Is the Family in Crisis?

Is the Family in Crisis? Divorce, illegitimacy, single-parent families, the new underclass, drugs & rising youth crime rates…..is this the end of civilisation as we know it?

Is the Family in Crisis? • The explosion of divorce since 1971 is seen by the New Right as threatening the stability of Society. • The increasing Diversity of household types and structures in Britain is given as evidence that the Family is no longer working. • How far do sociologists agree that modern Diversity in Family life is a cause for concern?

Goode: Marital Dissolution 1971 • Where marriages exist in a context of extended links between families (a mutuality of kin) there is pressure on the couple to make the marriage work • Nuclear / Privatised families stress choice and affection, but this can prove fragile, when exposed to external pressures (unemployment, money) > breakdown • Dissolution needs to be considered not only as divorce, but as separation and empty-shell marriages. Both are difficult to get figures on, but both are more likely now to end in divorce, than formerly.

Anderson: Sociology of the Family 1971 • Key reason for change is that people are living longer, could be married for very much longer and therefore are more likely to experience marital breakdown • This is not really new. Many people experienced more than one marriage or partnership in the 19th Century, as a result of being widowed, deserted or separated.

Nicky Hart: When Marriage Ends 1976 • 75% of all divorce petitions are begun by women • Civil rights, welfare benefits, family credit, education, working mothers, childcare and higher incomes make it easier for women to leave their husbands • Women have higher expectations of personal fulfilment from marriage and are less likely to put up with an abusive, inadequate or cheating partner • The ‘Value’ placed on marriage remains high, but so does the degree of ‘conflict’ in marriage, which is sensitive to economic stress. The ‘opportunity’ to escape marriage, by divorce, is also higher.

Cherlin: Marriage, Remarriage and Divorce 1981 • Kellogs or Simpsons families falling to 25% • Should look at the Life Cycle as a whole: Infant, Child, Young Adult, Partner, Young Married, Young Parent, Single Parent, Reconstituted Partnership, Remarriage, Parent of adult children, Surviving partner and old Age. • This puts Divorce into perspective

Eversley: Social Change & Diversity 1982 • Diversity in Family is correlated to location • Middle class areas tend to have Kellogs families (blood or step) & tend to be privatised • Working class areas have both nuclear & extended-networks • Fractured industrial areas lose single people • Inner cities gain youngsters and lose Kellogs families. • Rural & coastal areas tend to attract clusters of the elderly

Chester, 1985: Rise of the Neo-conventional Family • Moral panics about the divorce rate & the number of single-parent families are an over reaction • Divorce produces a ‘single parent family’, but most don’t stay that way, they become Reconstituted Families, as divorcees marry or cohabit with new partners • Most children experience a two adult, caring ‘family’ for most of the time. • Cohabitation & delayed marriage have given us the idea that people are giving up on marriage, when in fact they are not, because these are usually temporary phases, in an otherwise conventional life.

A. Wilson: The Family 1985 • Rise in the Divorce Rate does not threaten Society because: remarriage and cohabiting partnerships demonstrate that life long, monogamous relationships are still the individual goal of parents • People are experiencing several relationships, one after the other: Serial Monogamy.

B. Wilson: Religion in a Secular (Non-Religious) Society 1985 • A Key factor in the high rate of divorce and the increasing diversity of the family must be changes in traditional attitudes towards morality and the decline in the numbers of people attending church (5-7%) or marrying in church (less than 50%) • Social taboos have been removed. Being divorced, single, an unmarried parent, a cohabiter or a gay no longer attracts public opprobrium or discrimination to the same extent • You could argue that marriage has simply returned to what it was before Victorian Morality screwed things up

Gaynor Cohen: Life Course 1987 • The life course of individuals is made up of settled and unsettled phases. Overall the settled phases predominate and most children of breakdowns cope well with the unsettled phases, consequent to the breakdown of their parents’ marriage • The evidence suggests that it is stability and affection that matter - more than being with both biological parents for ever.

Giddens 1992 : The Transformation of Intimacy 1 • Giddens believes that sexual satisfaction and romantic attraction are a quite recent development & that until the 18th Century marriages were simply contractual alliances between families. • Then Romantic poetry & novels began to equate marriage with love - at least amongst aristocrats. • Women came to hope for an idealised relationship with their husband: one which was loving & sexual without being tied to pregnancy . • Giddens asserted that in the lives of peasants affective relationships remained irrelevant to the business of family alliance, reproduction & lust.

Giddens 1992 : The Transformation of Intimacy 2 • The Romantic ideal reinforced patriarchal norms: the delicate virgin, waited to be ‘swept off her feet’ and entombed in her ‘gilded cage’ - Being placed ‘on a pedestal’ always meant being constrained as a member of a ‘weaker sex’, whose sensitivity and purity exiled them forever from the male world of work, struggle and achievement. • Post-modernity or high modernity saw women achieve a degree of political & social equality with men; they were no longer capital or property to be sold by a father or bought by a husband.

Giddens 1992 : The Transformation of Intimacy 3 • The death rate fell and birth control became available. Women could avoid being perpetually pregnant and sex could be redefined as an affective relationship, not just reproduction. • SO: changes in the structure of Postmodern Society freed women in particular to give individual meaning to their social interactions. This process of structuration resulted in a plastic sexuality; one that could be moulded & re-moulded as women chose. Sexuality is re-defined. • Affective relationships have became confluent: contingent on the continuing consent ofboth sides.

Giddens 1992 : The Transformation of Intimacy 4 • Confluence means that the relationship is only defined as existing for as long as it is meaningful to both. Again this is individual meaning that relies on the structural opportunities afforded by changes to the divorce law [hence structuration]. • Pure relationships are held together only by consent and consent implies that the partnership must be mutually satisfying, open & equitable. • Marriage per se, may recognise such a relationship, but it cannot create one, nor can it, in the Postmodern world, replace it.

Giddens 1992 : The Transformation of Intimacy 5 • Giddens suspects that lesbian and gay couples find confluence and equitableness easier to sustain than heterosexual couples. • The individuality of definitions leaves open to negotiation, the degree to which relationships are exclusive or monogamous. • Confluent relationships ought to be less abusive & patriarchal, if they are based on consent. • Giddens sees evidence of institutional reflexivity, in the way that modern laws attempt to reflect the way that people are choosing to live their lives, rather than trying to enforce ancient norms.

A Critique of Gidden’s Argument 1 • Historians doubt the assertion that romantic love was a product of industrialisation & the novel. Courtly love and promiscuity can be traced back through the ballads of medieval chivalry to the rampant hedonism of Ancient Rome, where love, in & out of marriage, was clearly an obsession. • It is hard to gauge the feelings of illiterate peasants, but the constant despair of the Church at their morals suggests that they may have indulged in affective common law marriages and sexual promiscuity, even more than the rich. Their relationships were not so constrained by status, honour or the transfer of property rights.

A Critique of Gidden’s Argument 2 • Giddens admits that confluent relationships may result in all kinds of psychological and physical abuse, but sees them as a step in the right direction, a move towards freedom, symmetry, pluralism and self-discovery. Humanity is on a learning curve. • Given his left wing ideology, Gidden’s judgement is hardly value free. The liberal left welcome diversity and reject New Right fears, as certainly reactionary, probably sexist and possibly racist. • BUT: All the evidence suggests that people desire lasting exclusive relationships and regard it as a personal tragedy when partnerships fail. People do not see emotional turmoil as desirable.

Chandler 1993: Women Outside Marriage • 28% of children are born outside marriage, yet 70% have two parental signatures on their birth certificate. • This must mean that cohabitation is being chosen not as a temporary phase of life, but as a long-term lifestyle, by a newer generation. • The ‘Friends’ generation of young professionals has little to gain from getting married and is not under any moral pressure to do so. • The long-term commitment, financial cost and legal entanglements of marriage are off-putting.Clearly the divorce rate must be a factor.

Gibson 1994: 1 Dissolving Wedlock • Modernity has increased the pressures on marriage. • The culture of the free-market, the demanding consumer and rampant individualism means that relationships are assessed not as duties, but as rights: the individual’s right to a satisfying & enjoyable emotional life. • The perfect relationship is defined by media images of love & togetherness, which often raise expectations that are unrealistic & romanticised.

Gibson 1994: 2 Dissolving Wedlock • At the same time the free-enterprise culture encourages a selfish and materialistic approach to life that makes it difficult for people to sustain any kind of a relationship. • Secularisation is a key factor in dissolving the ties that used to make marriages more secure. • Divorce is no longer seen as a sin or a stigma. • The moral climate encourages people to pursue personal fulfilment without worrying about the moral implications of their actions. There is an acceptance that people cannot help how they feel and are not responsible for their choices.

Beck & Gernsheim 1995:The Normal Chaos of Love 1 • Family diversity in Modernity is characterised by greater freedom and individual choice. • The process of Individualisation has extended the areas of social action where individual choice and meaning outweigh the structuring effects of social norms & institutions. • The Post-Industrial social structure implies choice, in the mobility and specialisation of its workforce. • Community and kinship are no longer a given; this too is something that the individual is expected to creatively choose for themselves.

Beck & Gernsheim 1995:The Normal Chaos of Love 2 • In the isolation of the nuclear family, individual’s crave affective relationships more than ever, because structured relationships are missing. • But: the new social structure makes it difficult for loving relationships to survive. • The structure itself creates conflicts of interests between individuals, who try to sustain their love. • Men and women are in competition: the career of one will interdict that of the other, the leisure of one becomes the unpaid work of the other. • Societal values like competitiveness, greed or aggression inevitably destroy relationships.

Postmodernist Insights • Morgan, in Past-Modern Sociology 1995, suggested that sociologists should focus on family practices, the symbolic interactions of everyday life. Mealtimes were where the action and meaning were to be found. • Smart & Neale, in Family Fragments 1999, argue that men see divorce as a loss of power over their ex, whilst women see it as a loss of control over their own self-identity.Divorce means different things to different genders & different people & is still evolving into a more complex form of parenting. • Stacey, in The Postmodern Family 1996, explored the complex relationships of working class families in America. They had already gone further down the road towards diversity than sociologists might have expected.

Barlow et al 2001: Just a Piece of Paper? Marriage & Cohabitation • The BSA survey indicated in 1994 that 70% of respondents considered marriage and children inseparable. By 2000 down to 54%. • Premarital was ‘not wrong at all’ for 42% in 1984, but 62% by 2000. • In 2000, 67% approved of cohabitation & 56% thought it advisable for any couple intending to get married, to have a trial run. • BUT: 59% thought marriage the best kind of relationship and 73% thought a marriage certificate was more than just a piece of paper. • The future? Serial, monogamous cohabitation

Allan & Crow 2001 1 Families, Households & Society • Marriage is less embedded in the social economy than it was. • Fewer family-run businesses. • Wives more often have an independent income or could fall back on the Social Security net. • Fewer people rely on Family for employment, status and social security • Deference to family authority & obligation is less. [Note ethnic communities, where this is false] • Therefore when conflict erupts, people are under less constraint to endure in a failing relationship.

Allan & Crow 2001 2 Families, Households & Society • The nuclear or privatised family makes it easier for marriage unions to be dissolved • This particularly reflects women’s increasing independence and higher expectations, since 70% of petitions come from women. • Marriage is less a binding, lifelong contract now than a relationship. People expect the relationship to work for them, in terms of affection & support. • Where relationships are not intrinsically satisfying, there is no moral stigma attached to ending it - indeed ‘you owe it to yourself’, not to be a loser.

Jon Bernades: Understanding Family Diversity 2003 • 1998 Government Green Paper on ‘ Supporting Families’ led to the creation of the National Family & Parenting Institute, whose aim is to support family life, • Bernades argues that Diversity is now ‘accepted’ Left-wing sociologists support the optimistic view of diversity as a new opportunity. (Right disagree) • Diversity is good because Monogamy is not necessarily healthy and marriage oppresses women, threatens them and often leads to violence against women and children. • There still remain strong pressures on single people to pair up - or else feel a failure. • BUT: Single people living on their own have risen from 4% in 1961 to 15%, by 2003. Somerville sees this as evidence for women becoming more independent

Is the Family in Crisis?