1991 180 38.6 36.0

1999 170 – –

2000 155 38.6 36.0

2001 157 41.5 39.1

Table 2.8 Divorce in the UKSource: Social Trends 30–34

Table 2.9 Divorce by gender and age per 1000 of populationSource: Social Trends 30–34

1961 1981 1999

Male Female Male Female Male Female

16–24 1.4 2.4 17.7 22.3 29.0 30.3

25–29 3.9 4.5 27.6 26.7 31.5 32.3

45 and over 1.1 0.9 4.8 3.9 6.3 5.1

All 16 and over 2.1 2.1 11.9 11.9 13.0 12.9


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Year Main Change

Pre-1857 Only by Act of Parliament

1857: MatrimonialCauses Act

Available through Law Courts for first time (but expensive to pursue).‘Fault’ had to be proven. Men could divorce because of adultery,women had to show both cruelty and adultery.

1923: MatrimonialCauses Act

Grounds for divorce made the same for men and women.

1937: Herbert Act Added range of new grounds for divorce (desertion, cruelty etc.) andno divorce petition was allowed for the first three years of marriage.

1969–1971:Divorce ReformAct

Abolished idea of ‘matrimonial offence’ (adultery, etc.) as grounds fordivorce. ‘Irretrievable breakdown of marriage’ became the onlyrequirement. Divorce could be obtained within two years if bothpartners consented and five years if one partner contested the divorce.

1985: Matrimonialand FamilyProceedings Act

Time limit on divorce reduced from three years of marriage to one.

1996 – 2000:Family Law Act

Introduced range of ideas (‘no-fault’ divorce, counselling, cooling-offperiod to reflect on application for divorce – not all of which havebeen applied). Idea was to make divorce a less confrontationalprocess.

Table 2.10 Divorce: selected legal changes in the UK


• War-time marriages, for example, havea high probability of ending in divorce.

• Attitudes to marriage: The weakeningof the religious significance of marriage(people probably no longer view it as‘until death do us part’) also goes someway to explaining attitudes to divorce– there is little moral stigma attachedto it anymore (or, if you prefer, lessstigma attached now than in the past).

• Lifestyle choices: Some couples seemarriage as a search for personalhappiness, rather than a moralcommitment to each other (which , asan aside, may also explain the increasein remarriages; divorcees (90% ofwhom remarry) are not unhappy withmarriage as an institution, just theperson they married).

• Social position: As women haveexperienced increased financialopportunities and independence theyhave become more willing to end anunsatisfactory marriage.

• Romantic individualism: The argumentshere are two-fold: firstly, that familyrelationships have, over the years,become stripped of all but theirindividual/personal functions – if people‘fall out of love’, therefore, there isnothing to hold their marriage together.Secondly, that we increasingly have(media-fuelled) illusions about love,romance and family life and once thereality hits home, many people opt fordivorce as a way out of an unhappymarriage experience.

Charles and Diana – one of the mostfamous separated couples of recent times.

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‘At risk’ relationshipsStatistically, those marriages most at risk ofending in divorce involve:

• Different social backgrounds: Pressurefrom family and friends can createconflict within the marriage that makesdivorce statistically more likely.Differences in class, religion and ethnicbackground also lead to a higher risk ofdivorce.

• Short acquaintance before marriage.• Separation for long periods.• Teenagers: A range of reasons apply here

(length of potential marriage, lowincomes, shared accommodation withparents and so forth).

• Remarriage: Divorcees are twice as likelyto divorce again.

SeparationPreparing theground

Our ability to understand changing patternsof separation are complicated by two factors,divorce and cohabitation.

DivorceIn the past – before divorce was eitheravailable or affordable – it was notuncommon for married couples to end theirrelationship by separation. However, wehave no reliable data about those whoseparated (or those who would haveseparated had divorce been possible). Thebest we can do is make educated guesses –based on the number who currently divorceand the fact that, every time it is madeeasier more people divorce – about theprevalence of separation. Once divorcebecame readily available, of course,

Strange reasons fordivorceAnita Davis, a family law solicitor hasidentified some odd reasons for divorce:

• a husband was divorced because hemade irritating noises with Sellotape

• a wife divorced her partner because hecrept into bed for sex during herhospital treatment for sexualexhaustion

• a woman divorced her partner forrefusing to let her buy her ownunderwear

• a man sued for divorce because his wifeused their Pekingese dog as a hot waterbottle.

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separation as a way of ending a relationshipbecame much less common – couplesdivorced (which allowed them to remarry)without the need to separate.

The 1969 Divorce Reform Act, however,introduced the concept of separation intothe divorce process itself; a divorce could begranted after two years of separation if bothpartners consented and five years if only onepartner consented.

In terms of married couples therefore,separation is, as Table 2.11 suggests, likely tobe a prelude to divorce rather than, as in thepast, an alternative.

CohabitationTo further complicate matters, do weinclude in our analysis figures for cohabiting

couples who separate? Numbers here aredifficult to estimate and data reliability islow because this information is not legallyrecorded.

However, one area in which we do havereliable data for contemporary separation isfor marriages that breakdown within the first12 months. This is because of judicialseparation decrees. Although couples cannotdivorce – and they remain legally married –they can apply to the family courts for a legalseparation. All marital obligations are endedand it can be granted for things like adulteryor unreasonable behaviour, although it is notactually necessary to show the marriage hasirretrievably broken down. Table 2.12 givessome idea of the (relatively small) number ofsuch separations.

Year of marriage Males Females

1965–1969 7 7

1970–1974 10 10

1975–1979 14 13

1980–1984 10 14

1985–1989 13 16

Table 2.11 Percentage of first marriages in Great Britain ending in separation within fiveyears: by year of marrige and gender[Source: Social Trends 34]

Year Petitions Decrees granted

1980 5423 2560

1983 7430 4854

1990 2874 1794

1997 1078 589

1998 1374 518

Table 2.12 Judicial Separation: 1980–1998. Source: Office for National Statistics 2000. A ‘petition’ is an application for separation. The separation is confirmed when a decree isgranted by the Courts. The difference between the two figures results from couplesdeciding to stay together following the petition but before any decree.

Digging deeper When thinking about separation, we cannote two points. Firstly, we can’t reliablyestablish comparative historical patterns ofseparation and secondly, the concept itself islargely redundant in our society given theeasy availability of divorce.

What we can usefully do, however, ischange the focus slightly to briefly examinethe possible consequences of separation forthe breakdown of marital or cohabitingrelationships. Rodgers and Pryor’s review,for example, of over 200 research reports inthis general area (‘Divorce and Separation’,1998) showed children of separated familieshad a higher probability of:

• poverty and poor housing• poverty during adulthood• behavioural problems• school underachievement• needing medical treatment• leaving school/home when young• pregnancy at an early age.

They also identified a range of factors thatinfluenced these probabilities:

• financial hardship

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• family conflict• parental ability to recover from stress of

separation• multiple changes in family structure• quality of contact with the non-resident

parent.

Lewis et al (2002) noted in their sample of50 parents who had cohabited, had a childand then separated:

• 40% gave ‘irresponsibility of their partner’as the main cause of separation

• 70% of separations were started by thewoman

• Mothers initially took primaryresponsibility for the child (which issimilar to the pattern for marriagebreakdown).

Child-bearingPreparing theground

Changing patterns of fertility and child-bearing involves looking at the behaviour ofthose who decide, for whatever reason, tohave children and the following tableidentifies some key recent changes.

Year Number oflive births(000s)

Births per1000 womenaged 15–44

Average ageof mother (1st child)

% of birthsoutsidemarriage

1964 876 93 – 7.2

1971 – – 23.7 –

1991 699 64 25.6 30.2

2003 621 54 26.7 41.4

Table 2.13 Live birth statistics: England and WalesSource: Office for National Statistics

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Over the past 40 years, changing patternsof child-bearing in our society can besummarised in terms of the following:

• general fertility has substantially declined,in terms of both the number of live birthsand the birth rate

• family size has declined from an averageof 3 to 1.6 children

• the average age at which women havetheir first child is increasing

• births outside marriage now account fornearly half of all births – a substantialincrease over 40 years ago.

Digging deeperWhen we think about reasons for changingpatterns of fertility, a number of factorsspring to mind.

ContraceptionThe development and widespread use of thecontraceptive pill, for example, has allowedpeople to plan their fertility more easily thanin the past.

ChildlessnessAn interesting feature of modern householdsis the number of people who choose toremain childless (who, as we have seen, formthe majority of UK households). The Officefor National Statistics (Social Trends 34,2004), has noted: ‘Related to the trend ofdelaying childbirth, is the growth in thenumber of women remaining childless’:

One reason for this situation is latermarriage. As we have seen, men and womenare increasingly choosing to marry later and,consequently, start a family later. This hasled to an increase in child-bearing amongwomen aged 30 and over.

McAllister and Clarke (‘Choosingchildlessness’, 1988) noted the followingpoints about childless households:

• Rates: The UK has one of highestEuropean levels of childlessness.

• Decisions to remain childless are affectedby a range of life events.

• Education: Highly qualified women aremore likely to remain childless.

• Security: Parenthood was identified withdisruption, change and poverty; thechildless chose independence over theconstraints of childcare and materialsecurity over financial risk.

TechnologyImprovements in both child and mothercare, IVF treatments and so forth haveextended fertility into age groups which, inthe past, would have been too old to safelybear children.

Financial costsOne factor in decisions about the number ofchildren produced within families is likely tobe the cost of raising them.

The Family Expenditure Survey (Officefor National Statistics, 2000) estimated theaverage spend on each child (for bothsingle- and two-adult households) as £52 perweek. Pregnancy & Birth magazine (March2001) estimated having a baby ‘costs parents£20,315 for the first five years alone’(although this rises to £36,000 for moreaffluent households).

Year of birth % childless at age 35

1960 11

2000 25

Table 2.14

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In this section we have looked at areas suchas family diversity and changing patterns offamily life (in terms of things like marriage,divorce and cohabitation). In the nextsection we can continue the general themeof family and social change by looking moreclosely at possible changes in familyrelationships.

Family andsocial changeIntroductionThe focus in previous sections has been onthe family group as an institution – althoughwe have, at times, touched on relationshipswithin this group. In this section, the focuschanges to the family group itself in order toexamine ‘the nature and extent of changeswithin the family’. To do this we can look atevidence relating to ‘gender roles, domesticlabour and power relationships’. The sectionis completed by looking at ‘changes in thestatus of children and childhood’.

Gender roles

Preparing the groundThe first thing we can usefully do is tooutline the distinction sociologists generallymake between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’.

• Sex: Anthony Giddens, (Sociology, 1989)notes, ‘sex’ refers to the physicalcharacteristics that lead to people beinglabelled ‘male’ or ‘female’. Sexcharacteristics are, in a sense, biologicallydetermined and ‘fixed’ (although it is, ofcourse, now possible to change yourbiological sex).

• Gender, on the other hand, refers to thesocial characteristics assigned by anygiven society to each biological sex(whatever these may actually turn out tobe). In other words, gender represents thethings we, as a society, associate withbeing biologically male or female.

The classic expression of these ideas isRobert Stoller’s argument (Sex and Gender:on the Development of Masculinity andFemininity, 1968): ‘Gender is a term that haspsychological and cultural connotations; ifthe proper terms for sex are “male” and“female”, the corresponding terms for genderare “masculine” and “feminine”; these lattermay be quite independent of (biological)sex’.

WARM UP: WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

To get you thinking about gender, considerthe following categories of masculinity andfemininity. In small groups, think aboutwhat the two concepts mean to you and alsohow you think our society views them (makea table like the one I’ve started and add yourideas to it). As a class, bring your ideastogether.

Table 2.15 Middleton et al (‘Small Fortunes: Spending on children, childhood poverty andparental sacrifice’, 2002) estimate of the cost of children in 1995

First child Subsequent children

Typical spend Less Child Benefit Typical spend Less Child Benefit

About£67 pw

About£52 pw

About£56 pw

About£46 pw

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While all societies (considered both inhistorical and comparative terms) have ‘menand women’, the meaning of gender can varyconsiderably in the same society over timeand, of course, between different societies.

Masculinity (what it means to be ‘aman’), for example, is a concept that has adifferent general meaning in our societythan it does in Australia or Peru. Inaddition, its meaning changes to reflectdifferent stages in our physical development– ‘boy’, for example, is a different gendercategory from ‘man’.

Femininity (what it means to be ‘awoman’) similarly has different meanings atdifferent times and in different placesalthough, as Beattie (‘Who Was ThatLady?’, 1981) notes, there are significantdifferences in the way we use language todescribe gender:

. . . ‘girl’ like ‘lady’ is often used for‘woman’ in contexts where ‘boy’ or‘gentleman’ would not appear for ‘man’. Wefind Page Three ‘girls’ (not women) in TheSun. Calling a nude male pin-up a ‘boy’would be derogatory. Our tendency to callall women ‘girls’ is enormously significant.We stress their positive evaluative properties(especially the physical ones) and suggest alack of power. We are to some extentcreating immaturity and dependencethrough linguistic devices [language].

When we start to think about gender roleswithin the family group, therefore, we mustunderstand their content (what people doand how do they do it, for example) and, byextension, how such roles have changed.

Gender perspectives: Traditionally,sociological perspectives on conjugal roles(the roles played by men and women withina marriage or cohabiting relationship) havefallen into two (opposed) campscharacterised by their different views on theessential nature of family roles. We can, forexample note the concept of:

• Patriarchy: This view, mainly associatedwith feminist and conflict perspectives,generally sees the family group as maledominated, oppressive and exploitative ofwomen. Over the past few hundred yearsthe form of patriarchy may have changed(it no longer, perhaps, takes the aggressiveform of the Victorian family, with thefather ruling the family roost through amixture of violence and economicthreats), but both violence and moresubtle forms of male control (in relation towho does housework, controls decisionmaking and so forth) are still characteristicof family life from this perspective.

• Symmetry is the other side of this coin,and is associated (mainly) with

Masculinity Femininity

What does‘masculinity’mean to you?

What do you thinkmasculinity meansin our society?

What doesfemininity mean toyou?

What do you thinkfemininity meansin our society?

Men should bestrong andprotective.

Men are expectedto be unemotional(‘boys don’t cry’).

Women shouldmake themselvesattractive to men.

Women should bein touch with their‘caring side’.

Further Meanings

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functionalist perspectives, such asWillmott and Young (The SymmetricalFamily, 1973), who argued it was possibleto track historical changes in familyrelationships in the following way.• Pre-industrial family (pre-1750), an

economically productive unit with thefather as patriarch (head of household),exercising complete physical andeconomic control over his family.

• Asymmetrical family (1750–1900),characterised in terms of segregatedconjugal roles involving a separationbetween home and work – both for thehusband, who spent long periods awayfrom the home and the wife, whoserole as mother and domestic labourerstarted to become established.

• Symmetrical family (twentiethcentury), which they characterised asinvolving joint conjugal roles thatdemonstrate greater levels of equalitybetween males and females in terms ofboth paid and domestic (unpaid) work.

Whatever the reality of the situation, as I’vebriefly characterised it, a third way oflooking at gender roles within the home isone that straddles the two.

New Right perspectives argue familyrelationships should be ‘symmetrical’ in thesense of husband and wife (this perspectivedoesn’t particularly like non-marriage familyrelationships) performing ‘different butcomplementary’ roles within the family;these roles are, supposedly, tuned to maleand female biological capabilities – men asthe traditional family breadwinner andwomen as the family carer and domesticlabourer. In other words, a patriarchal formof family relationship based around abiological (as opposed to social) symmetry.

Digging deeper If we move away from these types of‘standard’ arguments about gender roleswithin the family, the first thing to note isfamilies are potentially confusing andcontradictory institutions, an idea neatlyexpressed by Decca Aitkenhead (‘WhenHome’s a Prison’, The Guardian, 24/07/04):‘ “What about Dad?” Eileen demanded “Heused to hit you”. “Your father never laid afinger on me! Not once!” flamed KathleenWard. Eileen knew her father had once beento prison for beating her mother – yet . . .nobody bothered to correct the discrepancy’.

An alternative way of thinking aboutgender roles (which we can relate to ideasabout domestic labour and power), therefore,is to think about them in terms of identities.That is, how family members organise theirrelationships on the basis of two conceptsnoted by Hogg and Vaughan (SocialPsychology, 2002), namely:

• Social identity – which represents howour membership of social groupsinfluences our perception of certain roles.For example, in our culture, the roles‘male’ and ‘female’ carry general socialcharacteristics that define the meaning of‘being a man or a woman’. These ideasare important because they represent astructural aspect to our relationships – Iknow how men and women are expectedto behave, for example, because mycultural (gender) socialisation has taughtme the general characteristics of suchroles.

• Personal identity, on the other hand,works at the level of social action. How Iactually play (in my case) ‘the male role’is open, to apply Goffman’s ideas (‘The

Growing it yourself: social and personalidentities.

In pairs, identify ten words commonly used to describe adult men and women. Enter the mostpopular words identified by the whole class in the table below.

For each male and each female ‘describing word’, decide as a group whether you think theyare used positively (�), negatively (�) or neither (�/�) in our culture.

Men Women

� � ��

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

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Presentation of Self in Everyday Life’,1959), to interpretation and negotiationwithin, for example, my family.

Thus, how I interpret and play the role of‘husband’ is conditioned by my perception ofwhat this role means in general cultural terms(what husbands are expected to do) and in themore specific, personal, context of my familyrelationships – which probably goes some wayto explaining why, in my household, I have toiron my own clothes and mow the lawn(although not, of course, at the same time).

In this respect, as Alison James(‘Imaging Children “At Home”, “In theFamily” and “at School” ’, 1998), argues,‘The home is a spatial context whereidentities are worked on’ – which, in plainEnglish, means family identities are notfixed, but, on the contrary, fluid. They are,as Anne-Marie Fortier (‘Making home:queer migrations and motions ofattachment’, 2003) puts it, ‘continuously re-imagined and redefined’.

Discussion point:take my wife

Use the table on page 111 as the basis fora discussion about how language can beused as a means of social control. Youmight want to think about the following:

How do you feel about being described incertain ways (such as being called ‘boy’ or‘girl’)? My wife, for example, dislikes beingcalled ‘dear’ (she also dislikes being called‘my wife’, but that’s another story).

How does the language used to describethe sexes impact on how we see ourselves(our masculinity and femininity) and on ourbehaviour (you could, if you wish, exploresome of the derogatory (insulting) waysmales and females are described)?

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If we think of gender roles in terms ofidentity, therefore, we can note two things:

• Changing gender roles: In the past, socialidentities relating to gender roles weredominant; they provided clear,unshakeable, guidelines for roles withinthe family (the classic idea of husband asbreadwinner and wife as domesticlabourer/carer, for example). There werefew opportunities to develop personalidentities that differed from the socialnorm – and the penalties for trying weresevere (in terms of, for example, maleviolence against women who attemptedto reject or renegotiate personal identitywithin the family). In contemporary families, although weare aware of social expectations aboutgender behaviour, we have far moresources of reference for our personalidentities – and far more opportunities forthe successful renegotiation and

reinterpretation of our roles within thefamily.

• Diversity of gender roles withincontemporary families is, consequently,much more apparent – family groups withvery similar social and economiccircumstances may display markeddifferences in the way gender roles areallocated and performed.

Allan and Crow (Home and Family: Creatingthe Domestic Space, 1989) reinforce this ideawhen they note: ‘The creation of the homeis an active process which is an integral partof people’s family projects’. Stacey (BraveNew Families, 1998) observes that in ‘post-modern society’ both the public domain (theworkplace) and the private domain (thehome) have undergone radical changes inrecent times to become ‘diverse, fluid andunresolved, with a broad range of genderand kinship relations’. Reich (2001) arguesthe ‘incredible shrinking family’ is onewhere: ‘People spend less time together,couples are having fewer children, financialsupport between spouses is eroding, and careand attention are being subcontracted . . .living together remains a conjugal norm, butthere is no longer adherence to permanentmonogamous family units as the basis forfamily life, or of heterosexual relationshipscomposed of male breadwinner and femalehomemaker’.

Finally, Michael Willmott (ComplicatedLives, 2000) argues:

It no longer makes sense to rely ontraditional roles when dividing up tasks inthe home. Instead, new roles must benegotiated by every couple depending ontheir individual circumstances. In the future,the important thing will be who has the timeor the inclination to do the housework, andnot whether they are a man or a women.

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Which is as good a reason as any turn to anexamination of domestic labour.

Domestic labourPreparing theground

Like it or not (and, on the whole, I don’t),housework is something that has to be done– and, to explore who does it (and why), weneed to think about what counts ashousework (or ‘domestic labour’ if youprefer).

For our purposes, domestic labour refers toanything that needs to be accomplished in orderto ensure the running of a home and family; it

includes the standard stuff like cooking,cleaning and shopping as well as things likehousehold repairs (mending the microwave!)and chores; it may also include things like careof children, the sick and the elderly.

Complete the ‘Growing it yourself ’exercise below. Having done this exercise,we can summarise recent evidence aboutdomestic labour in our society.

Amount and typeAs Table 2.16 (Office for National Statistics,2002) demonstrates, on average womenspend twice as long on housework each dayas men. It also suggests that men and womendo different tasks within the household –women spend more time on routinedomestic tasks (cooking, cleaning, etc.),

Growing it yourself: who does what?A relatively simple piece of social research you can carry out is to establish who does whataround your home, using a content analysis grid to record your observations.

As a class, identify as many aspects of housework as you can (don’t go into too much detail,except where it’s necessary to distinguish things like general care of children (washing,feeding, dressing and so forth) as against things like playing with children).

Once you’ve agreed this, draw and complete the following grid for your family.

Household task task usually performed by?

Maleparent

Femaleparent

Bothparents

Children(male orfemale?)

Otherrelative(e.g.grand-parent)

Cooking

Laundry

Shopping

Playing withchildren

Further tasks . . .

Household Chores Done By Children in the UK

Chore

Source: Phase 2 CensusAtSchool Project www.censusatschool.ntu.ac.uk

Per

cent

age

100

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Mak

e B

ed

Tid

y R

oom

Lay

Tab

le

Coo

k M

eals

Was

h D

ishe

s

Mow

Law

n

Do

Ironi

ng

Oth

er

Non

e

Females

Males

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men spend more time on repair work andplaying with children). Ramos (‘DomesticWork’, 2003) noted how women’s share ofdomestic labour increased with children inthe household.

with age – younger women do lesshousework than older women.

• Comparative: According to the FutureFoundation (‘Complicated Lives’, 2000)there has been a slight decline in theamount of housework done by womenand an increase in male housework. Theyestimate 60% of men do more houseworkthan their father, while 75% of womendo less housework than their mother.

• Employment: Although Man-yee Kan(‘Gender Asymmetry in the Division ofDomestic Labour’, 2001) found levels offemale housework were marginallyreduced by paid employment,unemployment or retirement increasedfemale housework hours and reducedthose of her partner. Throughout the

• Age: Ramos (2003) notes how theamount of female housework increases

Men Women

(2 hrs 20 mins.) (4 hrs)

Cooking Cooking

Childcare Childcare

Gardening Cleaning house

Pet care laundry

Table 2.16 UK 2000 Time Use Survey:average daily housework and main chores

Table 2.17

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1990s, total family workload (paid anddomestic labour) stayed roughly constantfor men, whereas for women it decreased(an increase in paid work was off-set by adecrease in domestic work). However,Ramos (2003) noted that, where the manis unemployed and his partner works fulltime, domestic labour is equallydistributed.

• Income and Education: Man-yee Kan(2001) noted how levels of both male andfemale housework decreased by incomeand level of education.

• Gender Beliefs: Ramos (2003) found that,in families with ‘traditional gender beliefs’,women do more housework than in familieswhere beliefs reflect sexual equality. Inhouseholds where partners hold conflictingbeliefs, men do less domestic work.

• Children: One area of domestic labouroften overlooked is that performed bychildren. However, as table 2.17demonstrates, they contribute tohousework in a number of ways.Jens Bonke (‘Children’s household work’,1999) notes that children generally makea relatively small contribution todomestic labour – contributions peak atage 20 (approximately 21⁄2 hours a week)and boys contribute less than girls. Inlone children families, girls averaged fivetimes as much housework as boys (21⁄2hours/week as against 30 minutes).

• Grandparenting: A final area we shouldnote is the role played by grandparents inthe care of children. Tunaley et al(‘Relatively Speaking’, 1999), forexample, suggested almost 50% ofworking parents in the UK rely ongrandparents for child care, for any of fourmain reasons:

• more working women• long and unsociable working hours• more active grandparents• high cost of child care.

�A more detailed set of statistics ondomestic labour can be found at: www.sociology.org.uk/as4aqa.htm

Digging deeper Debates over domestic labour can be amethodological minefield in terms of:

• Reliability: There is no clear definition ofhousework – some researchers focus ondomestic tasks, whereas others, such asDuncombe and Marsden (1993) haveincluded ‘emotion work’ (the work womendo to ‘make their partners and childrenfeel good’) as part of the definition.

• Validity: We need to be aware of observereffects (when housework is recorded indiaries by respondents) and interviewereffects (when people are questioned abouttheir housework chores). A generalproblem here is men overestimate – andwomen underestimate – the amount oftime spent on domestic labour.

In order to interpret the data, however, wecan return to the distinction, noted earlier,between social and personal identities.

Social identitiesIt is clear that, in some respects, culturalbeliefs about male and female abilities androles are significant in terms of explainingdifferences in domestic labour. Evidencedrawn from a range of studies suggestsdomestic labour is both overwhelminglyperformed by women and that, to someextent, this is tied up with notions of:

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Discussion point: is housework thenew sex?

Housework is not the new sex.It’s the same old dreary chore

Rachel Johnson: Daily Telegraph: 23/05/2003

You know that thing when you have your hands in the kitchen sink, and your beloved comesup behind you and wraps his arms around you. ‘Mmm, I love it when you’re doing thewashing-up,’ he says. The whole point of this manoeuvre, as we all know, is to signal theattractiveness of women pinned, like butterflies, in the middle of committing an act ofdomesticity.

As Pat Mainardi wrote in The Politics of Housework, women are conditioned to want to livein a clean, sweet-smelling home, with piles of folded laundry in drawers, plumped cushionsand gleaming surfaces. Men are quite happy to do some light carpentry, moving furniturearound, some weekend DIY, to help live this dream. ‘But men recognise the essential fact ofhousework right from the very beginning. Which is that it stinks,’ says Mainardi. That was in1970. Three decades later, housework – which is unrewarding, unrecognised, unpaid workthat never ends – is being sold back to women, who do most of it anyway, as sexy andglamorous. Marigolds the new Manolos? Phwoar! We’ve come a long way, baby’.

To help you discuss this (frankly quite scary idea), think about:

What does the phrase ‘women are conditioned to want . . . ’ mean?

How do you think men and women are conditioned in relation to housework?

How is ‘housework being sold back to women’?

What does the article tell us about changes in gender roles over the past 30 years?

• Patriarchy: Ideas about gender roles andbehaviour reflect patriarchal attitudesmainly – but not exclusively – amongstolder age groups in the population. Pleck(‘Working Wives. Working Husbands’,1985), for example, noted the ‘moretraditional’ the views held by couplesabout gender roles, the greater the levelof domestic labour inequality. Pilcher (‘Gender Matters?’, 1998) foundsimilar views. Older respondents – unliketheir younger counterparts – didn’t talkabout equality but thought instead intraditional ways about gender roles,responsibilities and relationships which

reflected their socialisation and lifeexperiences – where ‘men undertooklimited household work, married womenhad limited involvement in paid workand where a marked gendered division oflabour was the norm’.

• Femininity: Although changing, notionsof what it means to be a woman are still, tosome extent, tied up with ideas aboutcaring and nurture (and, as Ramos (2003)suggests, responsibility for child care stillfalls mainly on the female partner).

• Masculinity: Conversely, traditionalnotions of masculinity are still, to someextent, bound up with ideas about

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providing for a family by taking on themain economic role. Linda McDowe(‘Young men leaving school’, 2001), forexample, noted the ‘continueddominance of a “traditional” masculinity’in her study.

Personal identitiesAlthough social identities are clearlyimportant, personal identities give us a senseof the way gender roles are interpreted andnegotiated according to the specific familycircumstances of those involved; this isespecially clear when we consider classdifferences (although in some ways thisrepresents a displacement of domesticresponsibilities – high income families canpay others to do their housework), age andeducational differences.

Callaghan (‘The Interaction of Gender,Class and Place in Women’s Experience’,1998), for example, highlights the importanceof considering these factors when thinkingabout how gender roles are created andperformed within the family and Dench (‘Theplace of men in changing family cultures’,1996) argues that younger men, as a group,believed ‘couples should share or negotiatefamily roles’ and resist conventional ideas thatmen should be the main breadwinners.

Speakman and Marchington (‘Ambivalentpatriarchs, shift workers, breadwinners andhousework’, 1999) however, noted how somemen used learned helplessness when trying toavoid domestic tasks – their ‘inability’ to workdomestic machinery served to throw domestictasks back into the hands of their partners.

To sum up the ideas at which we havejust looked, we can identify three mainreasons for the generally unequaldistribution of domestic labour in oursociety.

• Social identities, relating to deep-seatedcultural beliefs about male and female‘natures’ exert a powerful pull, throughthe socialisation process, that leads to thereproduction of traditional forms ofgender relationship (women as ‘carers’ forexample).

• Socio-personal identities involving theway the latter are pragmatically(‘reasonably’) shaped by the former. Forexample, in a family where the man is themain breadwinner, decisions about whowill give up work to care for children maybe guided by the reality of differences inearning power.

• Personal identities involve looking atquite specific relationships between thefamily partners and may be played outagainst a background of complex personaland cultural histories. For example, a manmay be able to get away with doing littlein the household; on the other hand, hisrelationship with his partner may notallow him to shirk his share of familyresponsibilities. Gender roles andrelationships are shaped, to some extent,by how partners personally relate to oneanother.

Powerrelationships

Preparing theground

Like any social institution, family groupsinvolve power relationships. In otherwords, they involve ‘struggles’ betweenfamily members – both adults andchildren – in areas like:

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• Physical resources – things like food,clothing and shelter – considered in termsof who provides and consumes thesethings.

• Social resources – things like decisionmaking, control over family resources(such as money) and so forth.

• Psychological resources – things likelove, trust, affection and care – in short,the range of emotional securities (andinsecurities) that surround ourrelationships.

In this section, therefore, we need to explorethis aspect of family life in more detail andto do this it would be helpful to definepower. According to Anthony Giddens(1989) power involves ‘the ability ofindividuals or groups to make their ownconcerns or interests count, even whereothers resist. Power sometimes involves thedirect use of force, but is almost always alsoaccompanied by the development of ideas(ideology) which justify the actions of thepowerful.’

In terms of this type of definition,therefore, power has two dimensions weneed to note:

• Force: This aspect is probably the onethat springs most readily to mind becauseit involves making someone do somethingagainst their will – usually through theact or threat of violence.

• Authority, however, is an importantaspect because it suggests we can getpeople to do what we want because theythink it’s right – or they feel they want –to obey us.

Having outlined the concept of power, wecan examine some examples of how it isexercised within families.

Domestic violenceThis covers a range of behaviours (physicaland emotional), the aim of which is toaggressively control the behaviour of afamily member (adult and/or child). It caninvolve physical violence (assault), sexualviolence (rape) and economic sanctions(denying a family member something theyneed, for example). The one common threadlinking these examples is the desire forpower and control on the part of theperpetrator.

The extent of domestic violence isdifficult to estimate reliably since it generallyhappens behind closed doors within theprivacy of the family group and victims maybe reluctant to admit or acknowledge theirvictimisation. Keeping this in mind, HilaryAbrahams (Domestic Violence ResearchGroup, University of Bristol) has identifiedsome significant facts about domesticviolence:

• British Crime Survey (2000): 20% of allcrimes and 23% of all violent crimes were

Growing it yourself:power and control

Copy and complete the following table toidentify how power/authority is exercised inyour school or college.

Examples of situations which use:

Power Authority

DetentionsAttendance

Taking notes inclass

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classified as domestic violence (morerecent figures from Dodd et al (‘Crime inEngland and Wales 2003/2004’) suggestthis percentage has recently fallen – theyreport 16% of all violent incidents wereincidents of domestic violence).In 1995, 10% of 16–29 year old disabledwomen were assaulted within the home.Women are most likely to be sexuallyassaulted by men they know, and 45% ofreported rapes were carried out by acurrent partner.

• Repeat victimisation: Nearly 50% of allvictims experience more than one violentattack by their partner.

• Gender: The majority of victims (81%according to the 2002 British CrimeSurvey) are female.

• Reported crime: In 1999, nearly 40% offemale murder victims (92 women) werekilled by present or former partners. Thecomparable figure for men was 6%.

Kirkwood (Leaving Abusive Partners, 1993)notes that domestic violence haspsychological consequences, including lowself-esteem, dependence on the perpetratorand a tendency to minimise or deny theviolence. In addition, a Zero ToleranceCharitable Trust report (1998) found 20% ofyoung men and 10% of young women agreedabuse or violence against women wasacceptable in some circumstances.

Child abuseThis is a further aspect of power withinfamily groups, with writers such asHumphreys and Thiara (‘Routes to Safety’,2002) claiming a strong link to domesticviolence. In terms of statistical evidence:

• One child dies each week from adult

cruelty. Roughly 80 children are killedeach year, mainly by parents and carers –a level that has remained constant foralmost 30 years (Office of NationalStatistics: 1998–2001).

• Twenty-five per cent of all recorded rapevictims are children (Home OfficeStatistical Findings 1996).

• The most likely abuser is someone knownto the child (National Commission ofInquiry into the Prevention of ChildAbuse, 1996).

• According to the NSPCC, around 30,000children are currently on child protectionregisters for being at risk of abuse.

Decision makingPower relationships are not always playedout in terms of violence or abuse – themajority of family groups experience neitherof these things (the rate of child deaths fromabuse/neglect each year is less than 1 in100,000, for example). Power relationships,therefore, can take other forms within thehome.

• Financial decision making is a significantindicator of where power lies within afamily, since these types of decision –buying a house, a car or a holiday forexample – involve concepts of authority.Edgell’s influential study (Middle-ClassCouples, 1980) suggested men made themost important financial decisions withinthe family, whereas women madedecisions about everyday domesticspending (food, clothing and the like).Although Edgell’s study is nearly 25 yearsold, Pahl and Vogler (‘Money, power andinequality within marriage’, 1994)broadly confirmed his argument, although

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they found the 102 couples in theirsample could be grouped into four maincategories:• Wife-controlled pooling (27% of

couples) involved joint bank accountswith female control of finances.

• Husband-controlled pooling (37% ofcouples) involved a joint bank accountwith the husband controlling financialdecisions.

• Husband-controlled (22%), where thehusband had his own bank accountand took responsibility for all majorfamily bills. This type was mostcommonly found in higher incomefamilies.

• Wife-controlled (14%) includedcouples with no bank accounts wherethe wife controlled the family finances.This type was common in low-incomefamilies.

As the above suggests, financial decisionmaking can be a complex issue, notsimply in terms of ‘who makes decisions’but, most significantly perhaps, in termsof the type of decisions made; men, itseems, generally take the most important(macro) decisions whereas women aregiven a degree of financial autonomy(freedom) to micro-manage householdaccounts. This, in part, reflects traditionalgender roles in terms of householdmanagement being seen as part of thefemale role.A further aspect to financial decisionmaking is added by the existence ofsecret economies: In a small proportionof families, one or both partners haveaccess to bank accounts of which theirpartner has no knowledge. Jayatilaka and

Rake (Fawcett Society Report, 2002), forexample, noted that in 5% of familiesmen had secret accounts and in 10% offamilies women kept such accounts. Mostfamilies in their study reported a strongbelief financial decisions should beshared, but this didn’t seem to be the casein reality – particularly for women withlow personal incomes (less than £400 amonth). Twenty-five per cent of thesewomen said their husband controlledfamily financial decisions. In general, the study suggested womenbelieved they either had some controlover or input into financial decisionsthat, according to Rake, were objectivelytaken by the male partner. As she notes:‘Bringing money into the householdbrings with it a sense of entitlement todecide how it is spent. Because men earnmore than women they have greatercontrol of how money is spent or shared,and more access to personal spending.’

• Work and relocation: Other areas ofmajor decision making in dual-earnerfamilies include those relating to work,and includes things like whose work hasthe greatest priority when, for example,the family is forced to move because of achange in employment. Irene Hardill (‘Atale of two nations? Juggling work andhome in the new economy’, 2003) foundwomen were more likely to be the‘trailing spouse’ – male occupations hadgreatest priority and the family relocatedmainly to follow male employmentpatterns.

• Status enhancement is an interesting –and little-discussed – aspect of authoritywithin families. It involves, according toCoverman (‘Women’s Work Is Never

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Done’, 1989), ‘work done by one partner(typically the woman) to aggrandize theother partner’s career’ (dinner parties,attending work functions and so forth).In extreme cases, status enhancement cantake the form of a ‘trophy wife’ – amarriage pattern used by some powerful(mainly, but not necessarily, older) menas a form of status symbol, used todemonstrate their wealth and power.

Digging deeper There are a number of different aspects topower relationships within the family. Some– domestic violence and abuse, for example– rest on the expression of physical force as aform of power that creates control throughfear and intimidation; others – probably themajority – rest on concepts of authority(who has the right to make decisions, forexample).

When we think about the patterns ofdomestic labour and power relationships wehave previously examined, we can seedecision making (in its widest sense toinclude things like how family life isorganised) involves a complex interplaybetween the private domain (the domesticarena of relationships within a family) andthe public domain (work, for example). Thisdistinction is useful because:

• Exercising power involves access tosources of power. The greater the accessto (and control over) a variety of sources,the greater your level of power.

• Major sources of power in our societyoriginate in the public domain, mainlybecause it’s where family income is earned.

We can explore the theoretical side of theseideas by applying Stephen Lukes’ (Power,

1990) argument that power has three maindimensions.

• The ability to make decisions: Althoughwomen exercise power within families,it’s mainly in areas where they’retraditionally seen to have greaterexpertise (the micro-management offamily resources to which we havepreviously referred). Major decisions tendto be monopolised by men, mainlybecause men tend to earn more moneyand this ‘public domain resource’ givesthem power within the family. Where both partners work, women havemore control over the wider decisionmaking process (which supports the ideapower is substantially dependent oncontrol over a wide range of socialresources). Having said this, female powerdepends on such things as the status offemale work, relative level of income,domestic responsibilities and so forth.

• The ability to prevent others makingdecisions involves the ‘ability tomanipulate any debate over the kinds ofdecisions that actually reach the stage of“being made” ’. In terms of gender roles,the personal identities of family membersare important (for example, how eachpartner sees their role within the family). Gender socialisation is significant also,since if males and females are raised tohave certain expectations of both theirown social role and that of their partnerthen the ability to make decisionsaffecting the family group takes on a‘natural’ quality. It appears ‘right, properand natural’ for women to raise childrenand men to have paid employment, forexample. In this instance, decisions aboutfamily roles never reach the stage of

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actually having to be made, simplybecause the stronger partner makes thedecisions.

• The ability to remove decision makingfrom the agenda involves the idea thatwho does what inside and outside thefamily group is conditioned by varioussocial factors (gender socialisation, maleand female social identities, the realitiesof power distributions in society and soforth) that reflect our personalexperiences.For example, decisions about paidemployment, domestic labour and thelike may be removed from the decisionmaking agenda (the respective partnersdon’t actually have to make consciousdecisions about them) for a variety ofreasons: they may for example share thebelief women are better child-rearers thanmen. Alternatively, where one partnerearns more than the other, has highercareer expectations and so forth, thispartner may remain in work while theother cares for the children.

ChildhoodPreparing theground

In this final section we are going toexamine the changing status of childrenand childhood, which involves two things:defining what we mean by ‘children’ andexploring historical differences inperceptions of childhood. These tasks arenot unconnected, since our ability toidentify and explain changes will depend,to some extent, on how childhood isdefined.

WARM UP: DEFINING CHILDHOOD

To get us started, we can think about twobroad indicators of childhood:

• biological (how people physically andmentally develop) and

• cultural (the characteristics people giveto the label ‘child’).

Using the following table as a starting point,what characteristics of childhood can youidentify?

It is not always easy – either biologicallyor culturally – to precisely identify anagreed set of characteristics aboutchildhood (in this respect we sometimesrefer to the idea as a ‘contested concept’because there are always arguments abouthow to define it).

Biologically, we are all young once and,with the passage of time, we all become old– but this simple statement hides a muchwider and more complex set of ideas.

Culturally, two ideas are significant:

• Duration: It is difficult to say preciselywhen child status ends (or even when itbegins, come to that). In my lifetime, theage when people are officially classified as‘adults’ has changed from 21 to 18(although, just to confuse things further,at 16 you can legally do some of thethings ‘children’ can’t do – work fulltime, marry, join the army and so forth).This simple cultural change alters the way

Indicators of childhood

Biological Cultural

Age at whichchildhood beginsand ends

Innocence?Immaturity?

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we define childhood and, of course,children.

• Social categories: ‘Childhood’ actuallyhides a range of different categorisationsof people who are ‘not adults’ (babies,toddlers, infants, teenagers, youth . . . ).The status and experience of being ateenager is very different to being aninfant – so should we classify them all aschildren?Come to that, the status of ‘teenager’ – asThomas Hine (The Rise And Fall of theAmerican Teenager, 2000) demonstrates –is a relatively modern invention (theword was apparently first used in theUSA during the Second World War –‘teenagers’ didn’t make much of anappearance in Britain until the mid tolate 1950s).

What this shows is that societies developbeliefs about age categories and ourunderstanding of their meaning helps us tointerpret not only age differences, but alsoconcepts of age-appropriate behaviour. Forexample, while it may be consideredappropriate for a male child to cry, cryingmay be considered inappropriate for an adultmale – although, just to confuse thingsfurther, there are times – at a funeral forexample – when it isn’t inappropriate for aman to cry. Although this makes trackingchanges in our general perception ofchildhood a little difficult, we can begin bylooking at a historical dimension. The workof Philip Aries (Centuries of Childhood,1962) stimulated debate about the changingstatus of childhood and children and,although it has been extensively criticised inrecent times (for example, MartinShipman’s, ‘When Childhood WasDiscovered’), it is useful for our purpose

because it helps us focus on a number ofquestions relating to the historical analysisof childhood.

• Recent construction: Aries argues that inWestern Europe the idea of childhood is arelatively modern one that developedover the past 300 or so years – effectivelywith the change from pre-industrial toindustrial society. While there were(obviously) ‘non-adults’ in pre-industrialsociety, Aries argues they were neithercalled ‘children’, nor treated in ways we,nowadays, would recognise as ‘childhood’.

• Religious beliefs: Changing beliefs aboutchildren developed as the ChristianChurch popularised the idea of childrenas ‘fragile creatures of God’ – in effect,childhood became defined as a phase of‘uncorrupted innocence’, to be nurturedand encouraged. Children were not to beseen as little adults, but as somethingdifferent and perhaps highly vulnerable –human beings who needed the protectionof adults.

• Physical and cultural separation:Gradually, children started to live in aseparate sphere from adults. As theeducation system developed (from themid-nineteenth century onwards)children were treated differently to adults.As Aries puts it, they were ‘progressivelyremoved from adult society’.

Whether or not we agree with Aries’argument about the ‘invention of childhood’– Linda Pollack (Forgotten Children:Parent–Child Relations from 1500 to 1900,1983) suggests the view there was noconception of childhood in pre-industrialsociety was mistaken – there seems littlereason to doubt that, over the past few

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hundred years, the status of children haschanged in a number of ways. As Archard(Children: Rights and Childhood, 1993)helpfully notes, ‘Aries claims to disclose anabsence of the idea of childhood, whereas heshould only claim to find a dissimilarity inideas about childhood between past andpresent’.

We can, therefore, identify a number ofhistorical changes in the status of children.

AttitudesIf we accept (and as sociologists I think weshould) that, according to Chris Jenks(Childhood, 1996), ‘childhood is not anatural but a social construct’, it follows thatits status is, to a large degree, determined byadults. Jenks notes two basic historicalstatuses of children that have existed, in oneform or another, over the past 300 years.

• The Dionysian child is one constructedas ‘a wilful material force . . . impish andharbouring a potential evil’. This viewsuggests adults must control children inways that prevent them falling victim totheir essential ‘badness’.

• The Apollonian child, on the otherhand, is constructed as ‘angelic, innocent,untainted by the world it has recentlyentered. It has a natural goodness and aclarity of vision that must be encouraged,enabled, facilitated, not crushed or beateninto submission’. This view suggests therole of adults is to create the conditionsunder which children can develop theiressential ‘goodness’.

These ideas reflect a basic uncertainty, as asociety, about how to understand the statusof children – at one and the same time wefeel they need to be both controlled by

adults and given the freedom to develop‘naturally’, away from the corruptinginfluence of adult society. As Hendrick(‘Constructions and Reconstructions ofBritish Childhood’, 1990) suggests, thestatus of children has undergone a number ofradical transformations since 1800.

• The delinquent child started to appear inthe mid-nineteenth century, reflectingconcerns about how to deal with law-breaking children and provide protectionand care. One solution was:

• The schooled child, involving ideasabout the need for education (moral andspiritual as well as technical – the skills ofliteracy and numeracy required for thenewly-emerging industrial culture).

• The psycho-medical child wasconstructed towards the end of thenineteenth century with the developmentof psychological theories and techniques.This perception stressed the uniqueness ofchildhood status and constructedchildhood as a time of biological andemotional ‘stress and turmoil’. At thistime the concept of adolescence as adistinctive phase of childhood started todevelop, through the work of writers likeG. Stanley Hall (Adolescence, 1904).

• The welfare child emerged in thetwentieth century, stressing both thevulnerability of children and ideas aboutdelinquent behaviour being shaped byneglect, poverty and so forth.

• The psychological child has emerged inthe late twentieth century and focuses onthe idea of children having their ownneeds which, in turn, should be protectedand encouraged.

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Legal protectionsThe changing status of children has beenreflected in their changing legal status – notsimply in terms of legal definitions of‘children’ (an 1833 Royal Commission, forexample, decided childhood officially endedat 13) but also through laws designed toeither protect children or control theirbehaviour. The nineteenth century, forexample, saw the introduction of FactoryActs designed to limit the type and length ofwork done by children as well as lawsgoverning a child’s education.

The regulation of childhood has, ofcourse, continued throughout the last andinto the present century – in 1972, forexample, the minimum school leaving agewas raised to 16 (with a suggestion it maysoon be raised to 18 or even 19). Childrenaged 13 to 16 can legally work 12 hours aweek during school terms and not after 7 pm. Sexual behaviour is also regulated bylaw and the table below demonstrates

cultural variations (even within the UK) inthe age of consent.

Children’s Rights: The latter part of thetwentieth century has witnessed moves –both official and unofficial – to developconcepts of ‘Children’s Rights’ – the ideathat children, like adults, have fundamentalhuman rights that should be both stated andprotected.

The United Nations ‘Declaration on theRights of the Child’ (1959), for example,defined the minimum rights a child shouldexpect and in 1989 the Convention on theRights of the Child laid down rights thatincluded:

Article 6: All children have the right tolife. Governments should ensure childrensurvive and develop healthily.

Article 16: Children have a right toprivacy. The law should protect them from attacks against their way of life, their good name, their families and theirhomes.

Age of consent: selected countries

Country Male–Female Male–Male Female–Female

Canada 14 18 14

Chile 12 18 18

France 15 15 15

Guyana 13 Illegal Illegal

Iran Must be married Illegal Illegal

Korea 13 13 13

Saudi Arabia Must be married Illegal Illegal

Spain 13 13 13

Tunisia 20 Illegal Illegal

G. Britain 16 16 16

N. Ireland 17 17 17

Growing it yourself:children’s rights

A simple and satisfying task is to designand create a poster, illustrating ‘changingconstructions of childhood’, based on theideas of Jenks and Hendrick.

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Article 31: All children have a right torelax and play, and to join in a range ofactivities.

Article 34: The Government should protectchildren from sexual abuse.(Source: www.un.org)

‘care, attention and nurture’ (somethingwhich, rather conveniently, fitted thenew role assigned to women).

Governments in the nineteenth century alsotook an interest in the status of children, fora number of reasons.

• Education was needed to establish basiclevels of literacy and numeracy for thenew industrial enterprises. Since familieswere largely unable to perform this task,separate institutions (schools) developedwhich served to define and prolongchildhood.

• Moral conformity: Education was alsoseen as a way of socialising the unrulyworking classes.

• Economic productivity: The use ofmachinery in factories made adultworkers more productive and reduced theneed for (unskilled) child labour.

• Moral entrepreneurs (people andorganisations who take it on themselvesto ‘protect the morals’ of others)protested about the exploitation ofchildren. This, coupled with ideas aboutthe ‘uncorrupted innocence’ ofchildhood, led to legal and social changesto their status.

In the twentieth century:

• Social science developed to underline theconcept of childhood as involving variousstages of social, psychological andbiological development. This hardenedthe division between full adultmembership of society and the period inwhich the child ‘learns how to achievefull adulthood’.

• Attitudes: In some ways, contemporaryattitudes to childhood reflect an extreme

Digging deeper To complete this section we can look atreasons for the changing status of childrenand childhood. In the early industrial period(seventeenth and eighteenth centuries), forexample, we can note:

• Economic roles: As the family groupstopped producing things (and turnedinto consumers), children lost theireconomic role.

• Separation of home and workplace: ‘Thehome’ became a place different to ‘theworkplace’ and, with the loss of theireconomic role, women and childrendeveloped new and different statuses.

• The sexual division of labour: Theremoval of women’s economic role led toan increasing focus on their ‘natural’ roleas mother and child-rearer, responsiblefor primary childcare within the family.

• Changing perceptions of children: Hand-in-hand with altered adult statuses, thesocial identities and status of childrenchanged – they became people in need of

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Discussion point: children’s liberationIn the 1960s and 1970s, the debate over ‘children’s rights’ developed into calls for children’sliberation. The following table lists a number of rights put forward by John Holt (Escape FromChildhood, 1974) and Richard Farson (Birthrights, 1974)

Tick those you agree/disagree with and compare your views with those of the rest of yourclass (be prepared to argue your case).

A child has a right to: Agree Disagree

Exercise choice in their own living arrangements

Information that is accessible to adults

Choose belief systems including to educate oneself

Sexual freedom

Work

Vote

Freedom from physical punishment

Justice

Own property

Travel independently

Whatever drugs their elders use

reversal of pre-industrial concepts; moralconcerns about the ‘increasing corruptionof childhood innocence’, through suchthings as child abuse and exposure to sexand violence in the media, reflect howchildhood is seen as a somewhat idyllicperiod before the cares andresponsibilities of adulthood.

• Education: This is increasingly promoted– especially at the post-16 level. The2004 Labour Government has set atarget of 50% of all 18 year oldsattending University (compared withapproximately 15% in 1974). This,again, serves to redefine notions of

childhood, based on the dependentstatus of children.

Contemporary trends: DisappearingChildhood? Two (opposed) contemporaryperceptions of children and childhood canbe summarised by, firstly, looking briefly atthe work of those (liberationalists) who arguechildren should not be seen as a separate,segregated, category of human beings; rather,they argue children should be given thesame rights as adults.

A second position in this debate ischaracterised by writers such as NeilPostman (The Disappearance of Childhood,1985) who argues:

Child labour crackdown: Sean Coughlan:April, 2002

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/1949145.stm

When you hear of illegal child labour, the leafysuburbs of Surrey might not be the first placethat springs to mind. But in recent months,the county has seen some of the highest-profile prosecutions for child labour offencesso far seen in the United Kingdom.

A McDonald’s restaurant, Woolworths, Tesco,Safeway, Burger King, Odeon Cinemas,Heritage Hotels, Fourbuoys and Thorpe Parkamusement park have all been successfullyprosecuted.

What is believed to be the biggest ever finefor such offences was imposed on aMcDonalds’ franchise holder in Camberley.The £12,400 penalty followed an investigationthat found school pupils working up to 16hours a day, in what was described as a ‘fast-food sweatshop’.

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Modern communications (Postman citestelevision, but recent developments inmobile phone technology and the Internetwould also apply here) are blurring thedistinction between childhood and adult,changing the status of children, as hedescribes it, to one where ‘adults have adifferent conception of what sort of person achild is, a conception not unlike that whichprevailed in the 14th century: that they areminiature adults’. Television, for example,represents ‘open admission technology’ – itcannot differentiate between adults andchildren; the latter, therefore, are exposed toimages of adulthood (sex, violence, newsand so forth) that, according to Postman,diminish both adult and child abilities todecide where childhood ends and adulthoodbegins. Children, in this respect, becomemore like adults in terms of their criminality,sexuality and dress, and adults, in our cultureat least, become more like ‘children’ in theirequation of ‘youthfulness’ with health,vitality and excitement. Will a point bereached when the distinction between themdisappears?

Internet technology has arguably closedthis gap further since it effectively allowschildren access to information and imagesthat, in former times, were denied untiladulthood.

Finally, one area in which the status ofchildren is becoming increasingly blurred is inthe workplace. The growth of service sectorindustries (such as fast-food outlets) hascreated a growth in (illegal) child labour.

Growing it yourself:child status

Make a list of possible reasons why thestatus of children has changed in the past100 years.

Select four reasons from your list and write100 words on each explaining how theyillustrate the changing position of childrenin our society.

02 Family ch02.pdf - Sociology Central

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