Family Diversity

• Some sociologists argue that there is no "normal" family, but instead a broad diversity of family and household forms in the UK today
• Reasons for increased diversity of family and household forms

  • Secularisation (as religion has become less central to UK society, so people are more likely to consider alternatives to marriage and also there is a reduced stigma to divorce)
  • Legal changes (the legal changes mentioned in the previous section has made divorce easier, therefore leading to more family types)
• Late modernist Anthony Giddens (1992) argues that


  Greater gender equality has led to significant changes in the nature of family life. Relationships are now categorised by freedom-people are free to enter into relationships on their own terms rather than bound by tradition or family expectations. A consequence of this is that people seek a pure relationship: if a relationship is not meeting their expectations then they are also at liberty to end it and seek one that is more fulfilling. Furthermore, relationships have become increasingly about the self: people's self-identity is explored through relationships.
• All of this combines to suggest that people are less likely to get married young and stay together for their whole lives and instead are likely to experience serial monogamy. That is, be part of several partnerships throughout their life course, rather than just one.
• While in previous eras it was not unusual for people to marry their "childhood sweetheart" it is now very unusual for people in a relationship at 18 to remain in the same relationship for life.
• While this represents greater choice and freedom, it is also characterised by instability.
• Examples of diverse family forms in contemporary society

  • Traditional nuclear family
  • Symmetrical family
  • Nuclear family with house husband or "new man"
  • Extended family
• Traditional nuclear family


  A married couple with their own children (2 or 3 of them) where the husband goes out to work and the wife looks after most of the domestic duties, with clear segregated roles
• Symmetrical family


  Families were becoming more symmetrical, with more joint roles. Women were increasingly going out to work and men were doing more of the housework.
• Nuclear family with house husband or "new man"


  The female adult in the family is the "breadwinner" and the husband does most of the domestic work
• Extended family


  Family members who are outside the "nucleus": aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents, etc. Extended family households can be either vertical (multiple generations living together) or horizontal (a household made up of aunts, uncles and cousins)
• Beanpole family


  A vertical extended family with no (or few) "branches". This is a multi-generational extended family, or vertical extended family, but is characterised by each generation having few siblings.
• Matrifocal lone parent family

  The most common lone-parent family is the matrifocal one: that is one where the lone parent is the mother of the child/children.
• Patrifocal lone parent family

  A less common variation on the lone-parent family is the patrifocal one: a family headed by a single father.
• Reconstituted family


  Where two nuclear families that have split up merge (or blend) to form a new family (i.e. with step-parents and step-brothers or sisters).
• Same sex couples


  There are really a number of different same-sex family structures, not just one. Same-sex couple implies a couple living without children (coupling describes this household structure for both heterosexual and homosexual couples) but there are also same-sex families where there are children (either naturally the children of one or other parent or adopted).
• Living apart together


  A living apart together family is where a couple choose not to cohabitate (or are not currently cohabitating).
• Grandparenting


  This is a term for when children are brought up by their grandparents rather than their parents. There are a number of reasons why this situation might arise. It refers to a more formal, permanent or semi-permanent arrangement than just grandparents assisting with childcare.
• Singledom


  This term refers to people living on their own.
• Flatmates/housemates


  Some households are multiple occupancy. This might be in the farm of flatmates or housemates such as university students, or it might be people who do not know each other prior to taking up residence (eg, some migrant workers).
• Empty nest family


  This term refers to a household where there is a couple who had children but they have now left the family home.
• Boomerang family


  A growing trend has been for boomerang families where children who have left the family home have come back again! For example, this might occur with people graduating from university and then returning to the family home.
• Polygamy


  Polygamy in the strict sense is illegal in the UK: you cannot be married to more than one person under UK law. However, there are people who live with more than one partner (not married) and also some people have other spouses in other countries (not recognised by UK law). In some cultures polygamy is seen as a better option than infidelity and is therefore encouraged.
• Of course individuals can live in several of these family forms through their course of their lives.
• Five ways in which the modern family is now diverse (Rappoport and Rappoport 1983)

  • Organisational diversity
  • Cultural diversity
  • Social class diversity
  • Life stage diversity
  • Generational diversity
• Organisational diversity


  Families are organised in a range of ways, in terms of the performance of roles. While some are traditional with segregated roles, others are symmetrical with joint roles and others perform roles in other ways (such as roles being segregated in a non-traditional way).
• Cultural diversity


  As a result of the UK being a culturally diverse society, so there is a diversity of family structures as a result. For example: African Caribbean families are more likely to be matrifocal, some Asian households are more likely to include extended family members.
• Social class diversity


  Family structure and child-rearing practices are also influenced by social class. There are statistics that show that divorce is more common among those on lower incomes for example and there are a range of possible explanations for that.
• Life stage diversity


  As previously mentioned, people find themselves in different types of families at different points in their lives. For example, one individual might experience, in one life: nuclear family, lone-parent family, reconstituted family, singledom, housemates, boomerang family, living apart together, coupling, nuclear family, lone-parent family, reconstituted family, empty-nest family, etc.
• Generational diversity


  Different generations have different attitudes to family life. When the Rappoports were writing, older generations tended to be more traditional, preferring the classic nuclear family while younger generations had different attitudes. 35 years later, Rappoports younger generations would be today's older ones.
• While postmodernists and late modernists largely regard family diversity as a positive feature of contemporary society (while acknowledging that it can also lead to instability) New Right thinkers, like Charles Murray and Melanie Phillips take a much more negative view of the phenomenon.
• New Right view on family diversity


  They argue that state policies, and particularly state welfare policies, and liberal attitudes have led to a collapse of traditional families, resulting in many social problems. Murray suggests that benefits paid to lone parents provides a perverse incentive to young women to get pregnant when single. The benefit system provides a similar incentive (they argue) to young men not to work and provide for their children. Planning, responsibility and commitment are all positively discouraged.
• Melanie Phillips view on family diversity

  She suggested that the mass rioting that took place across London and other parts of the UK in the summer of 2011 was a result of matrifocal lone-parent families: children (especially boys) growing up without fathers. She put the blame for this on a "social experiment" by the "liberal intelligentsia" and the Labour Party. She argued that politicians had ceased to see the value of traditional families and had indeed encouraged diversity as being preferable to tradition. She suggested that state welfare policies encouraged girls to get pregnant [to access benefits and a council home). She further argued that children born into these families lack the discipline provided by a father; boys lack a positive male role model and they are not taught to take responsibility or to respect authority, but instead to take what they can get away with and to blame others.
• A lot of sociologists strongly disagree with the New Right position. While some of the 2011 rioters were from lane-parent families and from workless homes, many were not. While the numbers with single parents may have been disproportionate, correlation does not mean causation. That is, just because children from lone parent families rioted does not mean that it was their family form that caused the behaviour.
• Others point out that a couple staying together does not necessarily guarantee a positive male role model, as there may be a bad father and a bad relationship. Furthermore, there may be other family members or friends providing that positive adult male role model (e.g. a grandfather or uncle).
• The functionalist sociologist Robert Chester (1985), while acknowledging that family life had changed, argued that by most families were effectively nuclear families, even if they were not traditional nuclear families. He coined the term neo-conventional family to describe families where there were two adults with children in a household but where it was not necessarily the case that the children were the biological offspring of both adults, that the adults were married, that they had not been married before, that a male was a breadwinner and a female an "expressive leader".
• Statistics from 2017 reveal that by the far the most common family type was the "married of civil partner couple" and the fastest-growing type was the cohabiting couple, both of which would come under Chester's definition of a neo-conventional family. The cohabiting couple family has overtaken the lone-parent family in the UK today.
• This topic links particularly with identity: family has always been an important part of people's identities, but postmodernists would argue that increasingly people can choose their family as part of their identity, rather than be determined by it.
• This also links to stratification and social differentiation as certain family-types are much more common among some social groups than others. There are correlations between ethnic groups and family forms; lone-parent families are much more likely to be headed by a woman than a man lone-parent families are more common among those with lower incomes than those with higher incomes, etc.
• The family is the most important social institution as it provides us with our first experience of society, teaches us how to behave and gives us an identity