Category: Families and Households

  • Legal Age for Marriage Raised to 18

    The legal age of marriage in the UK rose from 16 to 18 years of on Monday 27th February 2023. The reason behind this was to protect vulnerable teenagers aged 16 to 17 being manipulated or coerced into marriage against their will. There have been thousands of cases of forced marriage in recent years where…

  • Ageing in the UK…

    By 2066 5 million people in the UK will be aged over 85 and over, or 7% of the population.

  • How Has the SmartPhone Impacted Intimate Relationships?

    The majority of couples in longer term relationships use their smart phones primarily to ‘keep base’ with the partners during periods when they are not together, and manage to successfully negotiate rules to minimise the use of their phones when they are together. However, for a minority of couples excessive Smart Phone usage when together…

  • How has Increased Life Expectancy Affected the Experience of Childhood…?

    Life expectancy in England and Wales has risen dramatically over the last 100 years, increasing from around 55 in 1920 to 80 today for men and from 60 to 83 today for women. … This means that children who grew up in the 1920s and 1930s would, on average, not have had the experience of…

  • Arguments for Polyamory….

    Polyamory (having more than one long-term intimate sexual partner) is increasing in popularity in the UK, and it has many advantages compared to committing to monogamy, at least according to Ana Kirova, CEO of the FEELD app – which helps people interested in Polyamory find others with similar interests. This interesting topic, very relevant to…

  • Why is the Birth Rate in England and Wales Declining?

    The latest statistics rom the ONS show that half of all women now remain childless until they are 30, which reflects a longer term trend of declining birth rates in England and Wales. In fact, birth rates have been declining for around 10 years now, previous to which they had been increasing, but why is…

  • Thinking about Divorce Might help marriages last longer!

    Sociology students should be well aware that we live in age of persistently high divorce rates, with almost half of all marriages ending in Divorce. While marriage is usually a result of romantic love, and the first months and even years might well be pleasant, eventually mere practical concerns such as money, career changes, and…

  • Changing Family Values in the UK

    Attitudes to family life in the UK and Europe have become more liberal in the last decade

  • Why some women choose not to have children

    Birth rates have been falling for decades, in practically every country on earth. But not only are women having fewer children, more women are remaining childless for their entire lives. 15% of women in the United States now remain childless into their late 40s. However, this choice to remain child-free isn’t one that comes easy.…

  • A-level sociology families and households: course summary, schemes of work and lesson plans

    I’ve been consolidating my A-level sociology planning recently, and I’ve concluded it’s useful to have several different versions of module summaries and schemes of work, as below: A mind map overview/ summary A Power Point overview/ summary A brief scheme of work A long scheme of work Detailed individual lesson plans. All of these are…