However, after this period, the number of marriages in England and Wales then went into decline. Most recently, marriages reached an all-time low in 2005 when only 244,710 couples got married. Some people would say that it reached so low because people are rejecting marriage and are no longer bothered about it. But in fact, statistics reveal that many people are actually delaying marriage. It is said that most people will marry at some point in their lives, but people are deciding to marry later in life, most likely after a period of cohabitation.
As less people are religious, they are more likely to cohabit or divorce without fear of ‘living a sin’. The decline of religious significance is known as secularisation. Alternatively, changes in social attitudes mean that people art marrying at a later age rather than rejecting marriage altogether. Item B states that in 1971, only four per cent of women remained unmarried by the age of 50. By 1987, this figure had grown to seventeen per cent.
There are many reasons for the changes in divorce rates since the 1969 such as the legal changes, the changing role and position of women, also how the expectations for marriage is different. It is shown that from 1969 until 1972, divorce rates had doubled from around 50,000 divorces in the UK. It had more than tripled to 170,000 in 2000. Despite this, divorce rates dropped in 1993 from 180,000 to 157,000 in 2001. We know that in the past divorce was very hard to get as it was only legal for the men to file a divorce and was socially unacceptable.
There are many reasons for changes in family size over the past 100 years. Family size has been changing in all of the world’s industrial societies. One of the main reasons of changes in family size is that divorce rates have increased dramatically. This can be seen by figures showing that in 1950, there were 40,000 divorces across England and Wales and in 2005 there 153,399 across the same area. The increase in divorce has led to more reconstituted families, singlehood and single parenthood, therefore the family size has generally decreased apart from in cases where reconstituted families have been formed.
This was introduced in the mid 1960’s which allowed women to take control of their own fertility, which saw more women use contraception’s so birth rates decreased as a result of this. Over the past 25 years, 35% of all conceptions for the 18 - 19 age groups have ended in terminations and 20% of all conceptions are legally terminated. Also the legalisation of abortion in 1967 has had a huge impact on the number of birth rates, women were able to terminate their pregnancy & either focus on their career or decide not to have children. For Botting and Dunnell (2000), legal abortions have “contributed to the falling birth rates” amongst various age groups. Moreover because of these birth control techniques family sizes have decreased as more and more women now have more control over births than they did in the 1900’s, so they are choosing to have less children as a result of this.
In 2006, one in five women aged 45 were childless – double that of twenty years previously. Since women are choosing to not have children – the birth rate and there fore family size has fallen since 1900. Another factor is the decline in the infant mortality rate – the number of infants who die before their first birthday per 1000 babies born alive per year. Many sociologists argue that a fall in IMR leads to a fall in birth rate because if many infants die, parents have more children to replace those they have lost and thus increasing the birth rate. This is proven since in 1900 the IMR in the UK was 154 and by 2007 it had sharply declined to 5, owing to many factors including improved housing and better sanitation.
Life expectancy in 1900 was only around 47 for men and 50 for women whereas it now in 2013 83 for men and 87 for women. There are many reasons for the decline in the birth rate, the reduction of the infant mortality rate, meaning less children are dying in their first year of life, due to advancements in medical care meaning that families don’t need to reproduce a larger quantity of children on fear of death. Contraception was formally introduced in 1961 to the UK for married couples only, this meant that married couples could control the amount of children they could, which has become increasingly popular over the last 50 years because it has enabled couples and others to have sexual relations without resulting in a child. During the industrialization and up until around the 1900s, children were seen as a source of income to working class families as they could be sent out to work, so families had large amounts of children to bring in money. But due to the introduction of a law restricting the age of employment and compulsory education meant that children were now seen as a drain on money so families began to become smaller because of the expense of having a child.
Chapter 4 1. Describe how marriage and households have changed over the last 50 years in America. a. In many industrialized countries, people are increasingly turning away from traditional marriage. They are also adopting new roles for family members and various kinds of family structures.
By middle age, more than 90 percent of adults have married at least once. Married people often describe their marital satisfaction in terms of a “U-curve.” People generally affirm that their marriages are happiest during the early years, but not as happy during the middle years. Marital satisfaction then increases in the later years after finances have stabilized and parenting responsibilities have ended. Couples who stay together until after the last child leaves home will probably remain married for at least another 20 years as long as their intent was not to wait until the last child leaves the home to divorce. Divorce Middle adults do not exhibit an immunity to problems in relationships.
Also, womens education is now a lot better, so women are now not wanting to start a family and be in relationships but want to do well in their education and stay in education as long as possible. This means they are living on their own and are not being part of a family. Women also have higher expectations in a marriage now days, and will not tolerate being a victim of feminism