Changing family patterns, including trends in marriage, cohabitation, divorce, childbearing and the ageing population, and the reasons behind them.

What this dot point is asking

AQA wants you to describe how marriage, divorce, cohabitation and childbearing have changed in Britain, to know that Britain has an ageing population, and to explain the social, legal and economic reasons behind these trends. You should be able to link a named reason to a specific trend.

Marriage and cohabitation

Fewer people are marrying than in the past, and those who do marry tend to do so later, often after a period of living together. At the same time cohabitation (living together as a couple without being married) has risen sharply and is now widely accepted, frequently as a stage before marriage or as a permanent alternative to it. The change reflects shifting attitudes: a relationship outside marriage no longer carries the stigma it once did, and the law now recognises cohabiting and same-sex couples in ways it did not in the past.

Divorce

It is important to separate the legal change from the social causes. The 1969 Act did not make marriages fail; it made it legally easier and cheaper for couples in already-broken marriages to divorce. Behind the legal change sit deeper social changes: secularisation weakened the religious view of marriage as a lifelong sacred bond, and changing attitudes made divorce an acceptable choice rather than a scandal.

Childbearing and the ageing population

People are having fewer children and having them later, and a far larger share of children are born outside marriage. Better contraception gives couples more control over when and whether to have children, and the rising cost of raising children, together with women's careers, encourages smaller families. Meanwhile Britain has an ageing population: people live longer because of better healthcare and living standards, while the birth rate has fallen, so the proportion of older people is rising. This affects families through the growing need to care for elderly relatives, sometimes producing a "sandwich generation" caring for both children and parents.

Reasons behind the trends

The main reasons, which can be applied to several trends, are:

• Changes in the law made divorce easier and recognised cohabiting and same-sex couples.
• Secularisation weakened religious objections to divorce, cohabitation and births outside marriage.
• Changing attitudes reduced the stigma of divorce, cohabitation and lone parenthood.
• Women's independence through paid work made marriage less of an economic necessity.