Using appropriate sources of information support or refute the argument that in contemporary society the family has lost its relevance.

In this short essay, I will be supporting the argument, but as always there are two sides of a story. I will be highlighting the reasons why the family is not as traditional as it used to be.

The most frequently quoted definition of the family is that of George Murdock: “The family is a social group characterised by common residence, economic co-operation and reproduction. It includes adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain a socially approved sexual relationship, and one or more children, own or adopted, of the sexually cohabiting adults” (Murdock 1949:1)

There are a number of arguments for this question. “As the most general observation, the ‘married couple with children’ family is not the most common family form in Britain today.” (Stephens 1998: p184). Other types families are single or lone parent families, extended families (several generations of one family all living under one roof), reconstituted families (two previous separate families coming together), same-sex couples (may or may not have children living with them) and cohabiting families (living together without legally being married).

There has been an increase in cohabitation since the 1970’s. This is due to the fact ...

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There has been an increase in cohabitation since the 1970’s. This is due to the fact that people are delaying marriage rather than rejecting it (Chester 1985). As a result forty per cent of births now occur outside marriage (ONS 2001). Evidence suggests that sex before marriage has become the norm, (Joshi, 1989) when in the past it was wrong or sinful to have sex before marriage.

Families are much smaller than they used to be (fertility rate is now just 1.64 children per woman) - Mintel 2000. This implies that women are more concerned about their career prospects and education.

Paid work has changed the lives of women drastically. It has given them a theoretical equality with men, financial independence and broader horizons. “While the number of men in paid employment has remained relatively stable in recent decades, the number of women has grown by about one million since the 1980s; women will compromise 45 per cent of the civilian paid workforce.” (Stephens 1998 p.151)

This could be one of the reasons that affect the loss of the relevance of the family.

On the other hand, the rise in the numbers of the elderly is dramatic. Reduced numbers of young people are giving rise to the proportion of elderly in the population. This leads to the question as to who will look after the elderly.

In conclusion, I think that the family (more so the nuclear standard family) is losing its relevance, maybe not rapidly but gradually and slowly. As argued earlier, “All four trends- cohabitation, divorce, births outside marriage and single-parents are likely to be even more pronounced by 2020.” (The Guardian, 2004).

In the future, cohabitation and reconstitution will be more common, as the recent trends suggest. Studies suggest that the nuclear family is not the predominate family in the contemporary society. It seems likely that the increase in cohabitation is part of a new pattern of marriage.

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