Over the past 50 years there has been a considerable decrease in the rate of marriage in Great Britain
by
davob (student)
Ieuan Murrant
Over the past 50 years there has been a considerable decrease in the rate of marriage in Great Britain, for example a graph shows that in 1971 around 475000 marriages took place all together, and where as in 2008 around only 180000 marriages took place. There are a large number of reasons which could have lead to this such as secularisation, changes in the role of women and education and careers.
The first reason which explains why marriage has decreased so much is secularisation. This is the decline in religion, meaning that Britain over the years has generally become a far less religious country, this could be taken into two lights, as this could either mean there is less people following their religion, or there is far less people who have a religion, who are atheists. The effect on the marriage rates this has is that religion created the path for many people to follow, hence it influenced the vast majority of peoples lives, and anyone who went against the norms that Christianity created would often have their lives made like hell by those around them. This meant that cohabitation was a rare occurrence as it was considered to be ‘living in sin’, ‘living in sin’ would also apply to those who decided to have sex before they where married to the person. Often highlighted by those who fell pregnant before they were married, and were forced to marry before any signs showed by their parent due to fear of what the rest of the community would think, or due to there own consciousness due to fear of what there parents and rest of their community would think. So many people were forced to marry so they could live with their partner and have sex simply so they didn’t go against any ‘norm’. But as religion has showed signs of declining fewer people are seeing cohabitation and sex before marriage as a sin, so people are far less concerned about the reaction of other so no longer feel any strong need to marry any more. Evidence that supports that secularisation caused a decrease in marriage is that during the time of marriage rates declining statistics show that the number of people who attend church is also declining, as nowadays statistics also show that only about 6% - 7% of people attend church. However this could just be a coincidence because the 2001 census showed that 71.8% of people claimed to be Christian which would argue against such a strong decline in secularisation.
