Family Breakdown, Individualism and the Issue of the Relationship between Family Law and Behaviour in Post-War Britain

Abstract

The family became a major political issue in the UK during the 1990s as policy makers began to recognize the rapid pace of family change. In the space of a generation the numbers marrying have halved, the numbers divorcing trebled and the proportion of children born outside marriage quadrupled (Scott, Braun and Alwin, 1998). Declining marriage and increased childbearing outside marriage are inextricably linked to the growth of cohabitation, and increases in divorce, cohabitation and extra-marital childbearing have all contributed to the separation of marriage and parenthood. Between 1970 and 1990, the percentage of lone mother families more than doubled. Indeed, it is tempting to write of the ‘rise and decline of marriage’ in the twentieth century, with marriage becoming virtually universal in the immediate post-war decades and seemingly becoming much less popular in the closing years of the century. Such judgements may be premature, but it is the broad trends associated with the decline of marriage and rise of cohabitation that have promoted the fin de siecle anxiety about marriage and the family, now continuing into the twenty-first century.