Sociology G672

Divorce - Increasing

- According to New Right divorce rate shows a crisis within the family, divorce is too easily avaliable and divorce leads to one-parent families which increases chances of anti-social behaviour.
- Rodges and Pryor found that children were more likely to suffer from behavioural problems if they came from a single-parent family.
- Beck and Beck-Gernsheim argue that the rising divorce rates are a product of a rapidly changing world in which traditional rituals, rule and traditions of love, romance and relationships no longer apply.

Marriage - Decreasing

- New Right do not like this as they believe traditional is best, they believe this statistic suggests crisis in the family therefore creating anti-social behavour and moral breakdown.
- Feminist (Delphy) believes marriage is a 'labour contract'. Feminists see this decline as evidence of a rejection to family patriarchal arrangements.
- Postmodernists see this decline to do with the fact that people have more choice with their private lives.
- Amos and Parmar discovered that ethnicity has a huge impact upon family life, and Berthound supports this by finding  Pakistani and Bangladeshi women got married at the age of 25 compared to half of white British women.

Single-parent families - Increasing

- 90% of single-parent families are headed by woman, meaning they are matrifocal
- 23% of families in the UK are single-parent
- Fastest growing group of single-parent families are those cobahiting or never married
- Only 3% of mothers are teenagers
- The average age of a lone parent is 34