Cohabitation

 Is the concept of marriage dead?

• Cohabitation could have been the number one reason for the drop in the marriage rates.
• People find civil partnerships as far more valuable compared to the religious ceremonial Marriage.
• Secularisation has decreased as people do not feel the need to marry.

The average age for women to get married is 30, and for men it is 32.

Identify one strength and one weakness of the data in helping us to understand the changing family.

• The data clearly shows the different family types for the different age ranges. It shows the trends between age and family types.
  It shows us the types of family that exist and allows us to make predictions about how family life will change over time.
• However, a weakness of this data is that it does not show us an explanation as to why the family types change and the circumstances in which these changes happened, for example, divorce, death etc.

Reasons for the growth in cohabiting couples:

• Changes in social attitudes
• Economic factors
• Employment trends
• Religious trends
• Divorce

How would the following explain the trends in the data?

• functionalists:
• The fact that people get divorced can be considered a positive thing because it means that expectations are getting higher, however, the fact that people are not getting married is considered a bad thing because functionalists would argue that this leads to an unstable family

•  Marxists:
•  Cohabitation is seen as good because it is 'against the system' it stalls the preproduction of an unequal system that we live in since people are no longer following the same ideological teachings. 

• Feminists:
• Since women are becoming more independent cohabitation would be seen as more common, they see it as women becoming much more independent as individual units. 

Studies:

• Chester (1985) Neo-conventional, 5 year cycle, eventually become nuclear. Cohabiting is temporary
• chandler (1993) Time in cohabitation is lengthening and not ending with marriage
• Morgan (1999) Marriage is out of fashion
• Allan & Crow  (2001) say there is no clear family cycle. diversity is based on increased choice. In 1960s 1 in 20 women cohabited before marriage, by 80s 10 in 20 did.