Social perceptions concerning both the sanctity of marriage and the stigma attached to divorce have slowly changed - particularly as divorce has become increasingly more common in our society.
In terms of "family crisis" cohabitation (sometimes called "consensual unions" - people who live as "man and wife" without being legally married) is seen as indicative of potential - if not actual - family breakdown. This is mainly because of the absence of a legal contract to reinforce (or strengthen) the moral / normative contract people enter into when they decide to live together (and have children).
The "failure to marry" seems to be viewed with a degree of suspicion by family breakdown theorists - almost as if it represents a lack of moral commitment to one's partner. This represents a belief, perhaps, that cohabiting partners can simply "walk away" from a relationship without fear of any (legal) consequences. The Government is left to "pick-up-the-pieces" through financial support for a mother / father and their children.
Whilst it is true that it is legally far easier to dissolve a cohabiting relationship than a marriage relationship, it’s not clear how significant this is for family relationships.
For example, is it socially and personally preferable for two people who have grown to hate each other intensely to "stay together for the sake of the children" - or are the consequences of this potentially far more serious (in terms of violence, child socialisation and so forth) than a decision to dissolve a relationship?
Perhaps the central point here is that for "family crisis" theorists the argument has more to do with the socialisation of children within a family-type unit than with male / female relationships. "Crisis theorists" are more concerned with the propagation of a particular form of family ideology (one that involves dual-parent nuclear families with a relatively clear demarcation of gender roles and relationships) than with any clear-sighted, objective, analysis of family life.
One has to look briefly at the social significance of cohabitation as a form of family organisation in contemporary Britain. Cohabitation as either an alternative or prelude to marriage has become increasingly popular over the past ten years in Britain. The significance of this trend is difficult to evaluate (in terms of family organisation) mainly because many couples appear to cohabit for a number of years prior to marriage (in effect, cohabitation is less an alternative to marriage than a sort of "trail marriage").
One significant point to note, however, is that if increasing numbers of people in our society are choosing to have children with a cohabiting - rather than legally married - partner, the number of technically-illegitimate children in our society will increase.
A major underclass theorist, Charles Murray ("The Emerging British Underclass", 1990), sees rates of illegitimacy as one - very important - indicator of family breakdown. From this assumption Murray relates the supposed breakdown of family life to such ideas as socialisation and social control in a wider social context. Murray considers illegitimacy in Britain to be “sky-rocketing” out of control.
For example, illegitimate children are considered more prone to forms of "anti-social" behaviour (high levels of crime, juvenile delinquency and so forth). This behaviour is a "social problem" in terms of its cost to the Government and so forth.
What concerns us here is the relationship between illegitimacy, family breakdown and wider "social problems". In this respect, the main questions we have to ask are, Are "high rates of illegitimacy" indicative of family breakdown? What constitutes a "high rate"? Does Britain have a "high rate of illegitimacy"?
To answer such questions we have to consider what writers such as Murray mean when they talk about a relationship between illegitimacy and family breakdown. It is significant to note that "the family" is implicitly defined in terms of marriage. A "stable family structure" is one where the parents of children are legally married.
However, there is no logical, dependent, connection between marriage and family stability. People who are married to one another do not automatically become "good" parents, just as unmarried couples, single parents or whatever are not automatically "bad" parents.
What matters, sociologically, is not the legal status of the individuals involved but the nature of their relationship - and this cannot be considered in isolation from the social context of people's lives (in terms of such things as unemployment, poverty, child-minding facilities and the like).
Amongst "family breakdown" theorists, the issue of single parenthood can probably be seen as the major indicator of the breakdown in the nuclear family structure.
Whether or not this is actually the case (and writers such as Robert Chester have suggested that single parenthood should not necessarily be seen as some form of "alternative" to the nuclear family) is something that needs to be investigated.
In general, we can identify five main types of single parent family: single mothers, single fathers, widowed, separated women and divorced women.
It is one of the enduring myths of contemporary British politics that single parenthood is more-or-less synonymous with being young and female. Whether or not this is actually the case is something that we cannot be one hundred percent sure about.
The "single (unmarried) woman" category accounts for approximately one sixth of all single parent families. The causes of single parent families are varied and they include such things as bereavement, choice, divorce, desertion and separation. Even if we assume that the single lone mother category consists entirely of women who decide to raise a child alone by choice, nearly 85% of all single parent families are created by the break-up of a nuclear family.
Although we should not minimise the significance of this (for both society and the individuals involved), this is interesting because single parenthood appears to be more a phenomenon of nuclear family breakdown rather than a "conscious alternative" to the dual-parent nuclear structure (for a significant proportion, for example, the single parent family is created by the death of a partner).
The single parent family as a political issue has, over the past 20 or so years, been resurrected by the political New Right as an example of "family breakdown" that has serious social / moral implications and costs.
As Peter Laslett ("The World We Have Lost", 1979) has shown, one parent families are not a new phenomenon in our society. In Victorian Britain, for example, one parent families were probably as - if not more - common than today (mainly because of high mortality rates). Then - as now - the interpretation placed upon the social significance of one-parent families is of interest.
While we shouldn't minimise the consequences of single parenthood (both in wider social terms and in terms of the life experiences and chances of those involved - something that tends to overlooked by "crisis theorists"), it is important not to over-dramatise these consequences in the context of overall family stability / instability.
In my opinion I think that the family is not under threat. I think that there isn’t such a thing as a “family”. In that I mean there is no such thing as the nuclear family as today do many different types of family. The fact that today, even though there aren’t as many nuclear families as before, people still have a loving and caring environment means that children are still being socialised in the proper way and therefore does the same job as nuclear families set out to do.
