Other reasons can be things such as declining stigma and changing attitudes. It is now seen and respected by the public to divorce if want to end your marriage. Whereas before it had been looked down on and a act of shame. Now that it no longer exists people are more confident to divorce without the judgement of society. Mitchell and goody (1997) claim that important changes since the 1960's has rapidly declined stigma attached to divorce.
There have also been other views and explanations of this for example some functionalist views of one below: One such Functionalist Ronald Fletcher (1996) suggested that in this day and age marriage is seen as less necessary and divorce more accepted in wider society, back as far as the 19th century it was much harder to achieve and was even frowned upon. Also he argued that higher expectations of people place on marriage today are a major cause of rising divorce rates. Higher expectations make couples nowadays less willing to tolerate an unhappy marriage. Also those such as Arlie Hochschild (1997) argues that for many women, the home compares unfavourably with work. At work women feel
1) What can you learn from Sources A and B about changing attitudes to crimes involving religious beliefs? Source A shows how during the middle ages how strongly society believed that your religion should be dictated and if you did not believe in the religion that they told you to then there would be severe consequences. However Source B shows that the changes to crimes involving religious beliefs have now become un-acceptable and society has become more equal over periods of time. 2) Transportation as an alternative to execution, c1660. Transportation was introduced because the authorities believed that it was a cheap and easy way to eliminate criminals from the country.
Assess the view that the nuclear family is no longer the norm. (24 marks) In this essay I will be assessing the view of different sociologists concerning the question ‘is the nuclear family no longer the norm?’, from this essay I should be able to conclude if it is in fact still the norm or not. First of all, in 1969 the Divorce Reform Act was put into place which enabled people to get a divorce easily compared to before. With this law people could simply say that the marriage wasn’t working out and straight away they could get a divorce, this had an impact on both family structure and society. After this law there was an increase in lone parent families, cohabiting and even same sex couples, this was because it started to be more socially acceptable and married couples didn’t have to be forced into a relationship if they weren’t happy.
The New Right believe that state benefits should be cut and social policy targeted to discourage family diversity and promote marriage and the nuclear family. Robert Chester (1985) recognises that there has been some increased family diversity in recent years. However, unlike the New Right he does not regard this as very significant, nor does he see it in a negative light. He argues that the only important change is a more from the dominance of the traditional or conventional nuclear family, to what he
Identify and explain some of the changes that have taken place in family structure over the last 50 years. (20 marks) Over the past 50 years, there have been many increases and declines in types of family for several reasons. One of the biggest changes has been the rapid decline in the number of nuclear families. A nuclear family consists of a heterosexual couple and normally two children. In the 1970’s, the divorce laws changed meaning that a person could divorce their spouse for any reason, rather than only being able to divorce before if there was some type of wrongdoing before.
The fact that people were offering the same complaints more than a century ago puts the latest bout of harrumphing in perspective, not unlike those quotations about the disgraceful values of the younger generation that turn out to be hundreds of years old. The long history of indignation also pretty well derails any attempts to place the blame for higher grades on a residue of bleeding-heart liberal professors hired in the '60s. (Unless, of course, there was a similar countercultural phenomenon in the 1860s.) Yet on campuses across America today, academe's usual requirements for supporting data and reasoned analysis have been suspended for some reason where this issue is concerned. It is largely accepted on faith that grade inflation -- an
Over the last forty years marriage and cohabitation patterns have drastically changed due to various reasons and changes in society. Firstly I will look at the changes in first marriages. In 1951 there were approximately 330,000 first marriages in the UK, whereas in 2009 there were only 190,000. This clearly shows the dramatic decline in first marriages. The reasons for this decrease are due to a change in social norms and a decline in social stigma.
However, as society changed its views on marriage, the Matrimonial Causes Act 1959 (Cth) was passed to allow divorce on the concept of fault, including adultery. However people were forced to blame the other party in court when fault lay with neither party. This problem and public acceptance of the concept of divorce assisted in the establishment of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth), which introduced the ‘no fault’ divorce and the only ground needed for divorce; an “irretrievable breakdown” of the marriage. This can be clearly seen in the cases of Whiteoak vs. Whiteoak 1980 and Pavey vs. Pavey 1976. Women also received greater equality as non financial contributions to the marriage were taken into account during the dissolution.
We know that in the past, divorce was very hard to get as it was only legal for the men to file a divorce. Also it was socially unacceptable. Government have now been passing down laws in order to give men and women equal rights in divorce and is now much easier and cheaper than before. This Suggesting that now women have rights they’d be more confident to now file a divorce. In 1969, the Divorce Reform Act was introduced which made it much easier to get a divorce.