People are also expecting more from marriage, and women especially are choosing to live alone due to feminist views. One reason for the growth in single hood could be the change in the law for divorce. In 1969 the Divorce Reform Act allowed people to divorce easier, as it meant they could put in place a no fault act. This meant that people didn't feel forced to stay in a marriage that made them unhappy. Furthermore, this would lead to a lot of people expecting more from relationships after getting divorced, as they wouldn't want to fall victim to what cause their last marriage to end again.
One of these policies is the divorce act 1969; which has made it easier for couples to get divorced. Due to this, marriage has become less sacred which has made the family unit weaker. Couples may get a divorce instead of trying hard in the relationship to make it better. Another law affecting the family is the new deal 1998; which makes it easier for lone mothers to get back into paid work. This was introduced by the Labour party, who Lewis argues have taken on the idea of ‘social investment in children’ seriously and have realised family forms are changing.
Over the last 50 years or so, the patterns of marriage and divorce have changed significantly, and are still changing in today’s society. Due to many factors including: less stigma, changes in women’s positions, secularization and cohabitation. Nowadays, there is less pressure to marry and a lot more freedom for individuals to choose the type of relationship they want. It’s considered more important about the quality of a couples relationship, rather than the legal status. Secularisation is also involved in why there are changing patterns of marriage due to churches being in favour of marriage, but as their influence declines, people feel freer to choose not to marry – according to the 2001 Cenus, 3% of young people with no religion were married, compared to up to 17% of those with a religion.
In the UK, divorce has become a lot easier for women so more women are escaping an unhappy marriage and choosing to get divorced. The welfare state provides benefits for single parent families, so women are able to support their children on their own. These include child benefits, housing benefits and tax credits. This could encourage women to get divorced, hence leading to an increase in single parent families. Refugees have also been made available for women by the government, which have allowed women to escape domestic violence.
In the view of the government this would have a good impact on society because it reduced the amount of children being put up for adoption, less people would go through back street abortion which was a very dangerous procedure and the government also believed it would reduce the amount of poverty. Although it seemed like the legalisation of abortion was a positive
As time progresses, society began to change its view on marriage and force the legal system to adapt to the change. The introduction of Matrimonial clauses Act 1959 (cth) reflects the contextual society’s expectations by allowing divorce on the concept of fault including, insanity, violence, desertion, and death of the other partner. This can be seen in the case of Evans V Evans 1790 where the court recognised that people could be living in unhappy marriages; however there was no divorce for the sake of institution of marriage. Although this piece of legislation is reflective of the standard, this law is also seen as problematic as the effectiveness of addressing the issues raised by Divorce such as: harsh criteria to find grounds of fault, financial and Psychological impact of members of family and
Being a Daoist Priestess shows us that men weren’t the only type of human beings able to hold a place of power. By women obtaining property shows us that women could work for themselves and were independent from men. During this time women were quite happy with their rights, but the smile will soon be wiped off their faces because their rights just keep dwindling down to nothing. During the middle or end of the Tang dynasty and beginning of the Song dynasty women’s rights were at there “peak” and started to decline slowly. The Tang dynasty declined due to loss of communication throughout the empire, generals and officials gaining too much power, and revolts causing the empire to be weak and open for attack.
They are also not having babies or having them later so that they can pursue single lifestyle which means that by the time they have done this they have less time to have babies which means if they do decide to have children they will have less due to the time they have spent being single. A lot of women now have become a lot more independent and are concentrating on their career. Contraception has also improved a lot since the 1900’s this now means that women can choose whether they want to have children or not and still have a sexual relationship whereas before if you wanted to have sex you would most probably become pregnant. In the 1900’s children were less likely to survive due to the health conditions and lack of health care, now there is the NHS free health care for people so babies have a lot more chance of surviving so mothers don’t need to have as many children because the chance of them surviving is a lot higher than it used to be. Women are choosing to have babies later which is also causing the birth rate to drop this is because there is less stigma on having babies t an older age so women are waiting and not worrying what people might think.
In the years following this decision, several states began adopting laws against domestic violence that made wife beating a crime. Despite these laws, individual opinions held by judges and prosecutors regarding the appropriate role of law in private family matters frequently meant that courts did not enforce these laws. In the 1970s, the feminist movement focused attention on battered women, leading to some changes in the criminal justice response to domestic violence. The attention drawn by the feminist movement to domestic violence resulted in legal reforms that emphasized the need for court intervention in these matters. The emphasis of these new reforms was on applying sanctions to the batterer through such measures as the enactment of civil order of protection statutes, criminal contempt orders to enforce protection orders, and laws mandating the arrest of batterers.
The major change has been the introduction of the divorce reform act. This law allows the termination of a marriage without having to prove that one particular person had done anything to cause this. Now, divorce is considered acceptable when there is an irretrievable breakdown of a marriage. Another reason for the changes in divorce rate could be secularisation. Secularisation means the decline of the importance / influence of religion in society.