Structural Diversity

• Sociologists compare the diversity of contemporary family and household structures with the conventional family. This is also known as the cereal packet, cornflake or Oxo family based on the image advertisers often show of married couples where the father is a breadwinner and the wife at home looking after two children.
• In previous centuries, many families were shattered by early deaths or desertion, so that one-parent and step-families were by no means rare. However, the increase in divorce and the ease with which people cohabit and then separate has led to a change in the proportions of types of families with dependent children. In 2011 about 62% were headed by a married couple or civil partnership, 24% by a lone parent, 14% by a cohabiting couple and a tiny proportion by a same-sex couple. The average number of children in each type was two.
• New Right sociologists are concerned about the relative decline in the married nuclear family, which they view as the most stable and functional way of bringing up children and a source of security for adults.
• • The number of married couples, 38% of them with dependent children, decreased by 100,000. This seems to reflect a decline in the popularity of marriage.
• • 45,000 civil partnerships were formed as a result of the Civil Partnership Act (2005), and gay households that were not civil partnerships increased by 6,000. 2,000 of each type had dependent children.
• • The number of opposite-sex cohabiting couples, 39% of them with dependent children, increased by 608,000.
• • The number of lone parents with dependent children increased by 12% to 2 million. 9 out of 10 of these parents were women. This figure includes never married and divorced parents.
• • The number of people living alone increased to 7.5 million. Of these, 3.4 million were 65+, and 70% were female. This can partly be accounted for by people living longer. Of the 65-, 42% were female. The largest change was in the 45-64 age group where the number of people living alone increased by 31%. This was partly due to the increasing population over the last decade as the 1960s baby boom generation started to reach this age group and to a rise in the percentage of those in this age group who never married or are divorced.