Changes in the Family

• The family in Britain has gone through a number of changes since the beginning of industrialisation and continues to change today. The extent of some of these changes thought to have occurred in the family has often been exaggerated and misleading conclusions have been drawn.
• Changes in the family

  • Changing family functions
  • Decline in marriage and growth of cohabitation
  • Remarriage and the growth of the reconstituted family
  • More births outside marriage
  • Growth of lone-parent family
  • Rising divorce rate
  • Decline in family size
  • More child-centred
  • Weakening of extended kinship links and emergence of privatised nuclear family/modified extended family
  • More symmetrical
• Change 1

  The changing role of family in society:

  The family in Britain and most other societies has traditionally had a number of responsibilities placed upon it (its functions), primarily connected with its role in the preparation of children to fit into adult society. Some of these have changed.
• Change 2

  The emergence of a privatised nuclear family:

  This means the nuclear family is separated and isolated from its extended kin, and has become a self-contained, self-reliant, home-centred unit. Life for the modern privatised nuclear family is largely centred on the home - free time is spent doing jobs around the house and leisure is mainly home- and family-centred: DIY, gardening, watching television, or going out as a family.
• Reasons for changes

  Industrial societies require a geographically mobile labour force, with people able and willing to move to other areas of the country to find work, improve their education, or gain promotion. This often involves leaving relatives behind, thus weakening and breaking up traditional extended family life.
• Reasons for changes

  Industrial societies have become more meritocratic - the jobs people get are mainly achieved on the basis of talent, skill, and educational qualifications, rather than whom they know. Extended kin therefore have less to offer family members, such as job opportunities, reducing reliance on kin.
• Reasons for changes

  Educational success and promotion often involve upward social mobility and this leads to differences in income, status, lifestyle, and attitudes and values between kin.
• Reasons for changes

  With the development of higher standards of living and the provision of welfare services by the state for security against ill-health, unemployment, and poverty, people have become less dependent on kin for help in times of distress.
• But : modified extended family

  While there is evidence that nuclear families have become the most common form of the family in industrial society, geographical separation does not necessarily mean all links with kin are severed. Often, in the age of mass communications and easy transportation, the closeness and mutual support between kin, typical of classic extended family life, are retained by telephone, e-mail, and visiting. It has therefore been suggested that the typical family today in Britain is not simply the isolated nuclear family, but this modified form of the extended family.
• But : Beanpole family

  A lot of people are reaching old age, often living well into their eighties and nineties. At the same time, couples are having fewer children and nuclear families are getting smaller. This means that there is an increase in the number of extended three- and four-generation families. There are fewer children in families, but more of them are growing up in extended families alongside several of their grandparents and even great-grandparents. It is also longer, with several generations of older relatives, as people live longer.
• Change 3

  Symmetrical family :

  There is a common belief that the relations between male and female partners in the family in Britain became more equal in the second half of the twentieth century. The assumption has been that there was a change from segregated to integrated conjugal roles, and the emergence of a more 'symmetrical' or equally balanced family, with male partners becoming 'New Men' and taking more responsibility for housework and childcare. Conjugal roles are simply the roles played by male and female partners in marriage or in a cohabiting couple.
• Change 3

  Symmetrical family

  There are said to be two main types:

  • Segregated conjugal roles, where male and female partners have very different tasks in the family, with a clear division and separation between the male's role and the female's role.
  • Integrated (or joint) conjugal roles, where there are few divisions in the jobs done by male and female partners.
• Reasons for change (3)

  The improved status and rights of women have forced men to accept women more as equals and not simply as housewives and mothers.
• Reasons for change (3)

  The increase in the number of working women has increased women's independence and authority in the family - where the female partner has her own income, she is less dependent on her male partner, and she has more power and authority. Decision-making is therefore more likely to be shared.
• Reasons for change (3)

  The importance of female partners' earnings in maintaining the family's standard of living may have encouraged men to help more with housework - a recognition that the women cannot be expected to do two jobs at once.
• Reasons for change (3)

  The decline of the close-knit extended family and greater geographical mobility in industrial society have meant there is less pressure from kin on newly married or cohabiting couples to retain traditional roles - it is therefore easier to adopt new roles in a relationship.
• (3) But : myth of integrated roles

  Evidence from a number of surveys shows that traditional segregated roles still remain. Women still perform the majority of domestic work and childcare tasks around the home even when they have paid jobs themselves. Cooking the evening meal, household cleaning, washing and ironing, and caring for sick family members are still mainly performed by women, and

  they women spend nearly twice as long as men each day cooking, cleaning, shopping, washing and looking after the children. Housework is the second largest cause of domestic rows, after money.
• Change 4

  Changing position of children in family

  During the course of the twentieth century, families became more child-centered with activities and family outings often focused on the interests of the children. The amount of time parents spend wither children has more than doubled since the 1960s, and parents are more involved with their children: an interest in their activities, discussing decisions with them, and treating them more as equals.
• Reasons for Change (4)

  Families have got smaller over the last century, and this means more individuai care and attention can be devoted to each child.
• Reasons for Change (4)

  Increasing affluence, with higher wages and a higher standard of living, has benefited children, as more money can be spent on them and their activities.
• Reasons for Change (4)

  The welfare state provides not only a wide range of benefits designed to help parents care for their children.
• Reasons for Change (4)

  Compulsory education and more time spent in further education and training has meant young people are dependent on their parents for longer periods of time. 'Childhood' has itself become extended.
• Reasons for Change (4)

  Children have more legal rights through the Children Acts of 1989 and 2004, and there is now a government minister for children.
• Reasons for Change (4)

  Growing traffic dangers and parental fears (largely unjustified) of assaults on their children have meant that children now travel more with parents rather than being left to roam about on their own as much as they used to.
• Reasons for Change (4)

  Large businesses have encouraged a specific childhood consumer market. Businesses like Mothercare, Toys R Us, Nike, publishers, and the music industry aim at the childhood consumer market, encouraging children to consume-and parents to spend, to satisfy their children's demands. 'Pester power', where advertisers target children to pester their parents into buying them CDs, clothes, toys, and so on, is now an important feature of the advertising business.
• Change 5

  Decline in family size

  Over the last century or so, the birth rate has been declining in Britain. This has meant that average family size has been dropping, from around 6 children per family in the 1870s to an average of around 1.8 children per family in the 2000s.
• Reasons for Change (5)

  More effective and cheaper methods of contraception, and easier and safer access to abortion. Childre have become an economic liability and a drain on the resources of parents, as they have to be supported for a long period in education.
• Reasons for Changes (5)

  Women today have less desire to spend years of their lives bearing and rearing children, and many wish to pursue a career of their own.
• Reasons for Changes (5)

  Children have become an economic liability and a drain on the resources of parents, as they have to be supported for a long period in education.
• Reasons for Change (5)

  Fewer chidren are dying before adulthood, so parents no longer have many Chidren as securty against

  only a few surviving.
• Reasons for Change (5)

  The range of welfare state agencies which exist to help the elderly today. People are less reliant on care by their children when they reach old age.
• Change 6

  Rising divorce rate

  The number of divorces in England and Wales rose from 29,000 in 1951 to 148,000 in 2002, almost doubling during the 1970s. Although the number has now stabilised and is no longer increasing, this is because fewer people are marrying -relationships continue to break up, but fewer of them are marriages. Estimates have suggested more than 40% of marriages in the 2000s were likely to end in divorce.
• Reasons for Change (6)

  Changes in the law making divorce cheaper and easier to obtain.
• Reasons for Change (6)

  Higher expectations of marriage - people demand more of their marriages today.
• Reasons for Change (6)

  Privatisation of family life - less pressure from extended kin to retain marriage ties.
• Reasons for Change (6)

  Changing social attitudes causing less stigma - divorce more socially acceptable.
• Reasons for Change (6)

  Changing role and attitudes of women and their growing financial independence.
• Reasons for Change (6)

  Secularization - less religious importance attached to marriage.
• Reasons for Change (6)

  Welfare state support for lone parents.
• Reasons for Change (6)

  Increasing life expectancy - marriages have more time to break down.