households and family diversity notes

definitions of family structure and some recent trends

nuclear family

• mother and father married with children
• father is main breadwinner
• mother does housework and childcare
• cereal packet family
• in decline
• 1960- 38% of households in England and Wales were married couples with children
• 2008- 22% of households were conventional nuclear families

extended family

• classic extended- 3 generations live together for financial reasons
• modified extended- extended kin live some distance away from each other, but maintain high levels of contact
• the classic extended family declined from the 1960's onwards
• however numbers set to treble in next 20 years to around 200,000

reconstituted family

• dependent children living with step parents where a parent has re-married a new partner
• 726,000 children live with step parents where a parent has re-married a new partner (census data 2001)
• as many as 1 in 10 families with dependent children may be reconstituted

single/lone parent family

• mainly headed by women
• 1 in 4 children live in lone parent households (census data 2001)
• 2 million lone parents with dependent children in the UK in 2011
• grown steadily but significantly from 1.7 million in 2001
• difficult to assess how accurate these figures are
• numbers of fathers heading lone parent families is steadily increasing
• ethnic differences
• never married lone parent is most common in some lower income groups

other important trends

increased co-habitation and long term co-habitation

• the number of opposite sex cohabiting couple families increased significantly from 2.1 million in 2001 to 2.9 million in 2011
• the number of dependent children living in oppoiste sex cohabiting couple families increased significantly from 1.3 million to 1.8 million over the same period
• in 2011, 38% of married couple families had dependent children, the same percentage as cohabiting couple families
• people are less interested in marriage
• 'it's just a piece of paper'
• people run out of money…