Marital Breakdown

Marriage rates and marital breakdown

There is a decline in marriage rates. Fewer people are getting married and fewer are getting married when they are in their teens. In Britain in 1971 one in 11 teenage women got married; in 1981 this was 1 in 24. In 1981 the marriage rate was 7.1 marriages per 1000; in 1991 it was 6.8 per 1000. However, some sociologists do not agree that marriage is declining. According to Chester, “Mainly we seem to be witnessing a delay in the timing of marriage, rather than a fall-off in getting married at all.” Likewise, marriage rates in the European Community as a whole did not decline during this period. There is an increase in cohabitation. The General Household Survey shows that the percentage of non-married women who cohabit rose from 11% in 1979 to 23% in 1991.

What are the alternatives to marriage? One is a commune, which according to McCulloch are “experimental household groups which practise an ideology of sharing.” Communes occur quite frequently in the USA — according to Jerome there are 25,000 communes in the USA — but rare in Britain.

There are three kinds of marital breakdown: (1) divorce, which is a legal termination of a marriage; (2) separation, in which spouses not longer cohabit; and (3) empty-shell marriages, in which spouses live together and remain legally married whilst not enjoying all the privileges of marriage.

Divorce rates have been rising in industrial societies during the C20th. In 1971 there were changes to the law making divorce easier, and the sudden rise in divorce petitions in that year has been sustained in subsequent years; in other words, there is an underlying trend. In 1991 there were 350,000 marriages and 171,000 divorces. However, the proportion of second marriages has also been rising. In 1961 15% of all marriages were remarriages; in 1991 it was 36%.

It is very difficult to estimate the number of empty-shell marriages, and no statistics are available. It is likely that empty-shell marriages are more likely to end in separation and divorce than in the past.

Causes of Marital Breakdown

However, the causes of marital breakdown need to be examined. Talcott Parsons and Ronald Fletcher argue that marital breakdown is on the increase because people want more from their marriage, and so are more likely to end a relationship that they do not find acceptable. This argument is supported by the fact that the rate of remarriage is increasing. According to William J. Goode there is more pressure on marital relationships since the family is more isolated and more nuclear. Wider kinship networks help to distribute the emotional load generated inside and outside the relationship. Since families are more nuclear, according to Dennis, “In so far as companionship, a close, durable, intimate and unique relationship with one member of the opposite sex becomes the prime necessity in marriage, a failure in this respect becomes sufficient to lead to its abandonment.” Divorce is also easier in the sense that the stigma attaching to divorce has been reduced.

Prior to 1857 divorce was only possible in Britain as a private act of parliament, an expensive option open only to the very rich. The Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 made divorce possible, but limited the grounds for divorce to adultery. This attached the notion of blame to divorce. The 1950 divorce act extended the reasons for divorce to include cruelty and desertion. The Divorce Reform Act (1971) defined the grounds for divorce as 'the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage', which made divorce easier and removed the blame concept. Divorce legislation of 1984 reduced the period that a couple has to be married before they can file for divorce from three to one year. There has been a change in the nature of divorce petitions. In 1989 73% of divorce petitions were filed by wives; but in 1946 only 37% of divorce petitions were filed by wives.

Another possible cause of increasing divorce rates is marital conflict over roles. If a woman is working she may still be expected to perform all the normal functions of the household, in accordance with her traditional gender role. There may be a contradiction between the normative expectations of the wife's role and her role as a wage earner.

Income and class also affect the likelihood of divorce. In the USA an inverse relationship between income and marital breakdown has been established — that is, the lower the family income, the higher the rate of separation and divorce. Studies in Britain show a relationship between occupational class and divorce. The lower the class, the higher the divorce rate. These are the results from a 1987 study by Burgoyne, Ormrod and Richards

There is also an inverse relationship between the age at which a couple marries and divorce. The lower the age at marriage, the higher the rate of divorce. This factor is also linked to class, since working-class couples are more likely to marry at an earlier age.

Also marriage is more likely to end in separation or divorce if one or both partners' parents were divorced. Marital breakdown is also more likely if the spouses have different social backgrounds.

Marital breakdown occurs more frequently when one or both partners have certain occupations — divorce is more common among long-distance lorry drivers, sales representatives, engineers, technicians whose jobs involve frequent separations from their spouses and more opportunities for contacts with the opposite sex. Also actors, authors, artists, company directors and hotelkeepers have higher divorce rates owing to their high involvement with their work and low involvement with their marriage.

The family, politics and social policy

Unlike most European countries, Britain does not have a government ministry that is responsible for family affairs. However, the policies of the state have an impact on family life. One example of this is the organization of schooling. School hours and holidays make it difficult for both partners of families with children to work. It is difficult to combine domestic responsibilities with employment.

Since socially the burden of caring for the elderly and for children falls more on women, this means that women are expected to concentrate on domestic responsibilities and work only part-time.

However, during the 1980s the New Right argued that government policy was not biased in favour of the family but biased against it. They claimed that the family as an institution is threatened by permissiveness, social changes and government policies. They point to the existence of working mothers, high divorce rates, higher numbers of single parent families and overt homosexuality as signs of the deterioration of family. The New Right argues that welfare payments take money from conventional families and give that money to deviant households. Both Ronald Regan and Margaret Thatcher associated themselves with this viewpoint. Margaret Thatcher made a speech in May 1988 in which she said, “The family is the building block of society. It's a nursery, a school, a hospital, a leisure place, a place of refuge and a place of rest. It encompasses the whole of society. It fashions beliefs. It's the preparation for the rest of our life and women run it.” In office Thatcher established a Family Policy Group which recommended changes to the tax and benefits system so as to favour the family. Thus, in Britain from April 1988 benefits were withdrawn from 16-18 year olds that did not accept a place on a training scheme. The idea was that families would be forced to accept responsibility for maintaining unemployed teenagers. Changes to taxation in the 1988 budget meant that cohabiting partners could not claim more in tax allowances than a married couple. However, in the USA very few 'pro-family' policies were implemented. Likewise, some policies would seem to run counter to the ideology of the New Right — for example, divorce became easier in 1984; benefits to single parents were increased while Child Benefit, payable to all mothers, was frozen (under the Thatcher regime).

The fact that the family is regarded as important, and the rock-bed of society, may be the reflection of middle-class values.