This often creates two homes for the child/children and two families with both usually vying for the affections of the children. The second is separation which refers to the physical splitting of the partners and while for the most part is a temporary measure before either they divorce or get back together it can last several years. Finally there is the `empty shell marriage` where the spouses live together, remain legally married but there is no love just a marriage that exists in name only. This shell usually will only exist for the sake of the children but can often be more damaging than helpful.
After looking at these arguments and the statistical evidence on marriage break-ups leads you to only one possible conclusion, the family unite has changed. Has this new and dynamic structure affected the role that the family plays in the lives of the offspring? It is clear to us that there has not been a social collapse even though the family unit is changing so from this we can see that this dynamic new unite is doing the same job as the old.
According to the Marxist perspective, divorce is viewed to bring about various effects on individual members. They argue that in capitalist societies, marriage is an imperative institution as it stabilises the workforce and keeps them content. This in turn benefits the employer as a happy worker is a productive worker it also allows pro capitalist ideology to be passed from one generation to the next. Therefore Marxists believe that divorce is necessary to stop capitalism from perpetuating. Marxists believe that the children should be raised in a communal environment very much in keeping with the ideals of communism.
While the separation of families is a large factor in finding a possible answer one must also look at the non-married with children couples. Many sociologists argue that the increase in cohabitation is a direct result of high divorce and separation statistics. There are those people who believe that marriage put unnecessary stress on a relationship and if they love each other then they have no need to consummate the relationship. The general household survey shows the % of non-married women cohabiting; the figures say it all the last survey saw 11% of women cohabiting now 23% are. Almost 13% of 17 to 24 year olds are cohabiting and of those 7% are cohabiting with people are over the age of 25.
R Chester held an investigation into the figures and found that in most cases investigated, cohabitation was a temporary phase showing only around 2% of women aged between 18-49 are living and bearing children in `Consensual Unions `which may be permanent.
In contrast J Chandler argues that the time couples spend cohabiting is lengthening and they appear to be choosing cohabitation as a long term alternative to marriage. She concludes by pointing out that this phenomenon is nothing new.
Chandler quotes research which estimates that a quarter to a third of couple lived in consensual union in Britain in the 18th century. These figures do not show how many of these consensual unions went onto be consummated. It also does not take into account unregistered weddings.
In a sense, functionalist would agree that an increase in cohabitation is a symptom of a rise in instability within families. Although a traditional approach, functionalism believes marriage to be the most effective institution that serves the purpose of transmitting social solidarity through value consensus. Dobash in 1980 did the larges study on domestic violence ever to be held in Scotland and found out that 25% of assault is family related. Does this mean that there is no assault in cohabiting couples, obviously not but, it is harder to define a consensually unified couple and therefore harder to calculate the figures.
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Research methods and reasons
The research method I am going to use in my coursework is the unstructured interview method. I have decided to use this type of research method because all of the questions asked and the answers answered would be private and confidential and only used in my research. This way all of the people involved in the interview would be more likely to give honest answers because an unstructured interview is more like a conversation rather than a set of questions that have to be answered. Unstructured interviews are generally used to give qualitative data; the questions are usually of an open type. Ethnographers have developed what are called ‘in-depth-interviews’, which are now used more widely in sociology to uncover the cultural meanings perceived by individuals.
The advantage to the interview method is that as the interviewee is answering the questions in their own way they show a more detailed realism rather than answering yes or no when the answer could easily fit into the middle of these options.
There are disadvantages to using the unstructured interview method. There is no guarantee that you can compare one of the interviewees’ answers with the next because the answers are open.
Phenomenologists go further by saying that the data is an artificial creation of the researcher. The wording of the interview could be misunderstood by the interviewees and could make one person say one thing and another say something else when they both mean the same thing; they just interpret the question differently. I would try to overcome this by making the questions as simple as possible and by explaining them as much as possible; this will remove most of the confusion.
The interview would have to be unstructured because I need qualitative data rather than quantitative data.
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