Jeffrey Weeks (2000) identifies a long-term shift in attitudes since the 1950’s. Over this period sexual morality has become largely a matter of personal choice. At the same time the church and state have lost much of their power to influence individual morality. There is growing acceptance of sexual and family diversity especially by the under-35’s. Attitudes have become more favourable towards issues such as cohabitation and homosexuality.
However, Weeks observes that despite these changing attitudes, family patterns continue to be fairly traditional. Most people still live in a family; most children are bought up by couples; most couples marry and many divorcees re-marry.
Nevertheless, the number of marriages have decreased, and the number of couples cohabiting continues to increase and is the fastest growing family type in the UK with over two million couples now cohabiting. About a quarter of all unmarried couples under 60 are now cohabiting, double the amount of cohabiting couples in 1986. The number of cohabiting couples is expected to double again by 2021. Increased cohabitation rates reflect the decline in stigma attached to sex outside of marriage. In 1989, only 44% of people agreed that premarital sex was okay. This figure changed to 62% in 2000. Young people are more likely to accept cohabitation due to relatively recent changes in society such as; increased job opportunities for women which may mean that they have less need for the financial security of marriage and are freer to opt for cohabitation instead, some even staying single in order to establish themselves in a career before committing to a relationship let alone starting a family. Secularisation is another reason for the increase in cohabitation. According to the 2001 Census, young people with no religion were more likely to cohabit than those with religion as an influence on their morality.
Despite the increase in cohabitation, some couples see it as a trial for marriage, with 75% of the couples with the expectations of marriage further down the line. On the other hand, many couples see cohabitation as a permanent alternative to marriage. This proves that there is less of a traditional social stigma attached to living with someone out of wedlock. Child bearing outside of marriage has also become more common with only a third of people aged 18-24 who think marriage should come before parenthood.
Divorce is another major cause of changing family patterns and greater family diversity. For example, most re-marriages involve a divorcee, and divorce creates both lone-parent families and one-parent households. Since the 1960’s there has been an increase in the amount of divorces in the UK, doubling between 1961 and 1999 and doubled again by 1972. The upward trend continued peaking in 1993 at 180,000. Numbers fell slightly since then with 157,000 divorces in 2001- about six times higher than in 1961. This rate means that about 40% of all marriages will end in divorce. The increase in divorce is due to; changes in laws, declining stigma and changing attitudes, secularisation, rising expectations of marriage and the changes in the position of women.
Divorce was very difficult to obtain in the 19th century, especially for women. Gradually changes in the law have made divorce easier. When the grounds for divorce were equalised for men and women in 1923, this was followed by a sharp rise in the number of divorce petitions from women. Similarly, the widening of the ground in 1971 to “irretrievable breakdown” made divorce easier to obtain and produces a doubling of the divorce rate, almost overnight. The introduction of legal aid for divorce cases in 1949 lowered the cost, making it easier for working class people to get divorces.
Although divorce is the legal termination of a marriage, couples can do and find other solutions to the problem of an unhappy marriage such as an empty shell marriage, in which the couple continue to live under the same roof but remain married in name only.
Juliet Mitchell and Jack Goody (1997) note that an important change since the 1960’s has been the rapid decline in stigma attached to divorce. In the past, divorces and divorcees have been stigmatised. For example, churches tended to condemn divorce and would often refuse to conduct marriage services involving divorcees. Because of the decline, couples are more willing to resort to divorce as a solution to their marital problems.
Functionalist sociologists such as Ronald Fletcher (1966) argue than the higher expectations people place on marriage today are a major cause of people choosing to get married and the increase in divorce rates. Higher expectations make couples nowadays less willing to tolerate a less than satisfactory marriage. This is linked to the ideology of romantic love- an idea that has become dominant over recent centuries. This is the belief that marriage should be based solely on love. It follows that if the love in the marriage dies, there’s no other justification in staying in the marriage. In the past, by contrast, individuals often had little choice in whole they married, and at a time when the family was also a unit of production, marriage were often contracted largely for economic reasons or out of the duty of pleasing one’s family. Under such circumstances, individuals were less likely to have the high expectations about marriage as a romantic union. By entering a marriage with lower expectations, they were less likely to be dissatisfied by the absence of romance and intimacy.
Feminists see a high divorce rate as desirable because it shows that women are breaking away from the oppression of the patriarchal nuclear family. Many feminists also believe that the fact that women are now wage earners as well as homemakers has itself created a new source of conflict between husbands and wives leading to more divorces. While there have been big improvements in women’s position in society in terms of employment, politics and so on, feminists argue that in the private sphere of the family and personal relationships, changes have been slow, with men still expecting women to play the domestic, emotional role as well as going out to work. Feminist Jessie Bernard (1976) thinks that many women feel a growing dissatisfaction with patriarchal marriage. She sees the rising divorce rate, and the fact that most petitions come from women, as evidence of their growing awareness of feminist ideologies and that women are more confident about rejecting patriarchal oppression and have come to the realisation that they don’t need to financially depend on a partner and can manage independently.
In conclusion I think there are still many people who favour marriage. Although slowly, but surely old beliefs are changing. This phenomenon is triggered by social evolution, no one can stop it. The amount of people who value marriage has decreased due to the changes in society, however, in some cultures such as East Asian, the importance of marriage has remained a necessity for a successful life. However, if people choose different alternatives to marriage and are satisfied with their personal relationships, a legal document shouldn’t make it any less valued or valid. I also agree with the feminist perspective that it’s a positive sign that women are breaking away from the patriarchal family image in which households and relationships are led by men. By breaking away from their control, women are progressing even further with the ideology that both genders should be equal. In the long run I think that marriage will always have valued aspects, but people will continue to have higher expectations and will refuse to subject themselves to anything less than what they think is the perfect union, especially as it’s so much easier to change a relationship status’ nowadays as there is far less stigma attached to deciding to cohabit or getting a divorce from an unhappy marriage.
by
shenshen65 (student)
