2.  Know the main changes in partnerships including
marriage, divorce, cohabitation and civil partnerships
as well as one-person and extended family
households
 Know the main changes in childbearing and
childrearing, including births outside of marriage, lone-
parent families and stepfamilies
 Understand how these changes have contributed to
greater family diversity
 Be able to analyse and evaluate the reasons for these
changes in families and households

4.  Marriage
 Separation
 Divorce
 Empty shell marriage
 Irretrievable breakdown
 Monogamy
 Serial monogamy
 Social stigma
 Re-marriage
 Cohabitation
 Trial marriage
 Single-hood
 Divorce rate
 Marriage rate
 secularisation

6.  What changes do you think have occurred to the
family in recent times, if any?

7.  In the past 30 or 40 years there have been some major
changes in family and household patterns:
◦ Number of nuclear family households has fallen
◦ Divorce rates have increased
◦ Fewer first marriages, more re-marriages and people are marrying
later in life
◦ More couples cohabiting
◦ Same-sex relationships legally recognised
◦ Women having fewer children/having them later
◦ More births outside of marriage
◦ More lone-parent families
◦ More people live alone
◦ More stepfamilies
◦ More couples without children

8.  How is the concept of child-centredness
reinforced or otherwise in this programme?
 What other factors must be taken into account
when looking at the consequences of divorce?
E.g. economic factors
 What percentage of fathers lose contact with their
children within three years of divorcing?
 What impact has divorce had on the children in
the video?
 How to Divorce without Screwing Up your Children.WM

9.  Major factor
 Most re-marriages involve a divorcee
 Divorce creates both lone-parent families and
one-person households

12.  Since 1960s  increase in the number of divorces
 Doubled between 1961 and 1969, doubled again
1972
 Peaked in 1993 at 180,000
 Since then numbers have fallen – 2001 
157,000 (6x times higher than in 1961)
 At this rate 40% of all marriages will end in divorce

13.  7/10 petitions for divorce come from:
◦ females
 1946  37% came from:
◦ women
 Most common reason is ‘unreasonable behaviour’
of the:
◦ husband
 However, more recently divorce rates have started
declining:
 Divorce Rate Lowest for 29 Years

14.  Those that marry young
 Have a child before they marry
 Cohabit before marriage
 Those where one or both partners were married
before

15.  Sociologists have stated the following reasons:
◦ Changes in the law
◦ Declining stigma and changing attitudes
◦ Secularisation
◦ Rising expectations of marriage
◦ Changes in the position of women

16.  19th
C Britain  divorce difficult (especially for
women)
 Now:
◦ Equalising the legal reasons for divorce between the
sexes (1923)
◦ Widening the grounds for divorce
◦ Making divorce cheaper
◦ Tiger Woods Case

17.  1923  sharp increase in the number of divorce
petitions from women
 1949  legal aid for divorce cases lowered the
cost
 Divorce rates have risen with every change in the
law

18.  Desertion
◦ One partner leaves the other but the couple remains
legally married
 Legal Separation
◦ Court separates the financial and legal affairs
◦ Stay married, not free to remarry
 Empty Shell Marriage
◦ Married in name only and live under the same roof
◦ As divorce has become more easily accessible this has
become less popular

19.  Stigma  negative label
 Mitchell and Goody (1997)
◦ An important change since the 1960s is the declining
stigma attached to divorce
 ‘normalises’ divorce
 Misfortune rather than shameful

20.  Decline in the influence of religion in society
 Church attendance rates continue to decline
 Traditional opposition of divorce by the church has less
weight
 2001 Census data
◦ 43% of young people with no religion were cohabiting
◦ 34% of Christians
◦ 17% of Muslims
◦ 10% of Sikhs

21.  Functionalist Ronald Fletcher
(1966)
◦ Higher expectations placed on marriage
◦ Less willing to tolerate an unhappy
marriage
 Ideology of romance (Mr and Mrs
Right)  if love dies there is no
point in marriage
 In the past families were
constructed mainly for economic
reasons or of duty to one’s family

22.  Allan and Crow (2001)
◦ ‘Love, personal commitment and intrinsic satisfaction are now
seen as the cornerstones of marriage. The absence of these
feelings is itself justification for ending the relationship.’
 Functionalists take an optimistic view
◦ Point to the continuing popularity of marriage
◦ It has not been rejected as an institution
◦ Too ‘rosy’ a view?
 Feminists
◦ The oppression of women in marriage is the main factor
◦ Functionalists fail to explain why it is mainly women rather
than men that seek divorce.

23.  Improvements in economic
position
◦ Women today much more likely to
be in paid work
 47% in 1959
 70% in 2005
◦ Equal pay act & anti-discrimination
law
◦ Girls’ greater success in education
◦ Availability of welfare benefits –
women no longer have to be
financially dependent on men

24.  Arlie Hochschild (1997)
argues that for many women, the
home compares unfavourably with
work
◦ At work the woman feels valued
◦ Men’s resistance to housework at
home makes marriage less stable
◦ Both going to work leaves less time
and energy to talk about issues
together

25.  Wendy Sigle-Rushton (2007)
◦ Working mothers more likely to divorce than traditional bread winning
families
◦ However, where the husband is involved with chores, the likelyhood of
divorce falls to the same levels as traditional bread winning families
 Jessie Bernard (1976)
◦ Many women feel a growing dissatisfaction with patriarchal marriage
◦ Rising divorce rate + most petitions coming from women = feminist
ideas – more confident about rejecting patriarchal oppression

26.  Make notes from the yellow book (Haralambos)
page 64.
◦ The consequences of divorce
 Divorce and children
 Divorce and society

27.  Which religions now allow divorce and re-
marriage and under which circumstances?
 Try to find out about a range of churches
◦ Church of England
◦ Catholic
◦ Baptist
◦ Jehovas Witnesses
◦ Pentecostalism
◦ Non-Christian religions
 Create a poster in publisher that can
then be saved and put on the VLE