Demography refers to the study of the causes and consequences of changes to the size and structure of a society’s population. There are generally three things which can change the size and structure of a population – birth rates, death rates and migration, and these three things make up the three major sub-topics.
As with marriage and divorce, we break this down into discussing the reasons for the changes and then consider the consequences. A final additional topic here is migration patterns, which we deal with separately.
Subtopics
7.1: Reasons for changes to the Birth Rate
7.2: Reasons for changes to the Death Rate
7.3: The consequences of an Ageing Population
7.4: The reasons for and consequences of changes to patterns of Migration
Key concepts, research studies and case studies you should be able to apply
Birth rate
Death rate
Dependency Ratio
Total fertility rate
Infant Mortality Rate
Child Mortality Rate
Life Expectancy
Healthy Life Expectancy
Demographic Transition
Immigration
Emigration
Net Migration
Push Factors
Pull Factors
Possible exam style short answer questions
Suggest two reasons for the long term decline in birth rate (4)
Suggest changes in the role of women that may explain why they have fewer children (4)
Suggest three consequences of the decline in the birth rate (6)
Suggest three reasons for the long term decrease in the death rate (6)
Suggest three problems society may face as a result of an ageing population (6)
Suggest three ways in which the elderly might be represented in stereotypical ways (6)
Suggest three ways in which society might respond to the challenges of an ageing population (6)
Suggest three pull factors which might attract people to immigrate into a particular country (6)
Suggest two push factors which might explain patterns of migration (4)
Identify two changes in the patterns of child-bearing over the last thirty years (4)
Possible Essay Questions – You should plan these
Examine the reasons for, and the effects of, changes in family size over the past 100 years or so (24) (January 2012)
Using material from item B and elsewhere assess the view that an ageing Population creates problems for society (24) (June 2014)
An Overview of Families and Households Topic Two – Marriage, Divorce and Cohabitation, covering key sub-topics, key concepts and some exam style questions (short answer and essay questions).
You need to be able to identify key trends in marriage, divorce and cohabitation and outline the social factors which explain why the trends are happening (ideally using sociological perspectives), and analyse the importance of each factor. You also need to be able to outline different perspectives views on the consequences of the changing patterns of each of the above.
Sub topics
2.1: Explaining the trends in marriage
2.2: Explaining the trends in divorce
2.3: Perspectives on the consequences of declining marriage and increasing divorce
2.4: Examining how marriage, divorce and cohabitation vary by social class, ethnicity, sexuality and across generations
Key concepts, research studies and case studies you should be able to apply
Civil Partnerships
Divorce
Legal separation
Empty shell marriage
Secularisation
Cohabitation
The pure relationship (Anthony Giddens)
The negotiated family (Ulrich Beck)
Consumer culture
Postmodernisation
Gender roles (changing)
Genderquake
Individualisation
Monogamy
Serial Monogamy
Possible exam style short answer questions
Outline three reasons for the overall rise in the divorce rate since 1969 (6)
Using one example briefly explain one reason for the recent decrease in divorce rates (4)
Outline three social changes which explain why there has been a decline in the marriage rate (6)
Outline and explain two consequences of an increasing divorce rate (10) hint – use the perspectives.
Define the following terms – the matrifocal family, polygamy, polygyny and polyandry (4*2 marks for each term).
Possible Essay Questions – You should plan these!
Assess sociological explanations for the changes in the patterns of marriage and cohabitation over the last 40 years or so (20)
Assess sociological explanations for changes in the divorce rate since 1969 (20)
Assess different perspectives on declining marriage, increasing divorce and increasing co-habitation (20)
This is the first of seven* broad topics within the sociology of the family for A-level sociology (*as defined by most A-level text books!)
Perspectives on the family: a summary
Below is a brief summary of the seven main perspectives, click the links for further details!
Functionalism – focus on the positive functions of the nuclear family, includes Murdock’s theory that the nuclear family is universal and Parsons’ Functional Fit Theory.
Marxism – Engel’s theory that the nuclear family emerged with capitalism and private property so the bourgeois could pass their wealth down to their children; and the modern idea that the family is a unit of consumption.
Feminisms – Liberal Feminists believe there is nothing inherently wrong with the nuclear family, Marxist-Feminists believe the subordination of women within the family is essential to keeping capitalism going; radical feminists argue the nuclear family is the main source of oppression for women through such things as domestic violence.
The New Right – believe the nuclear family is the ideal type of family
Postmodernism – there is no longer a normal type of family but rather family diversity because people have more freedom and choice in postmodern society.
Late Modernism – family diversity and breakdowns are more common, but people don’t choose this, it is because of increasing uncertainty and fragmentation in society.
The Personal Life Perspective – there is no universal definition of the family. What counts as a family varies from individual to individual.
Being able to critically apply different perspectives is the most important skill you can demonstrate in Sociology. You can also apply the perspectives to many of the other topics within the family, most obviously Marriage and Divorce and Social Policies.
Key concepts, research studies and case studies
Please click here for a post containing brief definitions of many of these key terms.
The Nuclear family
Stable Satisfaction of the sex drive
Primary Socialisation
Dual Burden
Stabilisation of adult personalities
Primitive communism
ideological functions
family as a unit of consumption
Socialisation
Parson’s functional fit theory
Traditional society
Extended family
Triple Shift
Negotiated Family
The Underclass
Moral Decline
The Pure Relationship
Risk Society
Consumer culture
Globalisation
Negotiated family
Individualisation
‘The normal chaos of love’
Possible exam style short answer questions
Please click here for my hub-post on exam advice with links to some of the questions below.
Outline and briefly explain two positive functions that the nuclear family might perform (10)
Using one example, explain what is meant by the term ‘the stabilisation of adult personalities’ (4)
Using one example explain how the nuclear family’ fits’ industrial society? (4)
Outline and briefly explain two criticisms of the ‘The Functionalist Perspective’ on the family (10)
Outline three ways in which the family might perform ideological functions (6)
Using one example, explain what is meant the phrase ‘the family is a unit of consumption’ (4)
Define the term Patriarchy (2)
Outline and briefly explain the difference between the Liberal and Radical Feminist views of the family (10)
Using one example explain postmodern society has influenced family life in recent years (4)
Possible Essay Questions
Assess the Contribution of Functionalism to our Understanding of Family Life (20)
Using material from Item 2B and elsewhere, assess the contribution of feminist sociologists to an understanding of family roles and relationships
Evaluate the New Right Perspective on the family (20)
Evaluate the postmodernist view of the family and relationships (20)
Assess the view that the main aim of the nuclear family is to meet the needs of Capitalism (20)
Using material from Item 2B and elsewhere, assess the view that, in today’s society, the family is losing its functions (20)
The final question is emboldened because it is more likely you’ll get a question like this rather than a straightforward ‘assess this perspective’ type question.
married family households are decreasing, cohabiting family, lone parent family and single parent family households are all increasing.
This post summaries some of the changing trends (and continuities) in family and household structure in the UK, using data from the Office for National Statistics which collects a range of data annually on families and households in the UK.
There were 19.4 million families in the UK in 2022.
The most common family type in the UK 2022 was the married couple family, making up 65% of all families (down from 67% in 2012).
Cohabiting couple families made up 19% of all families, up from 16% in 2012.
There were 2.9 million lone parent families in 2022, representing 15% of all families.
43% of families had no children living with them and 42% of families had at least one dependent child.
Only 15% of families had only non-dependent children living with them.
Households in the UK in 2022…
The breakdown of family and non-family households in the UK in 2022 was as follows…
There were 28.2 million households in the UK in 2022, an increase of 1.6 million since 2012.
18.8 million (57%) of households were one family households, either with or without children living in them. Approximately half of these had children living in, the other half were ’empty nest’ households.
(10% of households were lone parent family households (84% of which were lone-mother households. NB this 10% is included in the 57% in the first bullet point above!).
8.5 million households (30%) were single person households, up from 29% in 2012 and representing 13% of the population in 2022.
3% of households were occupied by unrelated adults living together
1% of households were multi family, which includes multigenerational.
The average household had 2.36 people living in it in 2022, similar to 2012.
Changes to families and households 2012-2022
I’ve used the 2022 statistics where I can to summarise trends, but in some cases below I’ve had to go back to the 2018 analysis because that’s the last time the ONS focussed on changes over time using the particular graphics I wanted. NB the trend between 2018 and 2022 probably hasn’t changed anyway, so no worries!
(With any luck I’ll have the visualisation skills to update this with the 2022 data soon enough anyway!)
Changes to Family Households
There has been a continued decrease in married couple families, from 67% of families in 2012 to 65.2% of families in 2022.
Opposite-sex cohabiting families have seen the most signficant growth, up from 15.4% to almost 19% of all families today.
The number of lone parent families has decreased slightly in the last ten years to 15% of all families in 2022.
Same-sex cohabiting and same-sex civil partner families have both increased and together make up 1.2% of all families in 2022, up from 0.8% of all families in 2012
This means same-sex families have had the fastest growth rate over the past decade but from a very small base.
Marriage and Cohabitation Trends
The chart below clearly shows the long term increase in cohabitating families between 1996 to 2018, and when combined with stats above, from 1996 to 2022.
In 1996 there were only 2 million cohabiting families, in 2022 there were 3.7 million.
The number of married families remained stable between 1996 and 2018, but have declined quite sharply in the last four years to 2022.
Family Size in the UK
The one child family is the most common type of family in the UK in 2022.
44% of families are one child, around 3.6 million families
41% are two children families, around 3.4 million families
15% are three children families, around 1.2 million families.
Family size appears to have remained pretty stable over the past 15 years (1)
Households Size in the UK
The average household size in the UK is 2.4, but the infographic below taken from the 2021 UK Census (2) shows how this breaks down more specifically. The dots are local authority areas, so the national average is in the middle of each cluster.
30% of households have one person in
35% have two people in
17% have three people in
14% have three people in
5% have five people in.
The above are estimates based on looking at what’s below!
Multi Family Households
There were approximately 280 000 multi family households in the UK in 2022, which is down from the peak of just over 300 000 in 2014, but a significant long term increase since 1996 when there were only 180 000 such households…
Increase in People Living Alone
There has been a slow and steady increase in the overall numbers of people living alone, but this varies a lot by age – generally the number of older people living alone has increased, the number of younger people living alone has decreased.
Signposting and related posts.
This is a key topic in the families and households module, usually taught in the first year of A-level sociology.
The Postmodern View of Family/ Personal Relationships
The fact that we see a dazzling array of personal, intimate relationships and family forms is an expression of post-modern society.
Postmodern relationships are much more complex because of hyperreality (think Tinder) and because of leisure – this is generally to be celebrated because relationships (and sexuality) are now much more about fun rather than duty.
A postmodern view would celebrate the new freedoms surrounding postmodern relationships – based on choice and leisure – as this is a move away from the oppressive norms of the traditional nuclear family.
The Late Modern View of Family/ Personal Relationships
Developing stable relationships becomes more difficult in late modern society because relationships becomes a matter of choice.
The root cause of this is that the ‘new norm’ is for people to ‘use’ their relationships as a means of constructing their own identities. ‘My needs’ come first, the relationship comes second.
Two generic forms of ‘typical relationship emerge’ – The Pure Relationship (based on ‘confluent love’) and the Negotiated Family.
These are typically characterised by greater equality but more instability (hence high divorce) – new structures emerge to help people through relationship breakdowns.
Sociological Perspectives influence ideas about social policies. Views range from the New Right who believe in policies to support the traditional nuclear family to Radical Feminists, some of whom argue for the abolition of the nuclear family.
Sociological Perspectives on the family include Functionalism, Donzelot’s conflict perspectives, Liberal and Radical Feminism, the New Right and New Labour.
There are several social policies you can apply these perspectives too: everything from the 1969 Divorce Act to the 2022 marriage act.
Perspectives on family policy summary:
The two grids below summarise what family policies different sociological perspectives might support or criticise.
The main blog post below goes into much more depth….
The Functionalist View of Social Policy and The Family
Functionalists see society as built on harmony and consensus (shared values), and free from conflicts. They see the state as acting in the interests of society as a whole and its social policies as being for the good of all. Functionalists see policies as helping families to perform their functions more effectively and making life better for their members.
For example, Ronald Fletcher (1966) argues that the introduction of health, education and housing policies in the years since the industrial revolution has gradually led to the development of a welfare state that supports the family in performing its functions more effectively.
For instance, the existence of the National Health Service means that with the help of doctors, nurses, hospitals and medicines, the family today is better able to take care of its members when they are sick.
Criticisms of the functionalist perspective
The functionalist view has been criticised on two main counts:
It assumes that all members of the family benefit equally from social policies, whereas Feminists argue that policies often benefit men more than women.
It assumes that there is a ‘march of progress’ with social policies, gradually making life better, which is a view criticise by Donzelot in the following section.
Adapted from Robb Webb et al
A Conflict Perspective – Donzelot: Policing the Family
Jacques Donzelot (1977) has a conflict view of society and sees policy as a form of state power and control over families.
Donzelot uses Michel Foucault’s (1976) concept of surveillance (observing and monitoring). Foucault sees power not just as something held by the government or the state, but as diffused (spread) throughout society and found within all relationships. In particular, Foucault sees professionals such as doctors and social workers as exercising power over their clients by using their expert knowledge to turn them into ‘cases’ to be dealt with.
Donzelot applies these ideas to the family. He is interested in how professionals carry out surveillance of families. He argues that social workers, health visitors and doctors use their knowledge to control and change families. Donzelot calls this ‘the policing of families’.
Surveillance is not targeted equally at all social classes. Poor families are much more likely to be seen as ‘problem families’ and as the causes of crime and anti-social behaviour. These are the families that professionals target for ‘improvement’.
For example as Rachel Condry (2007) notes, the state may seek to control and regulate family life by imposing compulsory Parenting Orders through the courts. Parents of young offenders, truants or badly behaved children may be forced to attend parenting classes to learn the ‘correct’ way to bring up children.
Donzelot rejects the Functionalists’ march of progress view that social policy and the professionals who carry it out have created a better society. Instead he sees social policy as oppressing certain types of families. By focussing on the micro level of how the ‘caring professions’ act as agents of social control through the surveillance of families, Donzelot shows the importance of professional knowledge as a form of power and control.
Criticism of Conflict perspectives
Marxists and Feminists criticise Donzelot for failing to identify clearly who benefits from such policies of surveillance. Marxists argue that social policies generally operate in the interests of the capitalist class, while Feminists argue men are the beneficiaries.
Adapted from Rob Webb et al
The New Right and Social Policy
The New Right have had considerable influence on government thinking about social policy and its effects on family. They see the traditional nuclear family, with its division of labour between a male provider and a female home maker as self-reliant and capable of caring for its members. In their view, social policies should avoid doing anything that might undermine this natural self-reliant family.
The New Right criticise many existing government policies for undermining the family. In particular, they argue that governments often weaken the family’s self-reliance by providing overly generous welfare benefits. These include providing council housing for unmarried teenage mothers and cash payments to support lone parent families.
Charles Murray (1984) argues that these benefits offer ‘perverse incentives’ – that is, they reward irresponsible or anti-social behaviour. For example –
If fathers see that the state will maintain their children some of them will abandon their responsibilities to their families
Providing council housing for unmarried teenage mothers encourages young girls to become pregnant
The growth of lone parent families encouraged by generous welfare benefits means more boys grow up without a male role model and authority figure. This lack of paternal authority is responsible for a rising crime rate amongst young males.
The New Right supports the following social polices
Cuts in welfare benefits and tighter restrictions on who is eligible for benefits, to prevent ‘perverse incentives’.
Policies to support the traditional nuclear family – for example taxes that favour married couples rather than cohabiting couples.
The Child Support agency – whose role is to make absent dads pay for their children
Criticisms of the New Right
Feminists argue that their polices are an attempt to justify a return to the traditional nuclear family, which works to subordinate women
Cutting benefits may simply drive many into poverty, leading to further social problems
Feminism and Social Policy
Liberal Feminists argue that that changes such as the equal pay act and increasingly generous maternity leave and pay are sufficient to bring about gender equality. The following social policies have led to greater gender equality:
The divorce act of 1969 gave women the right to divorce on an equal footing to men – which lead to a spike in the divorce rate.
The equal pay act of 1972 was an important step towards women’s independence from men.
Increasingly generous maternity cover and pay made it easier for women to have children and then return to work.
However, Radical Feminists argue that patriarchy (the ideal of male superiority) is so entrenched in society that mere policy changes alone are insufficient to bring about gender equality. They argue, for example, that despite the equal pay act, sexism still exists in the sphere of work –
There is little evidence of the ‘new man’ who does their fair share of domestic chores. They argue women have acquired the ‘dual burden’ of paid work and unpaid housework and the family remains patriarchal – men benefit from women’s paid earnings and their domestic labour.
Some Feminists even argue that overly generous maternity cover compared to paternity cover reinforces the idea that women should be the primary child carer, unintentionally disadvantaging women
Dunscmobe and Marsden (1995) argue that women suffer from the ‘triple shift’ where they have to do paid work, domestic work and ‘emotion work’ – being expected to take on the emotional burden of caring for children.
This last point is more difficult to assess as it is much harder to quantify emotion work compared to the amounts of domestic work and paid work carried out by men and women.
Class differences also play a role – with working class mothers suffering more because they cannot afford childcare.
Mirlees- Black points out that ¼ women experience domestic violence – and many are reluctant to leave their partner
New Labour and Family Policy
New Labour was in power from between 1997 – 2010. There are three things you need to know about New Labour’s Social Policies towards the family
1. New Labour seemed to be more in favour of family diversity than the New Right. For example –
In 2004 they introduced The Civil Partner Act which gave same sex couples similar rights to heterosexual married couples
In 2005 they changed the law on adoption, giving unmarried couples, including gay couples, the right to adopt on the same basis as married couples
2. Despite their claims to want to cut down on welfare dependency, New Labour were less concerned about ‘the perverse incentives of welfare’ than the New Right. During their terms of office, they failed to take ‘tough decisions on welfare’ – putting the well-being of children first by making sure that even the long term unemployed families and single mothers had adequate housing and money.
3. New Labour believes in more state intervention in family life than the New Right. They have a more positive view of state intervention, thinking it is often necessary to improve the lives of families.
For example in June 2007 New Labour established the Department for Children, Schools and Families. This was the first time that there was ever a ‘department for the family’ in British politics.
The Government’s aim of this department was to ensure that every child would get the best possible start in life, receiving the on-going support and protection that they – and their families – need to allow them to fulfil their potential. The new Department would play a strong role both in taking forward policy relating to children and young people, and coordinating and leading work across Government and youth and family policy.
Key aspects included:
Raising school standards for all children and young people at all ages.
Responsibility for promoting the well-being, safety, protection and care of all young people.
Responsibility for promoting the health of all children and young people, including measures to tackle key health problems such as obesity, as well as the promotion of youth sport
Responsibility for promoting the wider contribution of young people to their communities.
Signposting
This post has been written primarily for students of A-level sociology, and is one of the main topics in the families and households module, usually taught in the first year of study.
A brief summary of Anthony Giddens’ work on the relationship between the self and society in late-modern age.
Self-identity, history, modernity.
Drawing on a therapeutic text – ‘Self-Therapy’ by Janette Rainwater – Giddens selects ten features which are distinctive about the search for self-identity in the late modern age:
The self is seen as a reflexive project for which the individual is responsible. Self-understanding is relegated to the more inclusive and fundamental aim of rebuilding a more rewarding sense of identity.
The self forms a trajectory of development from the the past to the anticipated future. The lifespan rather than external events is in the foreground, the later are cast as either fortuitous or throwing up barriers which need to be overcome.
Reflexivity becomes continuous – the individual continuously asks the question ‘what am I doing in this moment, and what can I do to change?’ In this, reflexivity belongs to the reflexive historicity of modernity.
The narrative of the self is made explicit – in the keeping of an autobiography – which requires continual creative input.
Self-actualisation implies the control of time – essentially, the establishing of zones of time which have only remote connections with external temporal orders. Holding a dialogue with time is the very basis of self-realisation, and using the ever-present moment to direct one’s future life course is essential.
The reflexivity of the self extends to the body. Awareness of the body is central to the grasping of the moment. The point here is to establish a differentiated self, not to dissolve the ego.
Self-actualisation is understood as a balance between opportunity and risk. The individual has to be prepared to take on greater levels of risk than is normal – to change is to risk things getting worse.
The moral thread of self-actualisation is one of authenticity… Personal growth depends on conquering emotional blocks and tensions that prevent us from understanding ourselves – recover or repeat old habits is the mantra.
The life course is seen as a series of ‘passages’. All such transitions involve loss.
The line of development of the self is internally referential – it is the creation of a personal belief system by which someone changes – one’s first loyalty is to oneself.
Giddens now asks how can we connect up these ten features of self-identity to the institutional transformations characteristic of the late-modern world?
Lifestyle and Life Plans
Therapy (and it’s focus on self-identity reconstruction) is a response to the backdrop to the existential terrain of late modern life which consists of the following features:
it is reflexively organised
it is permeated by abstract systems (money/ time)
the reordering of time and space has realigned the global and the local.
This has resulted in the following societal level changes
We live in a post-traditional order, the signposts offered by tradition are now blank
We have a pluralisation of lifeworlds – the milieu which we are exposed to are much more diverse.
Experts do not agree, so there is no longer a certain source of knowledge.
The prevalence of mediated experiences – the collage effect of the media – we have new communities and shed loads of new possibilities.
All of this has results in the primacy of lifestyle (and thus lifestyle planning and therapy)
A lifestyle may be defined as a more or less integrated set of practices which an individual embraces because they give material form to a particular narrative of self-identity. A lifestyle implies a plurality of choices – it is something which is adopted rather than handed down (and should not merely be conflated with consumerism in this instance).
(NB Giddens also says that we do not all have complete freedom of choice over our lifestyles – we are restricted by work, and by class etc… and moreover, the lifestyle pattern we choose limits what we can do if we wish to maintain an authentic narrative of the self.
Life planning becomes essential in the above social context – life planning is an attempt to ‘colonise the future’.in conditions of social uncertainty – which is precisely what modern institutions do at the societal level.
Thus life-planning and therapy kind of ‘mirror’ a broader (globalised) social context which is itself reflexive.
Two things in particular become central to ‘life planning’– (1) The Pure Relationship comes to be crucial to the reflexive project of the self and (2) the body becomes subject of ever greater levels of personal control, which I’ll cover in the next blog post or two.
