Demography - Separation and Divorce

Divorce

• Around 40% of marriages in the UK end in divorce
• 7 out of 10 applications for divorce now come from women

Reasons for the increase in divorce:

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 opposed to divorce has less influence over whether people choose to divorce.

Evaluation:

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

Postmodernists – A high divorce 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 their husbands for finances, and therefore are more able to get a divorce.

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