Examine the reasons for changing patterns of marriage, cohabitation and divorce in the last forty years.

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Emmanuel Mends

Sociology

Marie Gettings

Examine the reasons for changing patterns of marriage, cohabitation and divorce in the last forty years.

24 marks

There are many reasons for the changing patterns in marriage, divorce and cohabitation in our modern era of the 21st century. Here are some reasons to somewhat explain the reasons for the following. Item A states that “Only half as many people are getting married, lone- parent families have increased threefold, children born outside marriage has quadrupled in number and the number of divorces have trebled.

 In addition to this, item B goes on to further support the evidence given in item A. It states “marriage is a normal and expected part of women’s lives in Western society. However, although the vast majority of women will expect to marry at some time and at least once, in recent years there has been some decline in the popularity of marriage”.

The following evidences’ given above greatly illustrate how the idea of marriage has been idealised and also somewhat diminished from society in the last forty years.

In recent years there has been a significant fall in the number of first time marriages, with the figures substantially declining from 480000 in 1972 to 306000 in 2000. Further evidence suggests “the average age of first marriage rose by seven years between 1971 and 2005 when it was 32 years for men and 30 for women.”  The statistics show that a vast amount of people are putting off marriage until later; with one of the predominant reasons being that there is less pressure towards individuals to get married, wherefore they can have the freedom to choose the ideal type of partner and relationship that meets their desires. Further reasons are that, due to more levels of people being educated people may decide on putting off the idea of a first time marriage.

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However, some sociologists will point out that greater freedom of choice in relationships means a greater risk of instability, since relationships are likely to break up. Additionally, sociologists may point out that if people decide to put off marriages due to educational requirements, they may end up not marrying at all, which as a result will have an influence the figures of single households.

 Similarly, the number of remarriages has also drastically increased in recent years. Remarriages increased from 57000 in 1961 to 126000, almost forty-six per-cent of all marriages in 2000. Most serial monogamy involved divorced persons rather than ...

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