Assess the claim that the nuclear family as a dominant form of family structure has been replaced by a wide variety of types of families

Furthermore, The New Right, a conservative perspective, opposes diversity but admits that it is replacing the nuclear family, which, in their view, is the best type of family unit for society. They believe that the conventional patriarchal nuclear family, which includes a married couple and traditional gender division of labour, best meets individual and social needs. New Right supporters would argue that it is because of the replacement of the nuclear family by wider family types that, in their view, society is failing.  They believe that other types are unnatural and have lead to family decline and social problems such as the lack of male role models has lead to a dependency on the welfare state and higher crime rates. As the New Right see the nuclear family as the best family form they view diversity as a crisis. The New Right answer to the crisis of diversity is to cut benefits and enforce responsibility on parents to attempt to reinforce the position of the traditional family. The simple basic views and beliefs of the New Right show that they do believe that the nuclear family has been replaced and it is because of this that society is failing.

Further research appears to confirm diversity in the family. Twenty-five percent of all households comprise of people living alone. Of all households, twenty-seven percent are married people without children. In working class communities, dispersed extended family arrangements still exist, which are kept together by modern communications such as the Internet and phone. Family structures such as Cohabiting families, Lone Parent Families, Reconstituted families and Homosexual families have also emerged. As marriage has declined and divorce rates have risen, the numbers of cohabitating couples has risen. For women aged twenty to twenty-four, cohabitation rates have increased from six percent to sixteen percent from 1981 to 1990. Finally, nearly forty percent of babies born to unmarried mothers are both to mothers who are cohabitating with the father of the child. Giddens, a post modernist, suggests that cohabitation has increased because marriage is less relevant in modern society and less important in terms of economic security. He also suggests that female attitudes to sexuality are responsible as fidelity is less important because of women’s movement and contraception. With evidence as strong as this, it is difficult to argue against the claim that the nuclear family has been replaced by a variety of family types.

Judith Stacey’s research provides supporting evidence that the nuclear family has been replaced by a variety of family types. As a post modernist, she believes that society is now characterised by flux and change and with securalisation attitudes have changed in recent years to be more accepting of other family types away from the traditional nuclear family. She voices a passionate plea for the importance of extending respect and support for all family types in order to develop more inclusive societal views as well as family policies that truly foster well-being for individuals and families. As a post modernist, Judith Stacey believes that the family itself cannot be defined as it can be anything as we are free to design our own. Cheal [1993] would support Stacey in her argument and suggest that one sign of the postmodern nature of the family is the experience of great difficulty in finding a common definition for the family.

Robert Chester [1985] denies that the nuclear family has been replaced by other family types and places more emphasis on the idea of the ‘neo-conventional family’ which is a traditional family however the women of the family work as well as the men. He believed that the majority of people still lived in nuclear families however life cycles often result in people not living in traditonal family units. He argues it is misleading to simply use ‘snapshot’ statistical figures relating to the composition of family structures at any given moment, simply because people’s lives are much more changeable in modern societies which, in effect, means they are likely to experience a diverse range of family experiences. Most of which will, in some form or another, involve living in a nuclear-type arrangement or, possibly more notably, wanting to live in that type of arrangement should the chance to do so be available. He therefore argues that the nuclear family has not been replaced by diversity in family types.

Jennifer Sommerville would agree with Chester in arguing that the decline of the traditional nuclear family has been exaggerated and had not been replaced, as there is substantial evidence that the nuclear family still exists and that the majority of the population still live within it.