3. The family Family structure

The British live longer, marry later, have fewer children and are more likely to get divorced than ever before. Young people leave home earlier, though not necessarily to get married. More women now go out to work and more people, especially the old, live alone. The nuclear family (parents and perhaps two children) has largely replaced the extended family, where several generations lived together, but has also been partly replaced by patterns of remarriage, where children with different parents may live together with a family for some or all of the time.

Although patterns are changing, most people in Britain get married, have children and stay together until the end of their lives. People are marrying later: the average woman gets married at twenty-seven to a man who is just over two years older (although it is estimated that 40% of couples live together before getting married). Mrs. Average now has her first child in her late twenties, but she will have only one or two children: only one mother in four has more. Eight out of ten married women will have children at some point in their lives. And despite the changes in working habits it is usually the woman who has overall responsibility for domestic life: the traditional division of the family responsibilities still persists.

Britain has one of the highest divorce rates in Western Europe: approximately one in three marriages ends in divorce, half of them in the first ten years of marriage. As a result more people are getting remarried and there are now over 1.6 million single parents. There has also been a sharp rise in the rate of illegitimacy; by 1999 nearly 40% of babies were born outside marriage.

Working mothers

In the first years of the 20^th century less than 10% of married women were in employment: over the last thirty years the proportion of working married women has increased from 21% to over 50%. More than a quarter of women with children under the age of five and about two-thirds of women with school-age children go out to work.

Women generally are spending a larger proportion of their lives in paid employment. It is now normal for a woman to be in full-time work until the birth of the first child and an increasingly high proportion of women return to work after having a child, although this may be to a part-time job. Women are also returning to work more quickly after having a child. Britain has a high percentage of working mothers compared to some other countries (for example Italy, Ireland and Japan), but provisions for maternity leave and child care are amongst the lowest in Europe.

Young people

Despite media reports, not all young people in Britain are punks or football hooligans. There is a wide cross-section of youth from Young Conservatives to Rastafarians, from skinheads to pupils at expensive private schools.

Nineteenth-century Victorian attitudes about how children should be brought up have largely disappeared and for many children family life has become more relaxed and less strict. Many young people in Britain have a considerable amount of freedom and the things they are interested in reflect this; music, computers, television, shopping, sex, fashion and money predominate. Being independent and free to choose are priorities. Attitudes towards religion and marriage have changed and for many children there is a much higher standard of living than even twenty years ago. Ever since the media discovered the world of the teenager films, videos, TV programmes and magazines have all been marketed towards the young.

There are a number of problems associated with being young; some schools have problems with discipline and motivation; crime and drug taking in some areas have reached serious levels. Employment prospects for young people, who leave school early or without qualifications are not good. The new consumer society means, that many children do not take much exercise; many including quite young children are overweight.

For many young people leaving home is a route to independence, although for some this may be financially impossible. Most young people hope to be able to have their own house or flat: in modern Britain financial pressures are much more likely to restrict this than family pressure.

From Britain Explored

by Paul Harvey and Rhodri Jones, 2007

(pages 88, 91, 92)