Parents and children

• changes to child bearing in the UK

  • nearly half (47%) of children are now born outside marriage, over twice as many as in 1986
  • women are having children later between 1971 and 2012, the average age at the birth of their first child has now rose by 4 years to 28 years
  • women are having fewer children than in the 20th century though in the 21st century it has slightly increased
  • more women are remaining childless
  • in 2018 there were 657,000 live births which is a 9.9% decrease since 2012 and lowest since 2005
  • 51.6% of those were to married couples
  • fertility rates decreased in all age groups except for women aged 40 and over in 2018
• reasons for decreasing child-bearing

  • changing roles of women in society
  • improved contraception
  • delaying child-bearing
  • costs of child-bearing
  • decline in stigma about having births outside of marriage
  • increase in cohabitation
• changing roles of women

  • women are becoming more involved in higher education delaying marriage and children until later
  • more women are following career aspirations causing them to wait to have children
• improved contraception

  • more available and more effective giving women greater control over when they have children
  • increased efficiency of protecting from unwanted pregnancy
  • male contraceptionhas increased awareness on STI's
• delaying child-bearing

  • greater individualism
  • career progression
  • insecurity of relationships
• costs of child-bearing 


  • the cost of raising a child so people may have fewer children
  • social costs to parents are a factors
  • rise of child-centred society can impact on a costs of raising children
• births outside of marriage

  • over 48% of live births in 2018
  • cohabitating couples and changing attitudes to marriage impact on this figure
  • reduction in social stigma attached to being born outside of marriage
• lone-parent families

  • now make up 22% of all families with children
  • 1 child in 4 lives in a lone-parent family
  • over 90% of these families are headed by lone mothers
  • until the early 1990s divorced women were the biggest group of lone mothers
  • from the early 1990s single women were the biggest group of lone mothers
  • a child living with a lone parent is 2x as likely to be in poverty as a child living with both parents
• reasons for the increase in lone-parenting

  • increase in divorce and separation
  • increase in the number of never-married women having children
  • this is linked to the decline in stigma attached to births outside of marriage
• reasons why lone-parents tend to be female-headed

  • the widespread belief that women are by nature suited to be "expressive" or have a nurturing role
  • the fact that divorce courts usually give custody of the children to the mothers
  • men are less likely to give up work for their children than mothers are
• single by choice

  • many lone-parent families are female headed because the mothers are single by choice
  • they may not wish to marry or cohabit or they may wish the limit the fathers involvement with the child
  • Renvoize 1985 found that professional women were able to support their child without the fathers involvement
  • Cashmore 1985 found some WC mothers with less earning power chose to live on welfare benefits without a partner often because they had experienced abuse
  • feminist ideas and greater opportunities may also have encouraged an increase in the number of never-married lone mothers
• lone parenthood, the welfare state and poverty - New right view

  • New Right sociologist Murray 1984 sees the growth of lone-parenting as a result of an over-generous welfare state providing benefits to unmarried women and their children
  • argues that this has created a 'perverse incentive' as it rewards irresponsible behaviour such as having children without being able to provide for them
  • the welfare state creates a 'dependency culture' where people assume that the state will support them and their children
  • for Murray the solution is to abolish benefits to help discourage births outside marriage
• critics of new right view

  • argue that the welfare benefits are far from generous and lone-parents are much more likely to be in poverty for the following reasons:
  • lack of affordable childcare prevents lone-parents from working
  • 60% of them are unemployed
  • 2x higher than as among mothers with partners
  • inadequate welfare benefits
  • more lone-parents are women who generally earn less than men
  • failure of father for pay maintenance especially if they have formed a second family that have the support
• steep-families (reconstituted families)

  • account for over 10% of all families with dependent children in Britain
  • in 85% of step-families at least one child is from the womens previous relationship while in 11% there is at least 1 child from the mans previous relationship
  • in 4% of stepfamilies there are children from both partners previous relationships
  • Ferri and Smith 1998 found that stepfamilies are very similar to first families and that the involvement of stepparents in childcare and childrearing is a positive one
  • found that stepfamilies are at higher risk of poverty
  • Allan and Crow 2001 found that stepfamilies may face problems of divided loyalties such as contact with the non-resident parent can cause tensions
• reasons for these patterns of stepfamilies

  • stepfamilies are formed when lone-parents form new relationships
  • increase in lone-parents due to divorce etc therefore increases stepfamilies
  • more children in stepfamilies are from the womens previous relationships than the mans previous relationships as children are more likely to stay with the mother
  • stepparents are often at greater risk of poverty due to there often being more children in the house
  • some of the tensions faced by stepfamilies may be the result of a lack of clear social norms about how individuals should behave in families