Tag: families

  • 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…

  • 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 choice in personal life affected family structures in the UK today?

    This question recently came up on the June 2022 A-level sociology exam paper two, the families and household topic. It was one of the 10 mark questions which linked to an item, as follows: ‘People have more choice today than in the past over who they can be in a personal relationship with. They also…

  • 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…

  • The relationship of the family to the social structure and social change

    The pre-release information for the 2022 A-level sociology exam from the AQA selected the relationship of the family to the social structure and social change as the topic area that WILL come up for the 20 mark essay. NB we are talking here about the Paper 2 exam: topics in sociology the families and households…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • The Handmaid’s Tale – Possible in Real Life?

    The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian novel written by Margaret Atwood in 1985. This might be a novel, but it’s a useful way to introduce social policy and the family! It’s also an example of a type of secondary qualitative data! The novel is set in the United States and imagines a future where the…