Demography - Marriage patterns

Marriage

Trends: Delayed marriage, parents having children later, fewer children, focus resources on them, increased child-centeredness, better quality of life

Reasons for the decline in marriage:

1. Secularisation. The decline of religious influence in society. Church attendance continues to decline, causing the church to have less power. As a result, people are less likely to be influenced by religious teachings and so the traditional idea of churches being in favour of marriage has less influence so people feel more freedom to choose not to marry

Evaluation:

Feminists – View declining marriage as desirable. This is because it shows women's liberation from the oppression caused by the patriarchal nuclear family

Postmodernists – The declining marriage rate is a sign of individual freedom and is also a large cause of more family diversity e.g. rise of lone-parent families

2. Changes in the position of women**.** Women are now more likely to be in paid work than in the past, perhaps due to girls now performing better in education. As a result, women are now more financially independent and don't need to rely on a husband for finances. This gives women greater freedom to choose not to marry

Even if women aren't financially independent, they no longer have to be financially dependent on their husbands as they can depend on the welfare state.

Evaluation:

New right – Declining marriage rate is undesirable as it undermines the traditional nuclear family which they argue is vital for social stability.

Additionally, they argue that this creates a growing underclass of welfare-dependent lone parents which can arguably result in poorer health and educational outcomes.

Functionalists – A declining marriage rate isn't necessarily a threat to marriage as an institution. This is because there is a high rate of re-marriages due to the rise in divorces and therefore people are continuing to commit to the idea of marriage, but perhaps they just have higher expectations within their marriages.