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.
The 1969 Divorce Act, more women in paid work and the decline of tradition and more individual freedom can help explain the long term increase in divorce.
There has been a long term increase in divorce in England and Wales since the 1950s, despite a more recent decline.
The Divorce rate was 2.5 per 1000 marriages in the 1950s, gradually increased to 4 per thousand through the 1960s and then rapidly increased to 10 per thousand by the mid 1970s.
The Divorce rate then carried on rising steadily to reach a peak of 14 per thousand by the mid 1990s, and then started to decline slowly to its current level of 7.5 divorces per thousand marriages.
This post looks at the reasons for the long term increase from the 1960s to the 1990s especially. NB despite the recent decline we still have a divorce rate today that is three times greater than it was in the 1960s, so there has still been a long term increase in the divorce rate overall.
Why has there been a long-term increase in divorce?
There are four main factors which can explain the long term increase in divorce since the 1960s:
Social policy changes, mainly the Divorce Act of 1969.
Economic factors such as the rising cost of living.
Changing gender roles such as more women going in paid-work
Postmodernsisation which has meant the decline of religion and more freedom of choice.
This post examines these factors and others.
Social Policy Changes
The Divorce Act of 1969 explains the rapid increase in divorce during the early 1970s.
Prior to the Divorce Act it had been difficult to get a divorce because one person had to be at fault and accept blame for the marriage breaking down, through for example having had an affair.
The 1969 the Divorce Act extended the grounds of divorce to ‘irretrievable breakdown’, meaning that two people could simply agree that the marriage wasn’t working for them because they had just fallen out of love and that it was no one persons fault.
The Act was passed by parliament in 1969 and came law in 1971. Married couples could get divorced after two years if both agreed and after five years if only one person wanted a divorce.
However, this cannot explain all the increase because the divorce rate was rising before the act, and continued to rise for many years after its immediate impact in the very early 1970s.
It seems fair to say there were deeper, underlying social factors which created the conditions for higher divorce and the policy change reflected these changes.
Economic Factors
Increasing inequality in the UK has meant that the lower social classes now get paid less compared to rising living costs (mortgages/ bills). This means that both partners in a marriage now need to do paid work to get by, which puts a strain on the marriage which leads to higher numbers getting divorced.
A positive evaluation of this is that divorce rates are higher amongst poorer families.
A negative evaluation is that there isn’t a perfect correlation between increasing costs of living and the divorce rate: the divorce rate has been going down since 2010 when costs of living have been increasing.
Feminism/ changing gender roles
The changing position of women in society. Is crucial to understanding the increase in divorce rates.
The proportion of women staying on in higher education and entering paid work, especially professional occupations, steadily increased during the 1970s and especially the 1980s and early 1990s.
The proportion of women in some kind of paid work is now 70%, whereas in the 1950s it was less than 50%.
This means the ‘normal’ type of household is a dual-earner household in which both men and women are doing paid-work, which means men and women are on a more equal footing in their domestic relationship with women no longer being financially dependent on a male breadwinner.
Financial independence makes getting a divorce easier, and 70% of divorces are filed by women so this certainly explains some of the increase.
It also means that women spend longer building their careers before they have children, and so there are more childless married couples in their mid to late 30s, which makes getting a divorce much easier.
Anthony Giddens argues that two things lie behind the above changes to gender roles:
the impact of the Feminist movement, which has campaigned for equality of opportunity for women in society.
advances in contraception which allow women to avoid unwanted pregnancies.
Feminists however, point out that the advances of women can be exaggerated – women still earn less than men, and traditional gender norms remain in many families.
Postmodernism
Both religion and traditional values have declined in Britain. As a result there is no longer a set of social values which force people into staying married, there is less social stigma attached to getting a divorce and so people are freer to choose to get divorced. This change reflects the declining importance of social structure and the rise of consumer culture – the idea that individuals can choose their own lifestyles.
Giddens (1992) believes that the nature of marriage has changed because the nature of intimate relationships more generally have changed:
In the early period of modernity in the late 18th century, marriage became more than an economic arrangement as the idea of romantic love developed. The marriage partner was idealised as someone who would perfect a person’s life. Women kept their virginity waiting for the perfect partner.
In the era of what Giddens calls ‘late modernity’, plastic sexuality has developed. This means that sex can be for pleasure rather than conceiving children with your perfect marriage partner. Relationships and marriages are no longer seen as necessarily being permanent.
Marriage is now based on confluent love – Love that is dependent upon partners benefitting from the relationship. If they are not fulfilled in their relationship, couples no longer stay together out of a sense of duty, so divorce and relationship breakdown become more common.
Ulrich Beck points out that divorce has increased because individualisation. This involves:
More opportunities for individuals, especially women, and the opportunity for individuals to take more decisions about every aspect of their lives.
Increased conflict emerging from increased choice and uncertainty which leads to chaotic relationships and helps explain the higher divorce rate.
Functionalism
There are a number of reasons linked to the Functional Fit Theory which could explain the increase in divorce:
Functionalists such as Goode (1971) believe that conflict has increased because the family has become more isolated from other kin, placing an increased burden on husbands and wives who have little support from other relatives.
Dennis (1975) believes that because the family performs fewer functions the bonds between husband and wife are weaker.
Allan and Crowe (2001) point out that because the family is no longer an economic unit, this makes it easier for families to break up.
The New Right
The New Right would claim that increasingly generous welfare benefits for single mothers is a crucial factor which allows women to divorce if they deem it necessary.
If divorce occurs within a family, the child will go with the mother in 90% of cases making it difficult to find full time work: and hence benefits may be a necessary link in the chain of explaining the increase in divorce.
The New Right would also see the increasing divorce rate as a sign of wider moral decline.
Signposting and related posts
This is one of the main topics within the families and households module commonly taught in the first year of A-level sociology.
One of the key ideas associated with The Personal Life Perspective on the family is that are lots of differences of opinion over who counts as family. Many people regard friends, dead relatives and pets as part of their family, for example.
This post examines the extent to which people in the UK think Pets are part of the family.
More than 90% of dog and cat owners regard pets as part of the family
58.6% – of pet owners reported spending between £11 and £100 on their pet on Valentine’s Day 2020,
26% of respondents said they are more likely to buy their pet a gift than their partner.
Nearly a quarter of respondents reported they would prefer to spend Valentine’s day with their pet, rather than a love interest
This certainly seems to suggest that, for around 25% of the pet-owning population, pets are more important than their human partners.
Of course this might be because some (most?) of those respondents don’t actually have human partners! Also, the above stats have been collected by a Pet store for marketing purposes – the point being to make it seem like it’s normal to buy your pet a Valentines Day gift, so the reporting here might be selective to give the misleading impression that pets are more important than human partners, rather than pets being a kind of surrogate for a human partner.
Pet posts on social media
The Facebook Group: Our Pets are Family is certainly supporting evidence for the Personal Life perspective. Most of the posts are about pets that have been lost or stolen (yes, dog theft is a ‘thing’!), but with only 2.1K members, this doesn’t seem to be that representative of all pet-owners.
And I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of other pet related social media posts!
What do you think?
If you can think of any other pieces of evidence that either support or criticise the view that ‘pets are part of the family’ then drop links in the comments!
Signposting…
This post has been written to help students evaluate the Personal Life Perspective, which is part of the families and households module for A-level Sociology.
Many laws introduced in the name of ‘child protection’ are really about the oppression and control of children. Dianna Gittins uses the term ‘Age Patriarchy’ to refer to adult domination over children.
Age Patriarchy: Where adults control children and keep them in a state of dependency. By exerting too much control over children’s time, space, money and resources adults dominate children and prevent them from becoming independent.
Age Patriarchy: adult control over children
Adult control over children takes several forms…
control over resources
adult control over space
control over time
adult control over appearance.
Control over children’s resources
Labour laws and compulsory schooling make children financially dependent on adults. Shulamith Firestone sees protection from paid work as forcibly segregating children, making them powerless and dependent.
There are plenty of 14-16 year olds who would be happy to leave school and go into full time work. There are many more 16-18 olds who want to work full time and not stay in education. However the minimum wage for under 18 year olds is less than £6 an hour. This is so low they are unable to support themselves. Government policy keeps 16-18 year olds in a state of financial dependency on their parents.
Control over children’s space
There has been an increase in surveillance of children in public spaces.
Take school as an example: children are monitored more than ever through electronic registration systems, constant testing and nearly every school in the UK has surveillance cameras, with up to 10% of them having them in the toilets.
Children are even more controlled in terms of their journey to and from school. In 1971 76% of primary school children travelled home alone compared to only 25% by 2013.
Control over children’s time
Parents restricts children through daily and weekly routines. Children today are given less time to themselves, with parents scheduling in more activities for them to do in evenings and weekends.
Parents control how children dress and how they interact physically with other children and over their own bodies (don’t pick your nose, don’t slouch etc.).
Acting up and Acting Down
Evidence that children childhood as oppressive comes from the strategies they use to resist the status of child and the strategies that go with it. Two of these strategies are ‘acting up’ and ‘acting down’.
Acting up is where a child acts older than they to rebel.
Acting down is where a child acts younger than they are as an act of rebellion.
Age Patriarchy: criticisms of the concept
This doesn’t apply to very young children who are clearly dependent on adults and need controlling. It’s difficult to argue that a three year old on a scooter should be allowed total freedom to go where they want!
There is an ongoing debate over how much control is too much control and what ages this should be applied to!
This theory is very much out of step with the dominant march of progress view. The danger of allowing children too much freedom too young is that they come to harm in some way.
Signposting
This material is relevant to the families and households option, part of year one A-level Sociology with the AQA.
Parenting is getting more equal, but is still not equal, for example in 2022 women did 30 minutes more childcare per day than their male partners.
To what extent is there equality in relationships between men and women when it comes to parenting and childcare?
Research evidence for greater gender equality
Research by Gayle Kaufman consisting of interviews with 70 American fathers with at least one child under the age of 18 found that between 1977 and 2008 the average American man increased the amount of time spent on household chores and childcare by more than 2 hours per day on average each workday.
Statistics suggest that increasingly men are performing a ‘second shift’ when they return home from work, spending on average 46 hours a week on childcare and housework, which suggests that it is increasingly men rather than women who face the ‘dual burden‘.
Kaufman identified two new types of dads based on how they responded to the challenges of balancing work and family life.
‘New Dads’ which were by far the largest category placed a high priority on involvement with children and made some minor adjustments to their work practices – such as getting to work later or leaving earlier, or ‘leaving work at work’ or bringing work home with them and trying to juggle that and family duties.
Superdads actively adjusted their work lives to fit in with their family lives – by changing careers, cutting back work hours or adopting more flexible working hours. These dads saw spending time with their children as the most important thing in their lives, with money and career as less important.
Evidence against gender equality in parenting
We are still a long way from gender equality in parenting…
only 10% of full-time stay at home parents are male.
34% of female parents work part time compared to only 6% of male parents.
women spend 30 minutes more per day on childcare than men.
Only 1/3rd of dads take paternity leave.
Fathers spend longer on the fun, easy childcare activities.
90% of full-time stay at home parents are women
Data from the 2021 UK Census found that only 10.6% of full-time stay at home parents were fathers. Meaning that almost 90% of full-time stay at home parents are women.
141 000 economically active men who were looking after children full time at home, compared to 1, 185, 000 women.
However, the proportion of stay at home dads has increased since 2019. in 2019 only 1/14 full time stay at home parents were male, or only 105 000 men. So this is a significant increase in just two years!
Female parents are far more likely to work part-time
83.1% of men work full time compared to 6.3% of men who work part-time
38.4% of women work full time compared to 34.4% of women who work part-time.
Women spend 30 minutes more on childcare more day than men
Also, although fathers always say they want to spend more time with their kids rather than working, the evidence does not back this up – a third of men don’t take their two weeks paternity leave, 40% say they don’t intend to take the 6 months they are now entitled to and 90% say they wouldn’t take more than 6 months if it was offered to them.
Some more detailed research from NatCen revealed that while trends in housework were moving towards greater equality, the same could not be said for trends in childcare.
Mothers spent more than twice as much time than fathers doing ‘physical’ childcare, which includes such chores as feeding and bathing children.
Mothers spent 28 minutes per day on ‘interactive’ childcare such as playing, reading and talking with their children, compared to 19 minutes for fathers – this is the smallest difference of all the activity types, but arguably the most pleasant!
Mothers spent almost twice as long on ‘other childcare‘ activities such as taking children to school and after-school activities.
84% of single parent households are single mother households, only 16% are single father households. (Source: ONS families and households data).
However, the number of single father households is increasing, not so long ago 90% of single parent households were headed by females.
Intensive Motherhood
The Emergence of ‘Intensive Motherhood’ suggests things might even be getting worse for some mothers…
According to Sharon Hays (1996) it is still mothers, rather than fathers who remain the target of most parenting advice, and today all mothers are expected to live up to a new norm of ‘intensive mothering’ – a style of mothering that is ‘expert-guided’ and child centred as well as emotionally absorbing, labour intensive and financially expensive, requiring a 24/7 focus on the child.
Hays suggests that intensive mothering has become the taken for granted ‘correct’ style of mothering , and the focus is typically on the mother and not on the father.
Emma Watson recently coined the term ‘self-partnering’ to demonstrate her happiness with being single, which is in an increasing trend in the UK
There are 16.7 million people in the UK who are single and never married, and the number is increasing, with almost 370 000 more single people in the UK in 2018 compared to 2017, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Unsurprisingly, you’re more likely to be single and never married when you’re younger compared to when you’re older, but at Emma Watson’s age almost half of people are single. However this has declined to only 25% of the population for people in their mid 40s.
NB – being single and not married doesn’t necessarily mean you’re lonely or celibate: many of these people will be dating, maybe in the early stages of a relationship, maybe in a more serious relationship and just not living together, so this just their formal status, rather than their actual relationship situation.
It would be interesting to get some stats on how many of these people are actually ‘single’ in the sense of not being in any kind of romantic relationship!
Relevance of this to A-level sociology
This is just a quick update to highlight the continued trend away from marriage and towards singledom. This is relevant to the ‘marriage and divorce’ topics and the ‘decline in the family’ debate within families and households.
If you’re interested in understanding why there are more single people, this post is a good starting point, on the increase in single person households, a closely related topic!
You can also use the ‘definition’ of single by the ONS to illustrate some of the limitations of official statistics – in that it isn’t the same as how most of us would use the word ‘single’ when we talk about relationships.
Below I’ve reformatted the examiners report for the 2018 A-level sociology exam, paper 2 (families and households section) into bullet points and included the exam questions.
This is really just designed to make this more user friendly!
This advice is taken straight from the AQA’s examiner report on the sociology A-level exam 2018.
Beliefs in society 2018 Questions and examiner commentary
Question 13
Outline and explain two ways in which globalisation may affect religious beliefs and practices (10)
Most students able to explain two ways in which globalisation may have affected religious beliefs and practices.
Popular answers included pluralism and greater choice, deterritorialisation and the growth of fundamentalism.
Some weaker answers described recent changes in beliefs or practices without making the role of globalisation clear.
Question 14
Applying material from Item I, analyse two reasons why minority ethnic groups in the United Kingdom are often more religious than the majority of the population (10)
This question was generally answered well.
Popular answers included cultural defence and cultural transition (although the difference between these two concepts was not always clear), and the idea that migrants are simply more likely to be religious when placed in a secular society.
This question referred specifically to the United Kingdom and so answers about other countries could not be credited.
Question 15
Applying material from Item J and your knowledge, evaluate the view that an increase in spirituality in the United Kingdom has compensated for the decline of organised religion (20)
Answers here showed a good range of knowledge.
Most students took cues from the item and discussed a range of developments, such as variations of secularisation, growth of science and rationality and the growth of New Age activities.
There was pleasing evidence of knowledge of contemporary postmodern approaches but only the best answers explicitly addressed spirituality or considered that there might be a difference between the spiritual and the religious.
Below I’ve reformatted the examiners report for the 2018 A-level sociology exam, paper 2 (families and households section) into bullet points and included the exam questions.
This is really just designed to make this more user friendly!
This advice is taken straight from the AQA’s examiner report on the sociology A-level exam 2018.
Families and Households 2018 Questions and examiner commentary
Question 04
Outline and explain two ways in which government policies may affect family structure. [10 marks]
There was a tendency to go into detail about the chosen policies rather than to discuss effects on family structures.
Some answers assumed an effect and did not take the opportunity to use their sociological understanding to explore the ideas in greater depth. For example, some answers said that changes to divorce laws increased the number of lone parent families, but few discussed increases in reconstituted families or bi-nuclear families.
Similarly the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act of 2013 was recognised as increasing the number of same sex married couples but also led to same sex divorces, changes in adoption, surrogacy and so on.
Question 05
Applying material from Item C, analyse two ways in which demographic trends since 1900 may have affected the nature of childhood in the United Kingdom today. [10 marks]
Many answers went into reasons for the demographic changes referred to in the item rather than focus on effects on childhood.
Others discussed childhood a hundred years ago or earlier.
However, many did develop points about child centeredness by looking at its positive consequences for childhood and then developing this to link it to over protectiveness, age patriarchy, pester power, toxic childhood and so on.
Similarly, the presence of grandparents was in better answers not merely described but analysed as to how it could be both positive and negative in contributing to socialisation and childcare and in adding to the burden of care for the family with some children becoming young carers.
Better answers were distinguished by, as the mark scheme says, ‘developed applications’, going beyond the immediately apparent.
Question 06
Applying material from Item D and your knowledge, evaluate the view that individual choice in personal relationships has made family life less important in the United Kingdom today
Many answers discussed changes in family life such as divorce, cohabitation, same sex marriage and gender roles in terms of greater choice but few explored whether these developments made family life more important or less important.
More developed analysis showed how diversity did not always lead to less importance being given to family life, importance of a changed form of family life. Functionalism and the New Right were often included but, sometimes with Marxism, described rather than being applied to the question.
There was a shortage of postmodernist views in addition to choice and diversity. Better answers referred to pure relationships, confluent love, negotiated families and alternative life courses.
