Impact of Social Changes on Families

Family change involves more than different household shapes

Family structure concerns how a family is made up: for example, a couple with children, a lone parent with children, or a reconstituted family containing children from earlier relationships. A household is different: it consists of a person living alone or people living at the same address who share living facilities. Someone living alone may still have close family relationships elsewhere.

In Britain during the 1950s, marriage was a strong social norm: most adults were expected to marry, and marriage was generally expected to last until a partner died. Since then, cohabitation, divorce and remaining unmarried have become more acceptable. This does not mean that marriage has disappeared. It means that there are more accepted routes through adult and family life.

Several changes work together. Greater acceptance of divorce has more effect when the law also permits it and people have the financial means to establish separate households.

Changing norms, values and religious influence

A social norm is an expectation about behaviour, while a value is a belief about what matters. The expectation that couples should marry before living together is a norm; the belief that marriage is sacred is a value supporting it.

Since the 1960s, attitudes towards cohabitation, births outside marriage and divorce have become less disapproving within many social groups. Reduced stigma makes alternatives to marriage easier to choose. However, attitudes still differ between families, generations and communities.

Secularisation means that religion has less influence in society. Where religious teachings previously discouraged sex outside marriage or treated marriage as a lifelong sacred commitment, declining religious influence can weaken these barriers to cohabitation and divorce. This is one explanation, not a claim that all religious people have identical views.

Values within marriage have also changed. People increasingly expect affection, companionship and personal fulfilment. A couple may therefore end a deeply unsatisfying marriage rather than remain together simply because marriage is expected. Ronald Fletcher argued that higher expectations could explain divorce: leaving a disappointing marriage need not mean rejecting marriage itself.

Feminism, education and economic independence

Feminism challenges gender inequality and the assumption that women must depend on husbands. Increased educational and employment opportunities allow more women to establish careers and earn their own incomes. Marriage is therefore less necessary as a source of financial support, and leaving an unhappy marriage can become more feasible.

Longer participation in education and the time needed to establish a career also help explain later marriage. Some people prioritise qualifications and employment before making a long-term commitment.

Economic circumstances can push family change in different directions. Cohabitation may avoid the expense of a wedding, or allow a couple to save before marrying. An independent income may make separation possible, but running two households after separation can create financial hardship. Lone parents must often combine earning an income with caring for children. Welfare support can help, but it does not necessarily remove these difficulties.

Greater independence therefore expands opportunities without making everyone's choices equally easy. A woman with a secure income may have options that are much harder to exercise for someone in low-paid work with dependent children.

Laws change the available family arrangements

Legal changes can remove barriers to separation and recognise relationships that previously lacked legal recognition.

In England and Wales, the Divorce Reform Act 1969, implemented in 1971, made irretrievable breakdown the basis for divorce, demonstrated through specified circumstances such as adultery, unreasonable behaviour or separation. In 1984, the minimum time a couple had to be married before applying for divorce was reduced from three years to one.

The Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act 2020 introduced no-fault divorce in England and Wales when its provisions came into effect in April 2022. Applicants no longer had to allege a partner's misconduct or establish a period of separation to demonstrate breakdown. These changes make it easier to end a marriage legally; they do not, by themselves, explain why a relationship became unhappy.

The Civil Partnership Act 2004 provided legal recognition for same-sex couples. Same-sex marriages began in England and Wales in 2014. Such changes broaden the legally recognised forms of couple and family life. They also show that greater diversity can include access to marriage, rather than simply movement away from it.

Divorce, serial monogamy and changing structures

Divorce increased over much of the period after 1945, but it has not risen continuously. In England and Wales, annual divorce numbers peaked at 165,018 in 1993, compared with 118,140 in 2012 and 80,057 in 2022. These are numbers of divorces, not divorce rates calculated in relation to a population of married people.

Changing laws, reduced stigma, secularisation, financial independence and higher expectations all help explain why divorce became more accessible and acceptable. None is sufficient on its own.

Separation can produce a lone-parent family or a one-person household. If someone later forms a partnership involving children from an earlier relationship, a reconstituted family may result. Serial monogamy describes a sequence of exclusive partnerships: for example, a marriage ends and is followed by another marriage or a cohabiting relationship. It differs from having several partners simultaneously.

These changes can bring relief from conflict and new sources of companionship and support. They can also involve emotional distress, financial pressures and complicated arrangements for children. The family structure alone does not tell us whether family members are happier or worse off.

Cohabitation, lone parenthood and later marriage

Cohabitation is living together as a couple without marriage or a civil partnership. For some couples it is a stage before marriage; for others it is a lasting alternative. Reduced religious pressure, greater social acceptance and wedding costs all help explain its growth.

Cohabitation helps separate partnership and parenthood from marriage. Unmarried parents can live together and raise children jointly, so an increase in births outside marriage must not be mistaken for an equivalent increase in lone-parent families.

Divorce and the breakdown of cohabiting relationships can produce lone-parent families. Reduced stigma also makes raising children outside marriage more socially acceptable. However, lone parenthood does not necessarily mean that the other parent has no involvement.

Later marriage can reflect longer education, career-building and cohabitation before marrying. Consequently, fewer marriages in a particular year need not mean that everyone has rejected marriage: some people have postponed it.

Singlehood is not the same as living alone

Greater financial independence gives more people, including women, the opportunity to remain single or establish their own households. Some choose not to marry, while others become cautious about marriage after experiencing relationship breakdown themselves or seeing their parents divorce.

But singlehood, being unmarried and living alone are different. A cohabiting person is unmarried but not single. A person living alone may have a partner who lives elsewhere. Conversely, a single adult may live with relatives or housemates.

International migration can also contribute to one-person households when people move to Britain separately from relatives or partners. Their household arrangement does not necessarily represent a permanent preference for singlehood.

Immigration and reproductive technology widen possibilities

Immigration brings people with different family traditions and expectations into British society. This can contribute to cultural diversity in marriage, parenting and relationships with extended kin. The Rapoports noted, for example, the relatively high presence of extended-family arrangements in British Asian communities and differences in lone-parent patterns between ethnic groups.

These are patterns, not fixed rules. Families within the same ethnic group differ, and their arrangements can change across generations. Culture also interacts with employment, income and opportunities rather than determining family structure by itself.

Reproductive technologies such as IVF, which involves fertilising an egg outside the body, and surrogacy, in which someone carries a pregnancy for intended parents, can enable routes to parenthood beyond conception within a couple. They help explain why family formation is not restricted to one conventional pattern. Their existence does not mean that everyone has equal access to them.

Why families have become smaller

The long-term UK trend is towards women having fewer children. Completed family size measures the average number of live-born children that a generation of women has had by the end of its childbearing years. ONS figures show a decline from around 2.45 children per woman for women born in the mid-1930s, to 2.09 for those born in 1950, and 1.91 for those born in 1970. These are generations' completed childbearing histories, not the number of children born in those calendar years.

Family size in this sense differs from household size, which counts everyone living in a household. A household containing two parents, one child and two grandparents has five residents, but this does not mean the parents have five children. Average UK household size was 2.36 residents in 2023, very similar to 2.37 in 2013. A long-term decline in childbearing therefore need not mean household size falls steadily in every decade.

Technology has increased control over reproduction. The introduction of the contraceptive pill in the 1960s made it easier to decide whether and when to become pregnant. Access to contraception and legal abortion enabled greater control over family planning and helped people limit the number of children they had. Unlike IVF, which can help people have children, contraception helps people prevent or postpone pregnancy.

Changing expectations also matter. More women have opportunities in education and employment and no longer see motherhood as their only possible role. Some delay childbearing while building a career; some want fewer children or choose not to have children. Secularisation can weaken pressure to have children and religious objections to contraception, such as those of the Catholic Church.

Economic changes reinforce these choices. In the nineteenth century, children's earnings could contribute to family income. Today, raising children brings substantial costs, including housing and childcare. High living costs and insecure employment can encourage people to delay parenthood or have fewer children. Smaller families may also allow parents to maintain their preferred standard of living.

These explanations interact: contraception makes planning possible, while values and economic circumstances shape what people plan. Feminists see greater reproductive control as increased freedom from pressure to become mothers. However, postponement is not always a freely chosen preference: unaffordable housing or childcare can prevent people from having the family they want. Nor does delaying a first birth necessarily mean remaining childless; women may have children later.

The Rapoports: five dimensions of diversity

In 1982, Robert and Rhona Rapoport argued that British family life could not adequately be understood through a single dominant family norm. They used secondary research, reviewing work already published by other sociologists, to identify five dimensions of diversity.

• Organisational diversity: differences in family structures, domestic arrangements and networks. A lone-parent family, a reconstituted family and a dual-earner couple organise family life differently.
• Cultural diversity: differences in beliefs and expectations, including those associated with ethnic and religious backgrounds.
• Social class diversity: differences linked to class circumstances. Income, employment and working patterns affect how families organise their lives.
• Life-course diversity: changes as people move through stages of life. A couple without children, parents of young children and an older couple whose children have left home face different demands.
• Cohort diversity: differences between generations because they grow up in different historical circumstances. Younger generations have experienced greater acceptance and legal recognition of same-sex relationships than earlier generations did.

These dimensions overlap. A young dual-earner couple may illustrate organisational, class and cohort diversity simultaneously. The Rapoports argued that diverse families can perform essential family functions, such as care and support, rather than treating difference as evidence of failure.

Does diversity mean more freedom or less stability?

Supporters of family diversity emphasise greater freedom to choose arrangements suited to people's needs. Feminist arguments highlight women's increased ability to avoid dependence or leave oppressive marriages. However, economic constraints mean that freedom is unevenly distributed.

Ulrich Beck argued that relationships increasingly depend on negotiation and personal satisfaction rather than tradition. This can allow more flexible arrangements, but also make relationships more fragile when partners' expectations are not met.

In contrast, Robert Chester (1985) argued that diversity was overstated. His neo-conventional family was a nuclear family in which both partners earned an income. On this view, change may involve adapting the nuclear family rather than abandoning it. People can also pass through lone parenthood or living alone before forming another couple family.

The New Right argues that divorce and the weakening of the conventional nuclear family threaten stability and children's upbringing. This can be challenged by pointing out that staying together does not guarantee a supportive home, while other family forms can provide care and security.

A balanced conclusion is that British family life has become more varied and more legally and socially accepted, but diversity is not simply unrestricted choice. Class, culture and life stage shape people's options, and the quality of relationships matters alongside their structure.