Parents project their own fears onto their children, restrict their freedoms and may unintentionally harm their development into independent adults.
In 2001 Professor Frank Furedi wrote ‘Paranoid Parenting’, arguing that a ‘culture of fear’ pervades parenting today, with parents perceiving their children as vulnerable, and as being perpetually at risk from several threats: from strangers, traffic, toys, and from the threat of falling behind in their development.
Parenting today has become an ordeal in which parents obsess over every detail of their child’s development, one in which they try to assess the risks of every activity and try to reduce these risks through surveillance and control (preventing them from taking risks in the first place).
Parents are now reluctant to let their children do unsupervised activities, such as walking to school on their own, for fear of them being abducted by strangers, and they are scared to let them go on school trips which involve long journeys, because of fear of traffic accidents or the possibility of them having moments when they might evade adult-supervision.
When purchasing products for young children, the safety of those products is also a concern – what are the risks of the child being injured or choking when playing with a toy, for example.
Parents are not only scared for their children’s safety when they go outdoors, they are also scared when they go online -virtual spaces are perceived as places where children may be prone to pedophiles, for example.
The causes of Paranoid Parenting
The most obvious cause is the exaggeration of the extent of stranger-abductions, and anything negative which happens to children in the news.
A less obvious cause is the growth of an ‘expert culture’ which has grown up around childhood, so that now there are a multitude of child-development professionals. There is an increasing norm in which parents are expected to defer to the authority of experts, rather than find their own way to parent.
The problem is that many of these experts have contradictory and unclear advice about what good parenting looks like, hence it just increases parental confusion.
A final reason is because the increase in alienation of parents – they have less power in the world of politics and work, and their children have become the main place where they can construct their identities, project their power and their dreams onto – so they are precious indeed!
The consequences of Paranoid Parenting
The increased control and surveillance that comes with Paranoid Parenting is a reduction in the amount of opportunities for children to develop independently – thus children remain children for longer because they are not allowed the freedom to take risks and make indpenedent choices that are required for transition to adulthood.
Another consequence is that children become more afraid themselves – with the constant messages that the world is risky, they become risk averse – and more vulnerable and anxious – paranoid parents create anxious kids. They inadvertently harm them.
Evaluating Paranoid Parenting
It’s now 20 years since Furedi wrote Paranoid Parenting, but today it seems more relevant than ever.
The video below involves an interview with Lenore Skenazy, the author of Free-Range Kids, who was dubbed ‘America’s Worst Mum’ when she let her 9 year old ride the Subway on his own, and made a video piece about it.
Note that her son had been asking to do this, and was familiar with the subway, so this was a rational ‘learning task’ for her son to do on his own!
This led to lots of TV appearances in which Lenore got demonised as the worst mum in America – she says in the interview that the TV hosts would often ask her ‘but what would you have done if he had never come back?’ and points out that this isn’t really a question, because they know how she’d feel – what they are doing is reinforcing the view that being a parent today involves going to the ‘worst case scenario’ – imagining the worst thing that could happen to your child and then concluding that they must always be under supervision, because that’s today’s norm, to be ‘Paranoid Parents’.
In the video and in this article there are several examples in the United States of the Police being called because of kids being unsupervised – in one example a teenage boy was chopping wood in his own yard with an axe, someone saw it, called the police, and they confiscated the axe, returning it to his parents.
The message is to not let your kids do anything that might help them develop as autonomous human beings, instead they should be doing ‘more homework’, and most definitely under surveillance.
Signposting and Related Posts
This material is mainly relevant to the families and households module in A-level sociology.
Below is a timeline of some of the social policies which changed childhood, from the early 19th century through to the present day.
Most people would adopt a ‘March of Progress view‘ and argue that these polices improved the lives of children, however there are some sociologists who see these policies as placing too many restrictions on children.
The main types of social policies which have changed children’s lives are those relating to work, education and child welfare and protection.
This post was written primarily for A-level sociology students studying the families and households module.
The 1833 Factory Act
Made it illegal for textile factories to employ children under the age of 9, and they had to provide at least twelve hours of education a week for children aged between 9-13.
The 1867 Factories Act
Made it illegal for any factory to employ children under the age of 8, and they had to provide all children aged between 8-13 with at least 10 hours of education a week.
Thomas Barnardo also opened his first children’s home in 1867.
The 1870 Education Act
Mass Education for children aged 5-12 was introduced
This is effectively the introduction of national primary education in Britain, although it wasn’t made compulsory for all 5-12-year olds until 1880, and the quality of education could be very poor indeed in some areas until the Education Reform Act of 1944.
The 1878 Factories and Workshop Act
Banned the employment of children under 10 in Factories.
The 1880 Education Act
Schooling in Britain made compulsory for every child up to the age of 10. Local Education Authorities
1889 – The Prevention of Cruelty towards Children Act, commonly known as the Children’s Charter
This Act gave the State the right, for the first time, to intervene in relationships between parents and their children. The Police could now enter a private residence and make arrests if a child were being mistreated.
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty Towards Children (NSPCC) was established in the same year.
This policy and new institution together laid the foundation for modern child welfare, and the idea that the state could intervene if parents were not being responsible.
The 1908 Children’s Act
This established juvenile courts, so that children would be prosecuted according to different standards from adults.
It also introduced a formal register of Foster Parents, formalising the idea of State approved Foster Parents taking over from ‘removed children’ who had suffered abuse from their biological parents.
The Punishment of Incest Act was introduced in the same year – this made sexual abuse within families a matter for state intervention and punishment, previous to this the Church had been responsible for dealing with this.
1918 – School Leaving Age Raised to 14
The 1944 Education Act
While students of sociology should be familiar with this date as the year in which the Tripartite System was introduced (and students probably familiar with criticising this act!), at the time this was a huge leap forward in the rights of children.
The 1944 Education act was the first time the State really took responsibility for education at a national level, rather than leaving education to Local Education Authorities. The act saw a huge increase in funding for education funding for education and a massive building programme of new secondary modern schools.
The School Leaving Age was also raised to 15.
The 1948 Children’s Act
This established a children’s committee and a children’s officer in each local authority and represents the emergence of ‘child protection and welfare’ being a major responsibility of each Local Authority.
A series of legislation throughout the 1960s and 1970s, often in response to high profile deaths of children at the hands of their parents or foster parents, consolidated children’s social services and safeguarding strategies in Local Authority in the UK.
1973 – School Leaving Age raised to 16
1989 – The Children’s Act
Gave children the right to protection from abuse and exploitation and put child welfare at the heart of everything the Social Services did. It also reinforced the central principle that children were best looked after, wherever possible within families.
1991 – The Child Support Act
This gave children protection in the event of Divorce – it emphasised that prime concern of family courts in a Divorce should be the welfare of the children.
2003 – Every Child Matters
This was a government report following the death of Victoria Climbie
It outlined five key principles that every child should have the right to:
Be healthy
stay safe
enjoy and achieve
make a positive contribution
achieve economic well-being
The idea was that everyone working within children in any capacity should be ensuring these principles guided their interactions with children.
2013 – Children were required to remain in education or work with training until at least the age of 18.
Further Legislations
The history of child labour, education and welfare legislation doesn’t stop here, there is more, but I am!
NB Safeguarding is now a big policy agenda, but to my mind it doesn’t really do anything new, it’s just refining and rebranding Every Child Matters and previous policies.
The Divorce Rate in the UK has now been declining for several years, why is this?
The divorce rate has been declining since 1993 when it was at a peak of just under 15 divorces per thousand marriages. The divorce rate declined slowly to 13 per thousand marriages by 2003 and then started to decline much more rapidly. In 2019 the divorce rate was down to 7 per thousand marriages, which is a 50 year low!
Three reasons for declining divorce
This article from the Economist (2011) argues there are three main reasons for the recent decrease in the divorce rate:
The decline in marriage: if fewer people are getting married then there will be less divorce. Especially when there is less social pressure to get married since the 1980s which means those people who get married are more likely to want to get married, and so more likely to stay together.
The increase in house prices: so people just stay together for economic reasons; they cannot afford to split up and move into two separate houses.
The increase in immigration: immigrants are less likely to get divorced and net migration has been very high in recent years.
They analyse the divorce rate by looking at the different divorce rates by number of years a couple has been married.
One of their findings is that if a couple makes it to ten years of marriage, then they are just as likely to stay together if they got married in the 1960s, compared to if they got married in the 2000s.
After ten years of marriage, the percentage going on to get divorced is 20%, this has been consistent over several decades.
What has declined drastically is the number of couples married less than 10 years getting divorced…
“Actual UK divorce rates among the most recent newlyweds are now down by 59% over the first three years of marriage from the peak, 47% over the first five years, and 27% over the first 10 years of marriage.”
Men: from sliders to deciders
The article points out that the high divorce rate in the 1970s-1980s among younger married couples was probably due to men going into marriage but not really being committed – that is they ‘slid’ into marriage, from social pressure, possibly encouraged into marriage due to the uncertainty of changing male roles during that period.
Meanwhile, women in the 1970s and 80s, experiencing positive gender-role changes had high expectations from men who hadn’t ‘decided’ to go into marriage.
The marriage of the two created a peak of divorces among newly married couples.
Now that there is less social pressure to get married, and cohabitation is more acceptable, men are more likely to ‘decide’ to get married rather than ‘slide’ into it, and so marriages are more likely to last the course!
An excellent documentary about the history of single mums in the UK featuring Jamelia
This is an excellent documentary for A-level sociology students studying the families and households option.
The documentary explores the experience of being a single parent in the Victorian era, through the 1960s, into the 1990s, with the conservative championing of the married, nuclear family, and through to the the present day.
Jamelia makes an excellent host, she’s very empathetic with the women she interviews during the documentary, I guess given her experience of being a single parent, which she also talks about.
The documentary is well organised into the following general sections:
Single Mums in Victorian workhouses
It seems that this was the lot of single parents in the Victorian era – seperated from their children and both sent to workhouses. Grim!
Single Mums in the 1960s
Despite the ‘sexual liberation’ of the ‘swinging ’60s’ there was still a stigma attached to getting pregnant out of wedlock. This section features a heart-wrenching interview with a woman who got pregnant at 14 and was coerced by her parents to have her baby in a distant ‘hospital’ and immediately give it up for adoption.
The Conservative backlash against single mums in the 1990s
The documentary also explores some of the more recent moral panic over single parenting – there’s a very interesting section at the end where a statistician exposes the way stats on ‘problem children of single parents’ are reported in a misleading way.
Sources
This is just a brief summary. The documentary is from 2011 (originally it aired on BBC3), but it’s still a useful historical source, especially the section on the 1960s!
Lockdown saw a significant increase in Domestic Abuse cases, according to this Guardian article.
According to the F-Word, the charity refuge reported a 7000% increase in calls to its abuse helpline just three weeks into lockdown, and Karen Ingala Smith, who tracks the number of women killed by men, reports a near three fold increase in female by male deaths during lockdown compared to the same period in previous years.
Why did we see an increase in Domestic Abuse cases during Lockdown?
According to Feminist analysis (and in classic sociological style) this is the wrong question….
Being forced into lockdown intensifies any relationship, and so those relationships that are already abusive will become more so, it’s almost as if there’s nothing to explain here!
The problem, according to the F-word, with how some media outlets have reported the increased rates of DV is that they seem to use the virus as a mitigating factor, almost blaming it, rather than the violent men, for the abuse.
The fact is that most of those women who had to turn to support services, or were killed by men during Lockdown would already have been in an abusive relationship for several years – so Lockdown was just an exacerbating factor, not the cause, so using Lockdown, or the virus more generally as an explanatory factor is kind of letting men off.
This reminds us that we should remember that rather than something unusual, this spike is really providing us with a window – it is making more visible the violence that is already going on for the female victims unfortunate to be involved in it.
What we need to be thinking of is not so much reasons for the spike, but reasons why some men are violent in the first place, and of course holding them to account!
This post explores the similarities and differences in marriage and civil partnership between same sex and opposite sex couples in England and Wales. It has been written to fit in with the A-level Sociology families and households specification.
The introduction of the Civil Partnerships Act in 2005 saw a huge number of male and female same sex couples becoming civil partners, with the yearly number of civil partnerships stabilising at just over 6000 a year in the late 2000s.
The introduction of same-sex marriage in 2014 saw a further drop, so that now there are just under 1000 civil partnerships a year, with male couples slightly more likely to form them than female couples.
It seems that marriage is taking over from civil partnerships.
The ONS reported in 2017 that ‘A total of 4,850 marriages were formed between same sex couples in 2014. Of these, 44% (2,129) were between male couples and 56% (2,721) were between female couples.’
This is an interesting article by the PEW global research center which explores briefly the 20 or so countries in which same sex couples can get married…
Civil Partnership Dissolutions
At first glance, these seem to have rise to quite a high number – in 2018 there were almost as many dissolutions as there were newly formed civil partnerships!
NB Women are more likely to dissolve than men, even though they are less likely to form a civil partnership in the first place. In fact, 80
The median duration of marriage for same-sex couples who divorced in 2018 was 3.9 years for men and 3.5 years for women. (ONS, Divorces in England and Wales 2018). 80% of divorces are to female couples!
NB there is currently very little data to go on for same sex divorces, as there are so few marriages!
One obvious difference between same-sex and opposite sex couples when it comes to children is that same-sex couples don’t have the biological requirements to create their own children between them, so they have to seek alternative options.
The NHS outlines various different pathways for same-sex parents to raise children (the same options as for opposite sex couples who can’t conceive!) including using sperm donors, co-parenting, adoption and surrogacy.
Adoption is an increasingly popular option, and the number of adoptions to same-sex couples has been increasing recently, while the number to opposite sex couples has been in decline.
Same-sex adoptions, UK figures.
This means there are increasing numbers of same-sex families, relative to opposite sex families with children.
Are there differences in the way same-sex and opposite-sex families parent their children?
Psychologist Rachel Farr recently conducted a Longitudinal Study with 100 adopted families, and found no differences in outcomes of middle-aged children between same-sex and opposite-sex families. Generally, all children were well adjusted and saw being adopted as positive, irrespective of the sexuality of their parents. (Source, study from 2019.)
By ‘outcomes’ they mean the chances of having good mental health, good educational results, not becoming a criminal etc.
This Fact Check article in The Conversation on the topic goes back further and summarises yet more research that supports the consensus that same-sex parents are as ‘good’ as opposite-sex parents. However it also reminds us that there is considerable discrimination against same-sex parents, and there are some people who will selectively publish research which seems to paint same-sex parenting in a bad light, and reminds us that we should always scrutinise such research.
This recent blog post by Marina Everri from 2016 explores the experience of being a same-sex parent in Italy, and argues that while the outcomes of children are the same, problems arise for same-sex parents and children because of discrimination from outside the family circle – in schools for example.
This much more in-depth article shows how same-sex couples in eight European countries suffer from discrimination when trying to adopt. Discrimination can be an off-putting factor which may prevent some same-sex couples from going through with adoption.
Finally, there isn’t much qualitative research on the experience of being in a same-sex family, but I did find this from Stonewall, but it’s from 2009-10!
How has childhood in the UK changed since the 19th Century, and have these changes been positive?
There have been several changes to the lives of children since the early 19th century, and we can break these down as follows:
Work – Policies which regulated and restricted child labour, leading to the eventual exclusion of children from paid work.
Education – The introduction of compulsory education and the increase in both funding of education and the raising of the school leaving age.
The Medicalisation of childbirth and early childcare – Rather than high infant mortality rates, the NHS now provides comprehensive maternity and early childcare to mothers and children.
Legislation has emerged to exclude children from a whole range of potentially harmful and dangerous acts.
Parents spend more money on children than ever – a range of specialist products and services have emerged and increased which are specifically aimed at children and child development.
Parents now spend more time with their children, actively engaged with ‘parenting’.
Child Welfare – The introduction of child protection and welfare legislation, and its expansion into every aspect of child services through recent Safeguarding policies.
The recent growth of the idea of ‘rights of the child’ has given children more of a voice in society.
Most people see these changes as representing a ‘March of Progress’. They see such changes as gradually improving the lives of children by giving them more protection from the stresses of adult life. It seems that we have moved towards a ‘child centred society’.
However, there are sociologists who point to the downsides of some changes, especially in the last 50 years.
This post mainly adopts a March of Progress perspective, with the critical perspectives dealt with in my other posts on ‘Toxic Childhood’ and ‘Paranoid Parenting’. I wrote this post primarily for students studying the Families and Households option for A-level Sociology.
Childhood in Victorian Times
During the early 19th Century, many working-class children worked in factories, mines, and mills. They often worked long-hours and in unsafe conditions, which had negative consequences for their health, and could sometimes even result in children suffering injuries or dying at work.
At home, children were also often required to take on adult-work, doing domestic chores and caring for sick relatives.
Social attitudes towards children started to change in the middle of the 19th century, and childhood gradually came to be seen more as a distinct phase of life, separate from adulthood, with children needing protecting from the hardships of adult life, especially work and provided with more guidance and nurturing through education.
Along with changing attitudes, social policies and specialist institutions emerged which gradually changed the status of children.
The changes below happened over a long period of time. The changes discussed start from the 1830s, with the first factory acts restricting child labour, right up to the present day, with the emergence of the ‘rights of the child’, spearheaded by the United Nations.
A March of Progress?
One perspective on changes to childhood is that children’s lives have generally got better over time, known as the ‘march of progress’ view of childhood.
This is something of a ‘common sense’ interpretation and students should be critical of it!
Work
There were several ‘factories acts’ throughout the 19th century, which gradually improved the rights of (typically male) workers by limiting working hours, and many of these acts had clauses which banned factories from employing people under certain ages.
The 1833 Factories Act was the first act to restrict child labour – it made it illegal for textile factories to employ children under the age of nine and required factories to provide any children aged 9-13 with at least 12 hours of education a week.
The 1867 Factories Act extended this idea to all factories – this act made it illegal for any factors to employ children under the age of 8 and provide children aged 8-13 with at least 10 hours of education a week.
The 1878 Factories Act placed a total ban on the employment of children under the age of 10, fitting in nicely with the introduction of education policies.
Today, children can only work full-time from the age of 16, and then they must do training with that employment. Full adult working rights only apply from the age of 18.
Government policy in 2023 discourages younger people from taking on full time work because younger people receive lower wages.
The minimum wage by age in the UK IN 2023:
£5.28 for under 18s.
£7.49 for 18-21 year olds.
£10.18 for 21-22 year olds.
£10.42 for those aged 23 and over.
This means that those under 18 can’t realistically expect to earn enough to survive, and so are effectively not able to be independent. Those aged up to 21 are in a similar position.
These lower wages encourage young people to stay in education for longer, until at least 21.
Children aged 13-15 can work, but there are restrictions on the number of hours and the types of ‘industry’ they can work in. Babysitting is one of the most common jobs for this age group.
Education
The 1870 Education Act introduced Education for all children aged 5-12, although this was voluntary at the time.
In 1880 it became compulsory for all children to attend school aged 5-12, with the responsibility for attendance falling on the Local Education Authorities.
The next century saw the gradual increasing of the school leaving age and increase in funding for education:
1918 – The school leaving age raised to 14
1944 – school leaving age raised to 15 (also the year of the Tripartite system and massive increase in funding to build new secondary modern schools)
1973 – The school leaving age increased to 16.
2013 – Children required to remain in education or work with training until 18.
Today the UK government spends almost £100 billion a year on education and employs around 500 000 people in education.
Children are expected to attend school for 13 years, with their attendance and progress monitored intensely during that time.
The scope of education has also increased. The curriculum has broadened to include a wide range of academic and vocational subjects. There is also more of a focus on personal well-being and development.
The Medicalisation of childbirth and early childcare
Rather than high infant and child mortality rates as was the case in the Victorian era, the NHS now provides comprehensive maternity and early childcare to mothers and children.
In the United Kingdom today it is standard for pregnant women to have a dozen ante-natal appointments for health checks and ultrasounds with National Health Services.
After birth, the government expects parents to subject their newborn children to extensive health checks to measure their development.
There are several of these in the first weeks after birth and then:
A monthly health review up to 6 months.
Every two months up to 12 months.
Every three months from there on.
During early reviews experts discuss things such as vaccinations and breastfeeding with parents and administer full health checks.
Later reviews are more light touch and may just involve general health checks, height and weight monitoring.
Legislation protecting children
The government introduced several policies over the last century which protect children from engaging in potentially harmful activities:
Children under the age of 14 cannot work, but at age 14 they can do ‘light work’.
Children can apply for the armed forces at 15 years and 9 months, but they can’t serve until they are 16.
16 years of age is really where children start to get more rights – you can serve. with the armed forces, drive a moped, get a job (with training) and change your name at 16.
At age of 18, you have reached ‘the age of entitlement’ – you are an adult.
For more details you might like to visit the ‘at what age can I’? timeline.
More money spent on children
This could well be the most significant change in social attitudes to childhood, specifically in relation to the family.
A range of specialist products and services have emerged which are specifically aimed at children and child development.
Children use to be perceived as people who needed to bring money into the family home. Today adults are happy to spend more money on children.
Expenditure by parents on their first newborn child (on things such as push chairs) increased by almost 20% between 2013 and 2019.
According to CPAG it cost £70 000 for a two parent family to raise a child to 18 in 2022; and it cost £110 000 for a one parent family. This is not including housing or child care costs.
There are several more, as outlined in this child friendly version of the document…
A Child Centred Society
Changes such as those outlined above suggest our society has become more child centred over the last century or so. Children today occupy a more central role than ever. The government and parents spend more money on children than ever and children are the ‘primary concern’ of many public services and often the sole thing that gives meaning to the lives of many parents.
According to Cunningham (2006) the child centred society has three main features (which is another way of summarising what’s above)
Childhood is regarded as the opposite of adulthood – children in particular are viewed as being in need of protection from the adult world.
Child and adult worlds are separated – they have different social spaces – playground and school for children, work and pubs for adults.
Childhood is increasingly associated with rights.
If we look at total public expenditure on children, there certainly seems to be evidence that we live in a child centred society! (Source below).
Criticisms of the March of Progress View of childhood
The common sense view is to see the above changes as ‘progressive’. Most people argue that now children are more protected that their lives are better, but is this actually the case?
The ‘March of Progress’ view argues that yes, children’s lives have improved and they are now much better off than in the Victorian Era and the Middle Ages. They point to all the evidence on the previous page as just self-evidently indicating an improvement to children’s’ lives.
Conflict theorists, however, argue against the view that children’s lives have gradually been getting better – they say that in some ways children’s lives are worse than they used to be. There are three main criticisms made of the march of progress view
1. Recent technological changes have resulted in significant harms to children – what Sociologist Sue Palmer refers to as Toxic Childhood.
2. Some sociologists argue that parents are too controlling of their children. Sociologists such as Frank Furedi argue that parents overprotect their children: we live in the age of ‘Paranoid Parenting’.
3. There are significant inequalities between children, so if there has been progress for some, there certainly has not been equal progress.
A further criticisms lies in the idea that childhood may now be disappearing – for more details check out this post: The Disappearance of Childhood.
Signposting
Childhood makes up part of the families and households option in the first year of A-level Sociology.
Since the 1960s marriage rates are down, and cohabitation and divorce rates are up!
This post explores the long and short term trends in marriage, divorce and cohabitation in the United Kingdom.
Marriage, Divorce and Cohabitation: Key Facts
There are approximately 230 000 marriages a year in England and Wales. This is down from just over 400 000 a year in the late 1980s.
The marriage rate halved between 1991 and 2019. For women the rate declined from 34/1000 in 2019 to just 18/ 1000 in 2019.
The average age for marriage is 34 for men and 32 for women. The average age of marriage is getting older. In 1967 the average ages were 27 for men and 25 for women.
The number of church weddings is declining. Only 18.2% of weddings were church ceremonies in 2019.
The number of cohabiting couples is increasing. In 2022 18.4% of families were cohabiting. This is up from 15.7% of families in 2012.
There has been a long term increase in the divorce rate since the 1950s. However the divorce rate declined between the early 2000s and 2018. More recently it has been increasing again.
In 2022 there were 9 divorces per 1000 marriages. There were a total of 113 500 divorces in 2021.
Where possible I have included data from the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) publications on marriage, cohabitation and divorce from 2023. However sometimes I have used previous publications because those show longer term trends or analyse the data in different ways.
Marriage Statistics
There was a long term decrease in the number of marriages per year since the late 1960s when there were just over 400 000 marriages every year, until around 2008, when the number hit around 230 000.
There has been a slight increase since then and there are now around 240 000 marriages every year in the UK, and this number has been relatively stable since 2008.
Marriage Rates in England and Wales
The marriage rate is the number of people who get married per thousand unmarried people. The marriage rate is slightly higher for men than for women, although the difference has decreased over the last 30 years (1).
The marriage rates in England and Wales almost halved between 1991 and 2019 for both men and women.
In 1991 the marriage rate for men was 39/1000, this had declined to 20/1000 by 2019.
For women the figures were 34/1000 and 18/1000 respectively.
During the lockdown of 2020 the marriage rate plummeted to only 6/1000 for both men and women.
I would expect the marriage rate to be similarly low in 2021, but then to increase in 2022 and maybe even 2023 with people having delayed getting married increasing the numbers. I think we will have to wait until 2024 for marriage rates to get back to normal and be able to compare the long term trend.
What is the average age of Marriage?
In 2019 the average age of marriage for men was 34.3 years for men and 32.3 years for women (2).
Looking at the longer term trend the average age of marriage has increased by almost ten years since the the 1960s.
In 1967 the average age of marriage was 27 for men and 25 for women.
The 2019 ONS data also shows us recent trends in the ages of same sex married couples getting married. Same-sex couples get married slightly older compared to opposite sex couples.
The Decline of Church Weddings
The above chart shows the drastic decrease in religious marriages, down to only 18.2% of all marriages by 2019. 82.8% of marriages in 2019 were civil ceremonies.
90% of couples cohabited before marrying in 2017, up from 70% in the late 1990s.
Limitations with Marriage Statistics
The ONS only publishes annual marriage statistics three years after the year marriages took place. This is because there can be a delay of up to 26 months from clergy and other official bodies in recording the marriages. The ONS estimates that one year on from marriages taking place, around 4% of them have still not been recorded. The three year delay is to make sure data recording is accurate.
Cohabitation Statistics
The proportion of cohabiting households in England and Wales has increased in the last decade.
18.4% of families were cohabiting in 2022. This is an increase from 15.7% of families in 2012.
Younger couples are much more likely to cohabit
According to UK Census, in 2021 (5)
89% of couples aged 20-24 were cohabiting.
45% of couples aged 30-34 were cohabiting.
24% of couples aged 40-44 were cohabiting.
This declines to less than 10% for all couples aged 65 and over.
All aged groups were more likely to cohabit in 2021 compared to 2011, except for the very oldest age category of 85s and over.
Divorce Statistics
Since the 1960s there has been a long term increase in the divorce rate.
The number of Divorces per year increased rapidly following the Divorce Reform Act of 1969, and then increased steadily until the early 1980s. In the late 1950s, there were only around 20 000 Divorces per year, by the early 1980s this figure had risen to 160 000 per year (quite an increase!)
It then stabilised for about 10 years and then started to decline in 2003, the number of divorces per year is still in decline. There are currently just under 90 000 divorces per year in England and Wales.
The Divorce Rate
The Divorce Rate was extremely low in the late 1950s, at only 2.5 per 100 000 married couples (3)
The Divorce Reform Act of 1969 led to this increasing rapidly to 10 per thousand in just a few years, by the early 1970s.
The Divorce Rate continued to increase until the early 1990s, when it hit almost 15 per thousand married couples. Since then it has been falling and currently stands at 7.5
The divorce rate has fallen since 2004
The divorce rate has fallen overall since 2004, but increased in recent years.
From 2004 to 2018 the UK divorce rate fell from 13 per 1000 marriages to just above 7 per 1000 marriages, the low point since before the 1969 Divorce Act.
The divorce rate has increased slightly since 2018, but only slightly and is currently at 9 divorces per 1000 in 2022.
The total number of divorces in 2021 was 113, 505.
What percent of marriages end in divorce?
The percentage of marriages which end in divorce depends on the year in which the marriage took place.
For those married in 1965, 28.7% of marriages had ended in divorce after 35 years.
For those married in 1975, 37.6% of marriages had ended in divorce after 35 years.
For those married in 1985 43.4% of marriages had ended in divorce after 35 years.
For those married in 1995 41.7% of marriages had ended in divorce after 25 years, and the divorce rate looks set to be higher by 35 years.
Those married in 2005 and 2015 have lower divorce rates for younger marriages, so are set to have divorce rates after 35 years somewhere between 36% and 42%.
For those who got married in 2005, 20.7% had got divorced after 10 years and 29.2% after 15 years.
How long does the average marriage last?
The length of marriage is increasing. For marriages which end in divorce, the median length of a marriage was 12.3 years.
For same sex couples the median length of marriage is much shorter. It is 5.9 years for male couples and 5.3 years for female couples.
Opposite and Same-Sex Divorces
There were 111. 934 opposite-sex resources in 2021, 63% of which were petitioned by females and 37% petitioned by men.
There were 1571 same-sex divorces, of which 67% were petitioned by female couples. The number of same-sex divorces has increased every year since they first became possible in 2015, following the introduction of same-sex marriage shortly before.
Limitations with divorce statistics
Divorce statistics only show marriage break ups which are final. They don’t show married couples who are separated.
There are no formal official break up statistics for cohabiting couples. Hence it’s difficult to compare break up rates for married and cohabiting couples.
It is difficult to compare the rates of divorce between same-sex and opposite-sex couples. Same sex marriage has only been around for less than a decade, and most divorces happen after several years of marriage. We will have to wait a few more years at least to be able to make valid comparisons.
Careful with comparisons! The Divorce Rate shows a slightly different trend to the ‘number of divorces’. The former is relative to the number of married couples!
Main sources used to write this post
(1) Office for National Statistics (May 2023): Marriages in England and Wales 2020.
Office for National Statistics: Divorces in England and Wales 2018.
ONS: Marriages in England and Wales 2017.
ONS: Marriage and Divorce on the Rise, Over 65 and Over.
Signposting
This post is relevant to the ‘marriage and divorce’ topic which is usually taught as the second topic within the AQA’s families and households A-level sociology specification.
This post outlines some of the ‘key facts’ students should know for the A-level sociology families and households topics.
The statistics below are taken from range of different topics covered as part of the families and households specification (AQA focus), and I find it useful to introduce students to them as part of the ‘introduction to families’ lesson.
The activity I use is to give students a series of cut up cards, some with the ‘fact’ and some with the ‘number’, students can then match them as a pair work activity, or you could do it as a stand up walk around whole class activity (one card per student).
The list of facts for students to puzzle out is as follows:
Insert image of card matching (cut up)
Once students have tried their best to puzzle out the correct answers, I give them a gapped answer sheet and get them to research the different sources of the data and comment on how valid they think each piece of data is, by thinking about HOW the data was collected, or how the figures were calculated.
Insert image of gapped answer sheet (link to teaching resources eventually!)
This blog post is effectively the extended answers to the above gapped hand-out.
What percentage of marriages end in divorce?
Almost 44% of marriages in 1987 had ended in divorce by the year 2018.
That 43.9% figure may sound alarming, but this is only true for marriages which took place in 1987, which is the ‘peak year’ (so far) for marriages ending in divorce.
If you look at marriages from slightly earlier years, then you get slightly lower figures. If you look at the divorce rate for the years after 1987, then the figures are also lower, and they could well stay that way because of the marriage rate declining since the late 1980s. Over time, as marriage has become more of a choice, this should lower the long-term divorce rate.
It follows that if we took an average divorce rate for several years surrounding 1987, we’d see a percentage lower than 43.9%.
So the data is valid, but only for two static years – 1987 to 2018. Any other selection of years will give you a different rate. Having said that, if you look at the lines in the graph above, they do seem to follow a predictable trend, so it’s unlikely that this figure is outright misleading! Just keep in mind it’s probably the very peak!
What percentage of households in the UK are cohabiting?
In 2018, almost 18% of family households were cohabiting compared to 67% married and 15% lone-parent.
The cohabiting family household has been one of the fastest growing household types in recent years
If you work it out per year, that’s about £8300 per year that parents are spending on their children on average, which sounds suspicious.
This might be an invalid figure because it includes housing costs, and it’s a bit dubious whether this is the actual cost, given that parents need a home to live in anyway. You can’t necessarily attribute the cost of an extra bedroom in a house to having a child as many childless couples live in houses with spare bedrooms.
It follows that a figure without housing costs might be more valid as that would be closer the money that’s spent exclusively on the child.
The report also makes it clear that the figure does not represent all families – it is more expensive for lone parent families to raise a child to age 18 – it costs them £185 000.
On average, how much more money a year does it cost to live a year if you are a single person living alone?
Single person households spend 92% of their disposable income, compared to only 83% for couples, meaning there is a 9% difference between the two.
