Assess the degree of diversity in modern British families today.

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Assess the degree of diversity in

Modern British families today.

The conventional families have far been lost in the diversity that is available in today’s modern society. I am going to look the main elements of diversity that is present in the modern British family.

 As far back as 1978, only 20% of family have had the traditional family unit. If we look back to Murdock’s definition of a family we can see that in the 1950’s diversity was not accepted in society. Murdock was a traditionalist who believed in the nuclear family units, the husband worker, the housewife and one or more children. In today’s society dual worker families are increasing, this where the husband and wife both work. He also believed in Vertical extensions; spouse’s parents/granny, and horizontal extensions; husband’s brother plus additional wife. Murdock’s view was that a family consisted of; ‘adults of both sexes, at least two of whom, maintain a socially approved sexual relationships and one or more children….’ This statement in today’s society has no relevance due to range of structural diversity. A more modern definition of the family unit is Giddens 1993, ‘A family is a group of persons directly linked by kin connections, the adult members of which assume responsibility for caring for children’ this statement is simple and allows all routes of family diversity to be linked to it. This also shows how families have evolved over time; this type of diversity is called cohort. Another example of evolution from the 1950’s is that in today’s society children, both male and female, are encouraged to be in education whereas similar children in the 1950 would be sent to work.

  Murdock’s definition includes at least one adult of each sex. However we know that this statement is not true due to single parenthood. Single parenthood has been on the up raise. The stats from social trends, 1998 shows that between 1972 and 1997 the percentage of children living in a single-parent families have increased from 7% to 19%. It also shows that they are more likely to live in poverty, in the 1992, government figures show that 75% claimed income support. It shows that a majority of these family’s are headed by the mothers, this is called a matrifocal family. In the case of a male centred family, which is the idealisms of a nuclear family, we call this a patrifocal family.

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 Fiona Mc Allistor findings show that an increasing number of women do not have children and that 1 in 5 will remain childlessness. The report shows that through qualitative research method that involved in depth semi-structured interviews of 176 childless women aged 35-49 showed this was due to not having maternal instincts, not interested or just having high standards of parenting. It also showed that women in their early 40’s end up childless without making a decision at all.

 Another statistic that is rising is stay at home dads (SAHD’s) this is not a new phenomena as a few ...

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