Month: April 2015

Family diversity by ethnicity in the UK

Asian households are the most likely to married, black households have the highest rates of single parents.

Last Updated on July 4, 2023 by Karl Thompson

This brief update explores the extent to which family life and attitudes to family-life vary across some of the different ethnic groups in the UK. It looks at such things as marriage, divorce, birth rates, household types, equality and household structure.

Ethnicity data from the 2021 UK census shows that 81.7% of the UK population are classified as ‘white’, 9.3% as ‘Asian’ or ‘Asian-British’, 4% as’ Black’, 2.9% as ‘Mixed’ and 2.3% as ‘other’.

(NB – This represents a significant increase in ethnic minorities compared to the 2001 census. In 2021, 18% of the population were non-white, compared to 9% in 2001.)

Marriage and Divorce Rates by Ethnicity

The ONS does not collect data on ethnicity when divorces are registered, so we have to rely on Census data.

To generalise, Asian adults are about 2.5 times more likely to be married than Black adults, and half as likely to be divorced (1)

Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshis have the highest rates of marriage and Black Caribbean the lowest… Over 60% of Asian adults are married compared to only 25.5% of Black Caribbeans.

Conversely, Mixed White/ Black, mixed White/ Asian and Caribbeans have the highest ‘divorced’ rate, at over 10%, while Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshis have much lower divorce rates, all below 5%.

Source: ONS (2021) Marriage and Civil Partnerships in the UK

Divorce is more common among young Asian couples

Divorce has traditionally been seen as something shameful in Asian culture, with children under pressure to stay in loveless marriages in order to uphold the family’s honour and prevent shame falling on the family.

However, for today’s third and fourth generation Asians, things are much different.. According to this article there is a soaring British Asian divorce rate now that young Asian men and especially women are better educated and increasingly going into professional careers.

Household type by Ethnicity

Some of the most obvious differences of ethnic minority households (compared to white) households include:

  • Asian households are three times less likely to be cohabiting, and have higher rates of marriage
  • Asian households have half the rate of Lone Person households compared to white households.
  • Black and mixed households have twice the rate of lone parent households.
  • Black, Asian and mixed households have incredibly low levels of pensioner couple households compared to White households, and much higher rates of ‘other households’ (could be ‘multigenerational?)
bar charts showing household structure by ethnicity, 2011.
Household types by ethnicity, UK Census 2011

To be more specific:

  • 47% of Asian households are married compared to just 22% of Black households and 33% of White households. 
  • Asian households have very low rates of cohabitation at only 3.5%, half that of Black households (7%) and three times less than White households (10%)
  • 24% of black households are lone parent, compared to only 10% of White households and 8% of Asian households.
  • 32% and 31% of Black and White households respectively are single person households, but only 17% of Asian households. 
MarriedCohabiting Lone Parent One person 
Asian 47%3.50%9%17%
Black 22%7.00%24%32%
White 33%10%10%31%

Source here.
British Asians have more conservative views towards marriage and sexuality

According to a poll in 2018, British Asians are twice as likely to report that ‘sex before marriage’ is unacceptable than ‘all Britons’, they are also more likely to be against same-sex relationships.

Bar chart showing Asian attitudes to same sex relationships, 2018.

Source: BBC News report, 2018

A previous UK National Statistics report showed that the highest proportions of married couples under pension age, with or without children, are in Asian households. Over half of Bangladeshi (54%), Indian (53%) and Pakistani (51%) households contained a married couple, compared with 37% of those headed by a White British person. Demonstrating the importance of marriage for the Brit-Asian communities.


Forced Marriages are more common among Asian Families

There is also a dark-side to Asian family life, and that comes in the number of Forced Marriages associated with Asian communities.

In 2018 the British authorities dealt with 1500 cases of Forced Marriage, with there being over 1000 cases a year for most of the last decade.

Nearly half of all cases involve victims being taken to or originating from Pakistan, with Bangladesh being the second most involved country.

Only 7% of Forced Marriages take place entirely in the UK, so there’s an interesting link to (negative) Globalisation and family life here.

Source: ONS Forced Marriage Statistics


Immigrant women have higher fertility rates

In 2021 the Total Fertility Rate for UK born women was 1.5 compared to 2 for non-UK women. This means the birth rate for non-UK born mother is about 25% higher.

The percentage of babies born to women from outside the UK has increased considerably over the last 20 years, but has recently leveled off and could now be declining.

Around 28% of births are to women who were born outside of the UK in 2018.

Source: ONS statistics: Births by Parents Country of Birth

The number of interracial relationships is increasing

The fact that interracial relationships are increasing might make it more difficult to make generalisations between ethnic groups in the future…..

Overall almost one in 10 people living in Britain is married to or living with someone from outside their own ethnic group, the analysis from the Office for National Statistics shows.

But the overall figure conceals wide variations. Only one in 25 white people have settled down with someone from outside their own racial background. By contrast 85 per cent of people from mixed-race families have themselves set up home with someone from another group.

Age is the crucial factor with those in their 20s and 30s more than twice as likely to be living with someone from another background as those over 65, reflecting a less rigid approach to identity over time.

A brief history of South-Asian Family Life in the UK

This historical study by Ballard (1982) noted that most South-Asian families had a much broader network of familial-relations than a typical white-British family and one individual household might be only one small part of a complex global network of kin-relations.

Ballard argued that in order to understand South-Asian family life in the UK in the 1980s, you had to look at the ideal model of family life in Asia which is Patriarchal, being based on tight control of women, collectivist (the group is more important than the individual) and obsessed with maintaining family honour (primarily through not getting divorced/ committing adultery or having children outside of wedlock) because maintaining honour was crucial to your being able to do business in the wider community.

Ballard also stressed the importance of Honour and its Patriarchal nature….. The complexity of the question of the asymmetry of the sexes is nowhere better illustrated than in the concepts of honour, izzat and shame, sharm. In its narrower sense izzat is a matter of male pride. Honourable men are expected to present an image of fearlessness and independence to the outside world, and at the same time to keep close control over the female members of their families. For a woman to challenge her husband’s or her father’s authority in public shamefully punctures his honour. To sustain male izzat wives, sisters and daughters must be seen to behave with seemly modesty, secluding themselves from the world of men.

One of the key questions A-level sociology students should ask themselves is the extent to which the above research is true today, or the extent to which things have changed!

Source: The Guardian, 2015

Other stuff

This is interesting: When will we stop blaming single black mother households.

Please click here to return to the homepage – ReviseSociology.com

Sources and Signposting

This material is mainly relevant to families and households module, usually taught in the first year of A-level sociology.

Evaluating the view that the nuclear family is in decline (part 3/3)

criticisms of the view that the nuclear family is in decline.

Last Updated on June 7, 2023 by Karl Thompson

Some commentators argue that the extent of ever increasing family diversity has been exaggerated.

Robert Chester – The Neo-Conventional 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. Chester argues the only important change is a move from the dominance of the traditional or conventional nuclear family, to what he describes as the ‘neo conventional’ family.

The Conventional Family – (declining) The Traditional nuclear family with ‘segregated conjugal roles’ – Male breadwinner and female homemaker.

The Neo-Conventional Family (the new norm) – a dual-earner family in which both spouses go out to work – similar to the symmetrical family of Young and Wilmott

Chester argues that most people are not choosing to live in alternatives to the nuclear family (such as lone parent families) on a long term basis and the nuclear family remains the ideal to which most people aspire. He argues that many people living alone have been or one day will be part of the nuclear family. Chester identifies a number of patterns that support his view:

  • Most children are still reared for most of their lives by their two natural parents
  • Most marriages still continue until death.
  • Cohabitation has increased, but for most couples it is a temporary phase before marrying.
  • Some ethnic groups are very likely to live in nuclear family households – Pakistani and Bangladeshi especially.
graph showing trends in married couple families
Married couple families are still the main type of family!

Pat Thane – A Historical Perspective on the ‘myth of the nuclear family’

This is a slightly different criticism to Chester – rather than criticising the idea that the nuclear family is in decline, Pat Thane challenges the idea that the nuclear family was ever the ‘norm’ in the first place. 

Family diversity was the norm up until world war two, then there was a brief period of thirty years from the 1940s -to the 1970s where nearly everyone got married and lived in nuclear families, and now we are returning to greater family diversity.

If we look at Marriage and Divorce – the decades after the end of the Second World War were an abnormal period, with much higher marriage rates than usual. Previously, in the 1930s for example, 15 percent of women and 9 percent of men did not marry. Similar numbers had long been normal.

If we look at lone parenthood –  In the early 18th century, 24 percent of marriages were ended by the death of a partner within ten years. As a result, a mixture of lone-parents, step-parents and step-children were commonplace in Britain.

Signposting and related posts

This material is relevant to the families and households module, usually taught in the first year of A-Level Sociology.

The preceding two posts to this one are:

Explaining the increase in family diversity part 1/3 – detailed class notes covering changing patterns of marriage and divorce, postmodernisation and economic factors.

Explaining the increase in family diversity part 2/3 – detailed class notes covering Feminism, social policies and late modernism

Sources

Pat Thane (2010) Happy Families? History and Family Policy.

Graph from the ONS families and households publication, 2022.

Explaining the increase in family and household diversity (part 2/3)

Feminism and changing gender roles, social policy changes and individualisation.

Last Updated on June 7, 2023 by Karl Thompson

Three factors which can explain the increase in family and household diversity are:

  • The impact of Feminism and changing gender roles
  • Social policies
  • Increasing individualisation with the shift to Late Modern society.

This is the second part of explaining these trends, you might also like to read the first part which covers the decline in marriage, postmodernisation and economic factors.

Feminism: Changing Gender Roles

Liberal Feminists and Late Modernists would point to the increasing number of women going into work as one of the most important underlying structural shifts in Late Modern Society.

The proportion of women in employment has risen from 52% in the early 1970s to 72% today, with women having closed the gap on men significantly over the last 40 years.

Rather than needing to depend on men for their financial independence, women are now much more likely to focus on building a career before ‘settling down’ and starting a family. This goes some way to explaining the increase in single person households. The increased earning power of women also explains the growth of the number of never-married women who choose to have babies on their own. While this only accounts for a relatively small proportion of single parent households, such numbers are increasing.

Women’s increased financial independence has also led to relationships becoming more fragile and thus helps explain the increase in single parent households and single person households following divorce.

Evaluation: It is important not to overstate the extent of ‘women’s liberation’ – In 2022, women accounted for 84 per cent of lone parents with dependent children and men the remaining 16 per cent. Women are more likely to take the main caring responsibilities for any children when relationships break down, and therefore become lone parents.

Social Policies

There are two important policies which lie behind many of the above changes – the 1969 Divorce Act and the 1972 Equal Pay Act.

In addition to the above, The New Right believe that overly generous welfare benefits have created an underclass in the UK, and a subsection of this underclass consists of teenage girls who choose to get pregnant in order to get a council house and live a comfortable life on welfare.

Evaluations (of the New Right): In reality, only 2% of single parents are teenagers, which is hardly a significant proportion compared to the overall numbers.

Also, it is not so much the benefits system which is to blame – The money is simply not enough to encourage someone to have a child to get housed – If you are on benefits, whether you have a child or not, you get enough to exist rather than to have a comfortable life. Also, Universal Credit encourages people into work today and the proposed changes to provide childcare for children as young as 9 months should accelerate this trend.

Late Modernism

Late Modern Sociologists argue against Postmodernists. The increase in family diversity is not simply a matter of individuals having more freedom of choice and choosing to live alone or become a single parent, people are forced into these options because of structural changes making life more uncertain.

Firstly, most people don’t choose to live with their parents until they are 30, and most people don’t choose to live in a multigenerational household, they do so because they have to out of economic necessity.

Secondly, most people still want to get married and have children, but fewer people do so because of an increase in ‘risk consciousness’ – There is more uncertainty about what a ‘normal relationship’ is. Changing roles of men and women and changing expectations of relationships and family life result in young people being more reluctant to settle down in a classic long term relationship.

Thirdly, Ulrich Beck also talks about indivdualisation – a new social norm is that our individual desires are more important than social commitments, and this makes marriage less likely. People are more likely to go through a series of monogamous relationships (serial monogamy) – which means cohabiting for a few years and then back to living alone again and then so on.

Finally, Anthony Giddens argues that the typical type of relationship is the ‘pure relationship’… it exists solely to meet the partners’ needs and is likely to continue only so long as it succeeds. Couples stay together because of love, happiness of sexual attraction rather than for tradition or for the sake of the children. In short, we have increased expectations of marriage, and if it doesn’t work for us, then we get a divorce, increasing the amount of single person and single parent and then reconstituted families.

Other Factors Explaining the Increase in Family and Household Diversity

  • Fewer people today are living in couples; there has been a big rise in the number of people living alone, and in 2022 almost three in ten households contained only one person. Half of all one person households are people of pensionable age. Many women in their 70s and 80s live alone simply because there are too few partners available in their age group – women marry men who are older than them and men die younger.
  • The massive expansion in higher education has seen the number of undergraduate students triple since 1970, from 414,000 to well over a million in 2023: this means more young adults are not in work and economically dependent on their parents for longer.

Signposting and related posts

This material is relevant to the families and households module, and a good next post to read would be this:

Evaluating the idea that there is increasing family diversity (part 3 of 3)

Explaining the increase in family diversity (part 1/3 )

Covering marriage, divorce, postmodernisation and economic factors

Last Updated on June 6, 2023 by Karl Thompson

Declining marriage and increasing divorce, the shift to a postmodern society and changing distributions of wealth can all help to explain why families and households in the UK have become more diverse in the 2000s.

Explaining the long term increase in family diversity

Changing patterns of marriage and divorce

The long term decline in marriage and increase in cohabitation and divorce can explain the increase in many types of family diversity.

The fact that people are getting married later explains why there are more Kidult and single person households: those who can afford it move into their own houses on their own, young people who can’t afford to move out stay living with their parents into their 30s, which has become increasingly common in recent years.

Any divorce which involves children is very likely to create one single parent household and one single person household for a period of time, and then many of these people will go on to form reconstituted families.

Relationship breakdown is more common amongst cohabiting rather than married families, and the cohabiting family household is the fastest growing family type in the UK.

Higher rates of divorce might also explain the increase in multigenerational households – as single mothers move back in with their parents, thus forming a multigenerational household.

Postmodernism and Postmodernisation

Postmodernists argue that the increase in the diversity of family household structures reflects the fact that we live in a diverse, tolerant society in which people are free to choose any type of family.

More people choose to stay single and hence there is an increase in Single Person Households Kidult households and because people are more tolerant it is easier than it was to be a single parent today because there is less stigma associated with being a single parent.

Another related factor here is that people are freer to choose non-nuclear families because of the decline of tradition and religion – there is much less social pressure to get married, have kids and stay married, so all other options become more viable.

Evaluation: Other perspectives argue that people do not simply choose to go into ‘alternative family structures’ – For example, Burghes and Browne’s 1995 research with 31 single parents found that not one of them had planned to become single parents, and all of them attributed their single parent status to the fact that their male partners had been either violent or too immature for parenthood

Economic Factors

The long term increase in wealth and overall rising standards of living explains the long-term increase in single person households. Generally wealthier countries have a higher proportion of single person households, and it is only wealthy countries where significant numbers of people can afford to live alone because it is expensive compared to two adults sharing the cost of a mortgage, bills, and food. It seems that when people can afford to do so, they are more likely to choose to live alone.

However, not everyone has benefitted from increasing wealth in the UK because at the same time as increasing wealth, the cost of living, and especially the cost of housing has increased. This explains the recent increase in multigenerational households and Kidult Households: at the lower end of the social class scale there are millions of people who cannot afford to buy or even rent their own houses, and so they stay living with their parents.

Read next:

Explaining the increase in family diversity part 2 of 3

Signposting

This material forms part of the families and households options within A-level sociology.

To return to the homepage – revisesociology.com

Trends in Family and Household Diversity in the UK

The diversity of families and households in the UK has been slowly increasing since 2012. Types of families on the rise include cohabiting households, reconstituted families, single-parent families, and ‘kidult’ households where adults live with their parents. There’s been a slight decrease in traditional ‘cereal packet’ families. Multigenerational households, however, saw a minor decrease, making up only 1% of households in 2022. Single-person households and lone-parent families also increased marginally yet represent significant proportions of UK households.

Last Updated on October 2, 2023 by Karl Thompson

Families and households in the UK have become more diverse since 2012, although the rate of change is relatively slow paced. The types of family and households which have increased since the 1950s include:

  • cohabiting rather than married households
  • reconstituted or step families
  • lone parent families
  • single person households
  • Kidult households, where adult children live with their parents.

The statistics below focus more on the trends in the last decade.

A slight decrease in ‘cereal packet’ families

  • The proportion of opposite-sex non-married cohabiting family households increased in the last decades, from 15.7% of all family households in the UK to 18.4% of all households in the UK.
  • There was a corresponding decrease in opposite-sex married family households: from 67% of all households to 65.2% of all households (2).
bar chart showing slight decrease in married family households
The proportion of ‘cereal packet families’ is slowly declining.
  • An important analysis point here is that the rate of decline is not particularly fast or significant.
  • Opposite-sex married and cohabitating families together make up 81% of all family households.
  • In other words around 80% of households with children are still heterosexual two parent households!

Trends in Reconstituted Families

  • In 2011 there were 544,000 step families with dependent children in England and Wales.
  • This means that 11% of couple families with dependent children were step families.
  • The Number of step families has increased since the 1950s.
  • However, the number of step families has declined recently dropping from 631,000 in 2001 to just 544,000 in 2011.
  • If there is only one biological parent in the step-family, that parent is the mother rather than the father in 90% of cases.
  • NB it is more difficult to get up to date stats on step-families! However according to this Guardian article from 2021 an estimated 1 in 3 families are blended families. NB this is probably including families with non dependent children.

Trends in Lone Parent Households

  • There were 2.9 million lone-parent families in the UK in 2022, which is 15% of all families.
  • This is down slightly from 2012 when there were 3.0 million lone-parent families, representing 17% of all families
  • 84% of lone-parent families were lone-mother families in 2022.
  • See source (2) below.

Separated Families

  • A separated family is defined as ‘one parent with care of a child 16 or under, or child aged under 20 if they are in full time Further Education, and with a non-resident parent’.
  • In 2020 there were an estimated 2.3 million separated families in Britain, with an estimated 3.6 million children.
  • 89% of parents with care in 2020 were female and under the age 50, and 86% of the non-resident parents male and 80% were under 50.
  • Methodological note: Lone parent and separated families are not quite. the same thing!

Trends in Single Person Households

  • 29.6% of all households in the UK were single person households in 2022.
  • This is equivalent to 8.3 million people or 13% of people who live in households.
  • This is up slightly from 2012 when 29% of all households were single person households.
  • According to Euromonitor International, the number of people living alone globally is skyrocketing, rising from about 153 million in 1996 to 277 million in 2011 – an increase of around 80% in 15 years.

Trends in ‘Kidult’ Households

The number of adults living with their parents rose by over 14% between 2011 and 2021 to 4.9 million adults.

Young adult males are more likely to live with their parents than young adult females.

In 2022 31% of males aged 20-34 lived with their parents compared to only 22% of females aged 20 to 34. (Source).

bar chart showing number of adults living with their parents UK

Overall, around 1/3 of adult men and 1/5th of adult women in the UK now live with their parents.

Trends in Multigenerational Households

  • Only 1% of households were multigenerational in the UK in 2022.
  • This is down slightly from 2012 when the figure was 1.1%.
Signposting and related posts

You can find a fuller range of stats in this post: Families in the UK: Interesting Statistics!

The next logical post after this one is:Explaining the increase in family diversity – part 1 of 3

For more posts on this topic area more generally please see my page on families and households, one of the options within the first year of A-level sociology (AAQA).

Sources

(1) Gov.UK (accessed June 2023) Separated Families Statistics April 2014 to March 2020.

(2) ONS: Families and Households in the UK 2022 (accessed June 2023)

Explaining the long term decrease in the death rate

economic growth, improved living standards, technological advances and improved public health all help explain the declining death rate.

Last Updated on October 9, 2023 by Karl Thompson

The death rate is the number of deaths in relation to the number of people in a population. It is normally measured per hundred thousand or per thousand people.

The death rate is also known as the mortality rate.

The crude mortality (or death) rate in England and Wales was approximately 10/1000 in 2021. This has decreased significantly since 1840 when the death rate was approximately 23/1000.

What is the long term trend in the death rate?

graph showing decline in death rate England and Wales 1840 to 2020.
The long term decrease in the death rate, England and Wales, 1840 to 2020.
  • The death rate has halved in the last century, declining from 23/1000 in 1840 to 10/1000 today.
  • The death rate decreased most rapidly between 1840 and 1830.
  • Since 1930 the death rate has declined overall, but at a slower rate.
  • There were spikes in the death rate during WW1 and WW2 (not shown on the graph below). See the data source (1) for details.
  • The death rate has increased since 2010, when the Tory government came to power.

NB the Census cites the death rate per 100 000 of the population. To get the death rate per 1000 you simply divide the above figures by 100!

How did Coronavirus affect the death rate?

There were more deaths in England and Wales due to the Coronavirus Pandemic especially in 2020 and 2021 (2)

graph showing decrease in death rates for males and females, England and Wales.
  • The age standardised death rate for males increased from 1079 per thousand in 2019 to 1236 per thousand in 2020
  • The age standardised death rate for females increased from 798 per thousand in 2019 to 894 per thousand in 2020.

The death rates now seem to be coming back down to what they were before the Pandemic. The overall long term trend is towards a declining death rate, and this is what this post will focus on.

Why has the death rate declined?

There are three major reasons for the long term decline in the death rate:

  1. Economic growth and improved living standards resulting in declining infant mortality and increased life expectancy.
  2. Medical advances such as improved immunisation and better survival rates from ‘diseases of affluence’ such as heart disease.
  3. Social policies and improved public health. Such as the establishment of the NHS and pollution laws.

In the first part of the century, most of this decrease was due to fewer children dying of infectious diseases, later on in the century, the continued decline is due to people living longer into old age.

The major causes of death have changed: from mainly being due to preventable, infectious diseases in the early part of the century to ‘diseases of affluence’ such as heart disease and cancers today.

There are considerable variations in life expectancy by gender and social class – people in the poorest parts of Glasgow die before 60, in the wealthiest parts of the UK (e.g. Kensington) life expectancy is nearer 90.

Economic growth and improving living standards

There are number of ways in which this had led to a decline in the death rate:

  • better food and nutrition (which in turn is related to better transport networks and refrigeration) which has meant that children are better able to resist infectious diseases, reducing the infant and child mortality rates. This is estimated to account for 50% of the decline in the death rate.
  • Better quality housing – Better heating and less damp, means less illness.
    Smaller family sizes – as people get richer they have fewer children, which reduces the chances of disease transmission.
  • More income = more taxation which = more money for public health services.
  • Evaluation – It’s worth noting that not all people have benefited equally from the above advances. The wealthy today have longer life expectancy than the poor, who still suffer health problems related to poverty.
  • Evaluation – In terms of food and nutrition, obesity is now becoming a serious problem – more food doesn’t necessarily mean better nutrition.

Medical Advances

  • Mass immunisation programmes limited the spread of infectious diseases such as measles.
  • Important in improving survival rates from ‘diseases of affluence’ such as heart disease and cancers.
  • Only really significant since the 1950s.
  • Evaluation – It’s easy to fall into the trap into thinking that modern medicine is the most important factor in improving life expectancy, it isn’t – economic growth, rising living standards and improvements in public health are more important.

Social Policies

  • The setting up of the NHS.
  • Health and safety laws – which legislate so that we have clean drinking water, food hygiene standards and safe sewage and waste disposal.
  • The clean air act and other policies designed to reduce pollution.
  • Health and Safety laws at work.
  • Evaluation – These are largely taken for granted, but they are important!

Other factors

  • There is greater knowledge and concern about health today
  • The decline of manual work means work is less physical and exhausting and less dangerous.

Analysis points

Two important related trends are the declining in infant mortality and the increase in life expectancy.

Declining Infant Mortality

The decline in infant mortality has broadly mirrored the declining death rate:

graph showing decline in infant mortality rates England and Wales 1850 to 2020.

Increasing life Expectancy

Much of the decrease in the death rate has been due to increasing life expectancy.

graph showing increased life expectancy.

Life expectancy isn’t increasing as fast today as it did between 1840 and 1850. This partly explains why the death rate has remained at around 10/1000 for the last several decades. People simply aren’t living that much longer!

Conclusions

  • 3/4s of the decline between the 1850s and 1970 was due to the reduction of infectious (fairly easily preventable) diseases such as Cholera, and improved nutrition accounts for half of this reduction. In these early years
  • More recently, the decrease in the death rate has been due to improving survival rates from heart disease and cancers.
  • The declining death rate is not necessarily all good – in the last decades we have witnessed a declining death rate and a declining birth rate – and so we now have an ageing population, which requires society to adapt in order to meet the different demands of differently structured population.
Mind map showing why the death rate has declined.
Related Posts

This topic is part of the demography aspect of the families and household module within A-level sociology.

A closely related topic with some overlapping themes is Explaining changes to the Birth Rate

To return to the homepage – revisesociology.com

Sources

(1) Office for National Statistics (2021) Annual deaths and mortality rates, 1838 to 2020 (provisional).

(2) Office for National Statistics (2021) Deaths registered in England and Wales: 2021 (refreshed populations)

How to explain the decline in the UKs birth rate

Economic growth, technological developments, more women in work and the child centred society.

Last Updated on September 6, 2023 by Karl Thompson

The birth rate in England and Wales fell from 18/1000 to just 11/1000 between 1950 and 2023.

The Total Fertility Rate declined from 2.9 babies per woman in 1960 to just 1.6 babies per woman in 2022.

This means both the birth rate and the total fertility rate have almost halved in the last 70 years.

Some of the main reasons for this trend include economic changes, technological chances, changing gender roles, postmodernisation and changes to the position of children.

Key terms

The Birth Rate is total number of live births per thousand members of the population per year.

The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is the average number of live children that a group of women would have if they experienced the age-specific fertility rates for the calendar year in question throughout their childbearing lifespan.

Trends in the Birth Rate and Total Fertility Rate

Between 1950 and 2023 the birth rate in England and Wales declined from 18/1000 to 11/1000….

line graph showing trends in birth rate UK 1950 to 2023

The Total Fertility Rate has fell from 2.9 babies per woman in 1960 to just 1.6 babies per women in 2022….

line grapth showing declining TFR UK

How do we explain the long term decline in the UK’s birth rate?

Five main factors can explain the long term decline in the UK’s birth rate:

  • Economic changes: improved living standards and the recent rising cost of living.
  • Technological and medical advances such as contraception.
  • Changes in the role of women – more women in work means they have fewer babies.
  • Postmodernisation – individualisation means having children is more of a choice, less of a norm.
  • Changes to childhood – children are now very expensive!
mind map summarising reasons for the long term decline in the UK's birth rate

Economic Changes

Globally, the general trend is that the wealthier the country, the lower the birth rate. It would seem that economic growth and rising living standards mean adults have fewer children. Part of the reason for this is that higher living standards mean better quality housing, better nutrition, better education and better medical care – all of which reduce the infant mortality rate, meaning that parents have fewer ‘replacement babies’ to make up for those who die before their first birthday.

A second factor here is related to Functionalism – as Functionalists see it, as societies evolve and become more complex, other institutions take over key functions of the family – men go into wage labour, which gets taxed, which then translates into schools and hospitals and pensions – the last century in the UK has seen the emergence of all of these institutions – people no longer need children to look after them in their old age, or to work the fields, other institutions do this, so people have fewer children. (This is related to the Functional Fit Theory.)

A final way economic factors can reduce the birth rate are that people are so busy working they don’t have time to start families – which is the case in contemporary Japan.

A criticism of economic arguments is that they are deterministic, people don’t just react to economic changes like robots, and they also appear a little ‘cold’ – It implies that people only have children for selfish, economic reasons.

The decline in Infant Mortality

Infant mortality has decreased significantly in the UK since 1980. In 1980 the infant mortality was 12/1000 babies, by 2021 it was down to just 3.7/1000.

line graph showing declining infant mortality UK 1980 to 2021

NB this is worth mentioning here because it is a significant achievement. However this probably doesn’t explain much of the decrease in the birth rate in the UK, because 12/1000 was already very low in 1980. (Obviously 3.7 is better!)

When you look at the global picture however declining infant mortality is a very significant factor in explaining the global trend in declining birth rates.

Technological Changes

The development of contraceptive technologies in the 1960s – Namely the contraceptive pill – gave rise to what Anthony Giddens calls ‘plastic sexuality’ where Sex becomes detached from reproduction. Also, importantly, The Pill gave women control of their reproduction and they could choose when to have children. There is no direct correlation between the invention of The Pill and the decline in the fertility rate – in fact the Baby Boom of the 1960s came immediately after The Pill’s invention, and most women clearly still choose to have babies, but this technological change does explain why women have babies later in life and have fewer children.

Other technological innovations which have led to people having babies later in life are IVF and the freezing of eggs – together these technologies mean women can delay having children into their 40s, extending the ‘natural’ period of fertility much later than is traditionally the case.

An attendant analysis point here is that for IVF to be available for all women, it requires the state to fund it, otherwise this would be prohibitively expensive for couples with low incomes, so for this technological factor to have an impact, it needs to combine with political rights and a wealthy state.

Changes in the Role of Women

Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck both regard this as the most important factor explaining the decline in the birth rate. Because women how have formal legal equality with men, and increased educational opportunities (girls are now outperforming boys at school), women now make up half the work force, and this has led to changes in attitudes to family life – Career now comes first for many women, and childbearing is delayed by an average of ten years compared to in the 1950s. Women now typically have their first babies in their 30s, not their 20s and up 1/4 women are expected to remain childless.

As an evaluation point here – it is important not to exaggerate the advances women have made, when the children come along, it is still predominantly women who do the majority of childcare and housework and suffer the consequences in terms of their career.

Postmodernisation

All of the above changes are part of the broader process of postmodernisation – The decline of traditional norms and values such as those associated with religions mean that contraception is no longer viewed in a stigmatised way and declining birth rates also reflect individualisation – the fact that we put our own needs first and it is acceptable to choose not to have children.

A criticism of Postmodernism is that many people simply don’t choose to have children. Many people are forced into living an uncertain, unpredictable life where having children may not be a possibility or simply not be rational or affordable.

Changes in the position of children

Until the late 19th century children were an asset to their parents because they could be sent out to work. Today, laws protect children from working and dictate that they should spend 18 years in education, and thus children have become an economic liability – they are a net drain on parents’ income. This puts people off having children.

People also have fewer children because we now live in a ‘child centred society‘. It is expected that children be the centre of family life, and parents are expected to spend more money (£250K is the average cost) and more time than ever engaged with their children – it is easier to do this with fewer children.

Related Posts

This topics relevant to the families and households module within the A-level sociology syllabus.

A closely related topics is Explaining the long term decline of the death rate

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The Postmodern Perspective on the Family

More individual freedom and choice means more family and life course diversity.

Last Updated on September 25, 2023 by Karl Thompson

Postmodernists argue that recent social changes such as increasing social fragmentation, greater diversity and technological changes have made family more a matter of personal choice and as a result families have become more unstable and more diverse.

In postmodern society there is no longer one typical type of family such as the nuclear family, rather there is huge diversity of family types and it is no longer possible to make general theories about the role of the family in society like Functionalists and Marxists have done in the past.

Postmodernity, Social Change and the Family

During the later part of modernity (around 1850-1950) society was clearly structured along social class lines with clear gender norms and the nuclear family formed part of (what at least appeared to be) a stable social structure.

Since the 1950s we have seen a shift to a postmodern society which is more global, fragmented (fractured), culturally diverse, consumerist, media saturated, uncertain and in which individuals have more freedom of choice.

The changes associated with postmodernity since the 1950s have changed the nature of the family: now that people have more choices, families are less stable and more diverse.

Postmodernity and The Family mind map

How has postmodernity changed the family?

  • The rise of consumer culture and individual choice: people have come to expect choice over what goods they buy, and the same applies to relationships: people choose when or whether to go get into a relationship, whether to get married, and when or whether they break up.
  • Technological changes and media saturation – ties into the above in the form of online dating and hookup sites – which set up a new norm of relationships being like shopping: if you can’t find someone ‘just right’ then either don’t bother or find someone that will do for now and ditch them when someone who does tick all your boxes comes along! This might explain the rise of serial monogamy.
  • Changes to work: there are no more jobs for life in the factory and this has led to a decline in the male breadwinner role. People have to spend longer training for careers, and change jobs more often during their working lives. Work is more pressured today, and there is less time for relationships which means more single people and more relationship breakdowns.
  • Changing gender norms: gender identity is more of a choice today which means we have more LGBTQ chosen families and also more gender equality within families, which leads to more diversity
  • The decline of religion – there is less social pressure to get married and stay married, meaning higher rates of divorce, potentially more reconstituted families.
  • Globalisation – more immigration means more ethnically mixed marriage, more relationships across borders, even more diversity.
  • Rapid social change, risk and uncertainty: instability in society affects relationships: if one partner loses a job or has to move for a new job, it might trigger a breakup, also awareness of high rates of divorce and the challenges of relationships might put people off getting involved in the first place.

To summarise: the shift to postmodern society has meant more individual choice which means more family and household diversity in society naturally means more types of family, for example:

  • More people staying single.
  • More short-term serial monogamy type relationships.
  • More cohabitation rather than marriage.
  • more people regarding their friends and other fictive kin as part of their families (see the Personal Life Perspective for more details).
  • more ethnic diversity within families.
  • changing gender norms mean an increase in more LGBTQ chosen families.
  • Higher rates of divorce and more single parent households and stepfamilies.

Furthermore there is no longer one dominant family type (such as the nuclear family). This means it is no longer possible to make generalisations about the role of the (nuclear) family society in the same way that modernist theories such as Functionalism did.

The rest of this post now considers two specific post-modern thinkers about the family – Judith Stacey and Tamara Hareven.

Stacey (1998) “The Divorce-Extended Family”

Judith Stacey argues that women have more freedom than ever before to shape their family arrangement to meet their needs and free themselves from patriarchal oppression. Through case studies conducted in Silicon Valley, California she found that women rather than men are the driving force behind changes in the family.

She discovered that many women rejected the traditional housewife role and had chosen extremely varied life paths (some choosing to return to education, becoming career women, divorcing and remarrying). Stacey identified a new type of family “the divorce-extended family” – members are connected by divorce rather than marriage, for example ex in-laws, or former husband’s new partners.

book cover: judith stacey family

Hareven (1978) “Life Course Analysis”

Tamara Hareven advocates the approach of life course analysis, that is that sociologists should be concerned with focusing on individual family members and the choices that they make throughout life regarding family arrangements.

This approach recognises that there is flexibility and variation in people’s lives, for example the choices and decisions they make and when they make them. For example, when they decide to raise children, choosing sexuality or moving into sheltered accommodation in old age.

Supporting evidence for the postmodern perspective on the family

Increasing family diversity

The 2022 Children’s Commissioner’s Family Review certainly supports the postmodern view that families are becoming more diverse over time. The review reports that family structure has gradually changed over the last 20 years: 

  • There are fewer married couples. 
  • There are more couples cohabiting.  
  • There are fewer ‘traditional’ nuclear family units today. 
  • 44% of children born at the start of the century, were not in a nuclear family for their full childhood, compared to 21% of children born in 1970.  
  • Over 80,000 children are in care, and many more in less formal arrangements, including kinship care. 

Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over is a recent documentary series exploring the diversity of family life in the UK. Most of the families are not nuclear families, but even those that are have non-standard lives, so even within the nuclear family set up, there is diversity!  

Marginalised Families is a website where people in diverse family structures can share their stories. It is designed to give more voice to non-nuclear families and provides some interesting case studies in family diversity.

More people are choosing to stay single than ever (5), but they are not isolated or lonely. In fact single people are more social than people in nuclear families and tend to have a broader conception of the family: in which they include friends, neighbours and ex-partners, thus challenging traditional definitions of the family.

(5) The Conversation (2017) More people than ever before are single and that’s a good thing. See also Bella de Paulo for the benefits of being single r

Low levels of belief in marriage

According to a 2022 YouGov Survey – does marriage matter 63% of UK adults think marriage is an outdated institution, although this is up from 68% in 2019.

Only 22% of the UK population thinks it matters that people are married before they have children: YouGov survey (2023) does marriage and children matter?

Criticisms of Postmodern Views on the Family

Late-Modernists such as Anthony Giddens suggest that even though people have more freedom, there is still a structure which shapes people’s decisions about the family.

Postmodernists over emphasise the amount of choice people have when it comes to relationships. However in truth, most people want to be in a stable long term relationship, but the social pressures of late modern life make this impossible for many to sustain. Thus people don’t ‘choose’ to get divorced or stay single as such, life just sort of pushes them into these ‘decisions’.

Contemporary Feminists disagree with Postmodernism, pointing out that in most cases traditional gender roles which disadvantage women remain the norm.

Signposting and Related Posts 

This post has been written primarily for students studying the families and households option in their first year of A-level sociology.

Related posts include:

The Personal Life Perspective on the Family.

The Late Modern Perspective on the Family.

Both of the above criticise the Postmodern perspective for over-emphasising the degree of personal choice individuals have, while still recognising that social changes have indeed made family life more chaotic!

If you like this sort of thing, you might also like these revision videos on YouTube.

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Evaluate Sociological Perspectives on Vocational Education (30)

Last Updated on January 11, 2019 by

Evaluations in italics!

VocationalSkills
Vocational Education refers to teaching people the specific knowledge and skills to prepare them for a particular career. Vocational Education can either be on the job training – such as with apprenticeships, or courses focused on a particular career in a college (typically 16-19).

The New Right introduced Vocational Educational in the 1980s. At the time they argued that Britain needed job-related training in order to combat high levels of unemployment at that time, and in order to prepare young people for a range of new jobs emerging with new technologies, and to make them more competitive in a globalising economy.

Two vocational policies the New Right introduced were National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) and the Youth Training Scheme (YTS). The former involved building a portfolio of evidence to prove you had the specific skills necessary for a job, and the later involved on the job training, in which trainees received a small wage, funded by the government.

At first glance, the expansion of Vocational Education in the 1980s seems to support the Functionalist view of education – as it seems be about getting people ready for work and performing the function of ‘role allocation’ more effectively, however, there were a number of criticisms of early Vocationalism

Two criticisms of these policies were that NVQs were seen by many as an inferior qualification to the more academic ‘A’ level subjects, and much on the job training was of a low quality because it wasn’t very well regulated – some trainees were basically just glorified tea boys (according to research by Marxist sociologist Dan Finn in the 1980s.)

New Labour expanded Vocational Education, seeing it as a way to provide individuals with the training needed to be competitive in a globalised Post-Fordist, high skilled/ high waged economy.

The main plank of Labour’s Vocational Policy was The New Deal for young people which Provided some kind of guaranteed training for any 18-24 year old who had been unemployed for more than 6 months. This was set up in 1998 and initially cost £3.5 billion. Employers were offered a government subsidy to take on people under 25 who had been unemployed for more than 6 months. By March 2003 almost 1 million people had started the New Deal, and 40% of them had moved on to full-time unsubsidised jobs.

A second central aspect of New Labour’s Vocational Policy was the introduction of The Modern Apprenticeships scheme in 2002.There are many different levels of Apprenticeships in a huge range of industries, and they typically involve on the job training in sectors ranging from tourism to engineering. Those undertaking them are paid a small wage, which varies with age, while undertaking training.

Some of the early modern apprenticships were criticised for being exploitative – some companies simply hired workers to a 6 week training course and then sacked them and rehired more trainees as a means of getting cheap labour. However, overall, apprenticeships have been a huge success and there are now hundreds of thousands of people who do them in any one year.

A third strand of New Labour’s Vocational Policy was The Introduction of Vocational A levels –Today, the most commonly recognised type of Vocational A level is the BTEC – Which Edexcel defines as being ‘designed as specialist work-related qualifications and are available in a range of sectors like business, engineering and ICT. A number of BTECs are recognised as Technical Certificates and form part of the Apprenticeship Framework.’

While the purpose of this was to try and eradicate the traditional vocational-academic divide it was mostly working class children went down the vocational route, while middle class children did A levels, which many middle class parents regard as the only ‘proper qualifications’, and from a broadly Marxist analysis Vocational Education simply reinforces the class divide.

In conclusion, the fact that Vocational Education has gradually been extended over the years suggests that successive governments see it as playing an important role in our society, especially in getting children ready for work and providing them with the type of skills our economy needs. It is also clear that a number of children simply are not suited to a purely academic education, so in an increasingly diverse society, it is likely to have a continued role to play. However, we also need to recognise that there are problems with it, such as with unscrupulous employers using on the job training as a means of getting cheap labour, so steps need to be taken to ensure it is effectively regulated.