Parents, Children & Extended families

• Pattern of childbearing:

  • Women having children later.
  • More women remaining childless.
  • Women having less children.

  Avarage number of children:

  1964=2.95

  2001=1.63

  2006=1.84
• Why?


  CHANGING ATTITUDES:

  Social acceptance of births outside of marriage- no longer seen as illegitamate.

  CHANGING OPPORTUNITIES:

  Increased educational opportunities for women.

  Increasing number of women in workforce.

  CHANGING VALUES:

  Increasing emphasis on the individual= e.g. freedom, choice, personal fulfillment.
• Reasons for rise in lone-parents:

  • Increase in divorce and separation.
  • Increase in number of never-married women having children.
• New Right view on Lone parents

  MURRAY= growth of lone parents due to over-generous welfare state= provides benefits for unmarried mothers & their children.

  Creates dependency culture & lack of discipline in children.
• Step families account for over 10% of all families with dependent children in Britain.
• Reasons for changing patterns of step families:

  • Factors causing increase in number of lone parents also responsible for the creation of step families.
  • More children in step families are from woman's previous relationship than man's, because children are more likely to remain with their mother.
• Ethnic differences in family patterns

  BLACK FAMILIES:

  • Higher proportion of lone-parent households.
  • High rate of female-headed, lone-parent black families= evidence of family disorganisation that can be traced back to slavery and recent high rates of unemployment among black males.
  • 2012, over 1/2 of families with dependent children headed by black person were lone-parent families.

  SOUTH ASIAN FAMILIES:

  • Sometimes contain 3 generations but most are nuclear rather than extended.
  • Houses were often shared in early period of migration. Later, most now nuclear with relatives living nearby.
• Beanpole family:

  Extends vertically through 3 or more generations.

  Does not involve aunts, uncles, cousins etc.
• Beanpole family may be the result of 2 demographic changes:

  1. Increased life expectancy= more surviving grandparents & great-grandparents.
  2. Smaller family sizes= fewer siblings= fewer horizontal ties.
• CHAMBERLAIN= Extended family survives as it performs important functions for its members.