Demography: Birth Rate Trends in the UK since 1900
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- Created on: 10-05-18 11:11
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- Demography: Birth Rate Trends in the UK since 1900
- Changes in womens position
- During the 20th Century major changes occurred such as:
- Legal equality with men
- Increased educational opportunities
- More women in paid employment
- Changes in attitudes towards family life and women's role
- Easier access to divorce
- Access to abortion and contraception
- Sarah Harper (2012) = education of women is the most important reason for decrease in birth rates
- Educated women are more likely to use family planning as they want to work instead of traditional house wife.
- For example, in 2012, one in five women aged 45 was childless.
- Cultural norms about family size change and are passed down the generations, smaller families become the norm.
- During the 20th Century major changes occurred such as:
- Decline in the infant mortality rate
- If the IMR decreases, birth rate decreases because parents don't need to have more children if they are surviving.
- In 1900, 15% of babies died in their first year. So parents would have more children.
- IMR decreased during the first half of the 20th Century because:
- Improved housing and sanitation.
- Better nutrition
- Better knowledge of hygiene, child health and welfare
- Decrease in the number of married women working
- Improved services for mothers and children, such as postnatal clinics
- From the 1950s onards, mass immunisation of childhood diseases, antibiotics, midwifery all contributed to the decline.
- Children are now an economic liability
- Children were an economic asset during the 19th Century.
- They were sent out to work to earn income.
- However since the 19th Century, children have became an economic liability.
- Laws banning child labour and causing children to stay economically dependent on parents.
- Changing norms about what children have the right to expect material-istically and so the cost of upbringing increased.
- Children were an economic asset during the 19th Century.
- Child centeredness
- Child-centeredness has caused the social construct of childhood to be an important time in a person's life.
- Parents now have smaller families and better attachments to the few children they have.
- Changes in womens position
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