Outline and discuss the view that the increase in one-parent families is due to diversity rather than family decline.

Authors Avatar

Jenny Mason

Outline and discuss the view that the increase in one-parent families is due to diversity rather than family decline

Over the past fifty years the nature of family life in Britain has changed and this has had an effect on society.  There is a view that the traditional nuclear family is under attack and that these threats to the traditional nuclear family are the main cause of the claimed moral decline among young people.

The “New Right” is a group who believe that the family is in decline; they see the 1960s and early 1970s as the beginning of an attack on the traditional nuclear family.  In particular the introduction of the contraceptive pill and the legalisation of abortion in the early 1960s as it gave women sexual freedom that supposedly lessened their commitment to the family; while equal opportunities and equal pay legalisation has distracted women from the family.  Also the 1969 Divorce Reform Act, which meant that men and women could file for divorce due to “irretrievable breakdown”, was seen as undermining the commitment of marriage.  Even religion not playing such an important part in family life, as people become more secular means changes in the familial structure.

The New Rights familial ideology also makes assumptions into how not to organise a family seeing one-parent families, teenage pregnancies and the increase of co-habitation as symptoms of the decline in family ideology, they are also seen as threats to both family stability and to the well-being of society.  In the New Rights view there is an underclass of unmarried mothers along with criminals and idle young men who are responsible for the crime increase.  They argue that this underclass is welfare dependent and are socialising their children to all the wrong norms and values of society.  

Join now!

However today’s government policy is generally aimed at ensuring that the family unit does not overwhelm the rights of the individual in it, so legislation has been aimed at improving the social and economic position of women.  For example in 1998 the Labour government introduced the “New Deal” which aimed at encouraging single mothers to return back to work.  Also New Labour does recognise the change in families’ especially one-parent families, which shows that we are becoming more diverse as a whole and that the New Right views are more in decline.

Statistics show that marriage is on ...

This is a preview of the whole essay