Transcript Family Diversity

Family Diversity
• Blended or reconstituted families
• Lone parent
• Same sex
• Ethnic diversity
• Cohabitation
• Singlehood
Reconstituted or Blended Families
• One form of family diversity which moves away from traditional
notions of the family is the step-family now more commonly known
as the reconstituted or blended family.
• Allan & Crow (2001) research found ‘seven out of ten families with
dependent children may be described as married-couple families
these do not all conform to the stereotype of the ‘normal’ family as
some are step-families or reconstituted families. Step-families with
dependent children account for 7% of all families and there is
evidence of an increase in the proportion of step-families in recent
years’ (p289).
Reconstituted or Blended Families
• Carol Smart, co-author of The Changing Experience of Childhood, has
conducted research with many children whose families have broken
up
• Smart found, ‘it was impossible for the step-parent to become a
substitute mother or father. They tended to assume instead a nonauthoritarian, non-disciplinarian, companionship role. A new
etiquette is emerging
Reconstituted or Blended Families
• Dorit Braun of Parentline Plus says that blended families often take 10
years to bed down.
• But it’s certainly true that the step role – sometimes a sort of uncle,
father, big brother – is shifting and uncertain with discipline being the
most fraught and visible example of the unease.
• As one of the interviewees said, ‘It’s all tied up with will they like you
or not?’ The advice (for what it’s worth, when children are being
really infuriating) is to let the biological parent do the disciplining and,
if she’s not there, to say, ‘I don’t think your mother would like you to
do that.’
Reconstituted or Blended Families
• Bedell 2002 also found there are plenty of other difficulties that intact
families don’t have:
• How do you handle birthdays?
• What do you all do at Christmas?
• When there are competing rituals at Christmas – stockings or
pillowcases – whose do you jettison?
• How is everyone going to react when there’s a new baby arrives, who
really is a child of this family?
Reconstituted or Blended Families
• Fact file on blended/reconstituted family’s
• 10% of all British children lives with one birth parent and a step
parent
• Over 50% of children who live in two different households take a
positive view of their ‘divided lives’
• 6% of all families with children are step families
• Two fifths of all marriages are re-marriages
• 25% of children have experienced their parents’ divorce. Over 50% of
them will find themselves members of a stepfamily when their
mothers and fathers go on to find new partners.
Lone parent families
• ‘One-parent families’ only appeared in official documentation in the
1960s.
• Of course, arrangements whereby one parent brings up a child have
always existed but historically it was a phenomenon known by
different stigmatised names
• e.g. ‘unmarried mother’, ‘fatherless family’ and regarded from
different perspectives (e.g. as pathological).
Lone parent families
• Due to this social-shift an official definition of a lone-parent family
exists to offset any social stigma:
• “A mother or father living without a partner (either married or
cohabiting), with their dependent children. The child must be under
19 and in full-time education.”
Lone parent families
• However, the experience of lone parenthood remains ‘full of
ambiguities’
• Hardey & Crow’s research found lone parenting is associated with
tough economic circumstances and social marginalisation
• For example single parent households are the most likely to be in
arrears on one or more household bills, mortgage or nonmortgage
borrowing commitment 31% (Gingerbread, 2013).
Lone parent families
• Nevertheless the following official statistics (January 2012, Office for
National Statistics) show the extent to which Britain’s seen an
increasing rise in the number of single-parent families:
• In 1971 just 8 per cent of families with children were single parent
families
• In 1998 24 per cent of families with children were single parent
families
• In 2011 26 per cent of families with children were single parent
families
Lone parent families
• For New Right politicians lone parents remain a problem
• Rt Hon Iain Duncan Smith MP in 2004 blamed the rise of lone parent
families :
• He said: “In the fourth largest economy in the world, too many people
lived in dysfunctional homes, trapped on benefits. Too many children
were leaving school with no qualifications or skills to enable them to
work and prosper.”
Lone parent families
• The reasons for the increase in lone-parenthood are varied.
• Allan and Crow (2001) have identified three factors:
• 1. is an increase in marital breakdown.
• 2. a rise in births to unmarried mothers
• 3. society’s acceptance of family diversity.
Lone parent families
• Other sociologists have identified other causes of lone parenthood by
separating the different causes between married and non-married
individuals.
• For married couples the causes of lone parenthood tends to fall into three
main categories:
1 - divorce; 2 – separation; 3 - death of a spouse
• While the cause of lone parenthood for individuals who have never been
married tends to be due to:
1 - may have been living with the parent of the child when the child was
born, but then their relationship terminated
2 - a relationship was formed after the birth of the child, but the relationship
terminated a period of time later
Same Sex Families
• There has been a relatively small but gradually increasing number of
children brought up in same sex families (gay and lesbian families).
However the number of children brought up in same sex families is
very small.
• The Office of National Statistics noted that less than 1% of dependent
children lived in civil partnership or same sex cohabiting couple
families in 2012
Same Sex Families
• In 2009 Stonewalls research found:
• Many children of gay parents see their families as special and
different because all families are special and different, though some
feel that their families are a lot closer than other people’s families
• Some children feel that their family is a bit different if they have
lesbian or gay parents but this is something to celebrate, not worry
about
• Other children do recognise that children with gay parents are less
common than other sorts of families, but don’t feel this means that
their families are any different to other people’s families because of it.
Same Sex Families
• Macionis and Plummer show how new reproductive technologies
have helped to extend the variety of family relationships. It’s worth
noting reproductive technologies are used by heterosexual couples as
well as single and older women
• Stacey (1996) argues that gay and lesbian families represent an ideal
model of postmodern kinship because their conscious efforts to
devise intimate relationships are freed from the constraints and the
benefits of traditional patterns of family life
Ethnicity
• Ethnically diverse family structures:
• Asian – most Asian households are built on the nuclear model though they
do tend to encourage extended family forms. Cohabitation is rare, and
marrying young is normal though sometimes arranged
• African-Caribbean – single parenthood is very high in this ethnic group. In
2001 48% of African-Caribbean families were headed by lone parents
(women), they also have the lowest marriage rate and relative divorce rate.
• Multi-cultural families – there has been an increasing number of
partnerships between people from different ethnic groups. BeckGernsheim 2002 studies have found there can be conflict between the
ethnic groups of origin yet she also found that multicultural marriages help
break down social barriers
Ethncity
• Bangladeshi and Pakistani family size has reduced to an average of
about three children per family, still higher than other groups
• Chinese fertility is particularly low, partly because one third of the
Chinese population are students
• is less difference in family size between ethnic groups than in past
decades
• People from mixed race backgrounds are the youngest ethnic group in
England and Wales
Cohabitation
• New figures from the UK Census have revealed that more and more
couples are living together without being married and/or before
getting married
• In 1994, the earliest date for which figures are available, 75% of
couples marrying in a civil ceremony lived together before getting
married. This percentage increased steadily to 88% in 2011
• The number of dependent children living in these opposite sex
cohabiting couple families also increased, from 0.9 million to 1.8
million
• The reasons are as follows:
Cohabitation
• sexual relations – cohabiting is no longer associated with living in sin (social
stigma) making cohabitation socially acceptable
• choice – people (particularly young couples) choose to cohabit in order to
‘test’ their relationship
• changing roles of women – greater economic independence has meant
women are able to choose their relationships
• effective contraception – from 1967 onwards reliable contraception was
made available on the NHS. This meant it made it possible for couples to
cohabit without worrying about becoming pregnant
• parental freedom – the 1960s saw a gradual relaxation in parents towards
their children. The formal discipline of the past slowly eroded and so
eventually parents ‘allowed’ their children to live together without being
married
Cohabitatation
• education – 1960s saw a growth in Higher Education, this meant
more children were given more freedom than ever before
• building societies – started lending money to unmarried couples in
the late 1970s and early 1980s as the social stigma waned
• divorce – there’s increasingly less stigma associated with divorce,
consequently marriage as a union between couples is not as socially
strong
• increasing divorce rates makes marriage is less of an aspiration for
people which has added to the currency of cohabitation
Singlehood
• According to the Office for National Statistics the 2011 Census
revealed just under a third of households consisted of one person in
2011;
• proportionally this has remained unchanged since 2001 although the
number of people living alone has increased by 0.6 million.
• The composition of singlehood shows 2.5million between 45 and
64 living in their own home alone with the number of men on living
on their own has increased far more than women
Singlehood
• So what is driving this growth?
• American sociologist Eric Kinenberg research identified the following
points:
• more people live alone than ever before is that they can afford to
• the rise stems from the cultural change that Émile Durkheim, called the
cult of the individual - according to Durkheim, this cult grew out of the
transition from traditional rural communities to modern industrial cities.
• divorce once justified a person’s decision to stay in an empty-shell marriage
-today if someone is not fulfilled by their marriage, they have to justify
staying in it, because there is cultural pressure to be good to one’s self.
Singlehood
• communications revolution has allowed people to experience the
pleasures of social life even when they’re living alone
• young solitaires actively reframe living alone as a mark of distinction
and success -they use it as a way to invest time in their personal and
professional growth building up a strong network of friends and work
contacts.
• contemporary families are fragile, as are most jobs, and in the end
each of us must be able to depend on ourselves
• as divorced or separated people often say, there’s nothing lonelier
than living with the wrong person- there’s a difference between being
lonely and alone
Singlehood
• The rise in singlehood means:
• number of people living alone has pushed up demand for housing
• is very expensive in terms of state benefits and health and social
services care
• people who live alone are more likely to need the NHS or social
services