The geographies of contemporary British families and family life a geographers perspective

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The geographies of contemporary British families
and family life (a geographers perspective)

• Darren P. Smith
• University of Brighton, UK
• 16th May 2008
• Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Family life
  Conference
• Geographies of Children, Youth and Families WG of
  RGS-IBG
• University of Newcastle
• Organised by Peter Hopkins

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A definition of the family (2001 Census)

• Defined as a family
• Married / cohabiting (heterosexual same-sex)
  couples without children or who do not live with
  their children
• Married / cohabiting (heterosexual same-sex)
  couples with dependent / non-dependent children
• Married / cohabiting (heterosexual same-sex)
  couples with dependent / non-dependent
  step-children belonging to one partner (or both)
• Lone parents living with dependent /
  non-dependent children
• Any combination of the above living together
  (e.g. two couples sharing an household)
• Any of the above living with other people such as
  lodgers, friends, etc
• Not defined as families
• One person households
• Friends / students / unrelated persons sharing a
  household

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Does this definition suffice?

• An out-dated view of the family?
• The family should be self-defined
• Roseneil, Budgeon friendship versus sexual
  unions?

4
Geographers and the family?

• The family always evident on the radar of
  geographers
• Internal migration, International migration,
  gentrification, ethnicity, etc
• Historically, the family is not a fundamental
  primary research issue of geographers
• No sub-disciplinary identity
• RGS-IBG Research Group? (when and why?)
• Journal (Family Geographies)?
• The family provides a contextual, back-drop to
  studies of the primary research issues - gender,
  childhood, ethnicity, work, home (etc) - for
  geographers
• Population, Space and Place?
• Social and Cultural Geography?
• Gender, Place and Theory?
• Childrens Geographies?
• Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies?
• Journal of Rural Studies?

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The family and epistemology

• Knowledge production?
• Geographers have not effectively informed
  conceptual and theoretical understandings of the
  diversity of the family
• Cultural turn use of purposive samples
• Fine-grained analysis of the family at a
  micro-level (qualitative) often not situated
  within the more general patterns of the family
  / family change (i.e. the geographies of the
  family)
• Quantitative geography
• Taken-for-granted, unproblematic view of the
  conventional family within analyses (i.e. census
  definition)
• A middle-ground between the specific
  (intensive) and the general (extensive)
• Middle-range theory
• Such theory, based on grounded research into
  actual family practices rather than on assuming
  universal patterns, would allow general
  statements about the behaviour of particular
  social groups in given contacts (Duncan and
  Smith, 2006)

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Theorisations of family change

• This is something that is done by sociologists,
  social policy, family studies
• Theories picked-up or cherry-picked by
  geographers
• Theories of the family / family change tend to
  remain aspatial

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An agenda for change

• But things are gradually changing in geography
• RGS-IBG Research Group (CYF)
• (New Labour Department for Children, Schools and
  Families)
• Inter-disciplinary research projects
• CAVA (University of Leeds)
• FLAG (Family, Lifecourse and Generations)
  (University of Leeds)
• ESRC Families and Social Capital Research Centre
  (South Bank)
• Why is this?
• Geography and public policy / politics (Fuller
  and Askins, 2007)
• Family policy could be a key battleground at the
  next UK election (BBC, 8/11/07)
• Recognition of the profound reconstitution of the
  family in British society
• A revolutionary innovation is the increasingly
  common option of not having any children at all.
  A large proportion of people who marry today
  will never have children, not because of
  infertility, but because they choose to remain
  childless (Coontz, 2004 975)

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What Family Change??

• Ferri et al. (2003) 7 seven key changes
• Cohabitation has trebled
• Divorce rates have doubled
• Proportion of children living with a lone parent
  has doubled
• Single person households have doubled
• Average family size has decreased from 2.9
  children to 1.6 children
• Five times as many babies born outside of
  marriage
• Average age when females have their first child
  has increased by 5 years

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The pace of change?

• International migration into the UK
• A8 migrants from Europe
• Out-migration
• A place in the sun movement (King)
• Internal student migration
• The expansion of HE (Duke-Williams)
• International student migration (Findlay, Waters)
• UUK Report (2008) treble in next ten years
• The housing crisis
• Expected rise of multi-person households

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Monitoring the pace of family change?

• Focus on Families (Murphy et al., 2007)
• Total number of families in the UK increased from
  16.5 million (1996) to 17.1 million (2006)
• Cohabiting couple families in the UK increased by
  65 between 1996 and 2006
• Married couple families down by 4
• Families headed by a married couple fell by half
  a million between 1996 and 2006, to just over 12
  million.
• Lone-mother and cohabiting couple families
  increased (2.3 million each).
• Children in non-married families has trebled in
  the last 50 years to around 40
• Average number of children has fallen to 1.8 in a
  family
• Third of un-married families are single parents
• For every three weddings there are now two
  divorces - the highest rate in Europe
• A quarter of children now live with a single mum

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Social Trends (2007) Theme Children Young
People

• Between 1971 and 2007, the number of households
  in Great Britain rose by 5.8 million to 24.4
  million
• In Great Britain in 2007 the proportion of people
  living alone (12 per cent) was double that of
  1971
• In 2005 there were just under 284,000 marriages
  in the UK, around 27,000 fewer than in 2004, and
  197,000 fewer than in 1972, when the number of
  marriages peaked at 480,000
• Over the last 20 years, the proportion of
  unmarried men and women aged under 60 cohabiting
  in Great Britain rose from 11 per cent of men and
  13 per cent of women to 24 per cent and 25 per
  cent respectively
• One in ten men and one in four women forming a
  civil partnership in the UK in 2006 had been in a
  previous legal partnership, in nearly all cases a
  marriage
• Married women giving birth for the first time
  were, on average, age 30 in England and Wales in
  2006, compared with age 24 in 1971

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Social trends (2007)

• The proportion of children living in lone-parent
  families in Great Britain more than tripled
  between 1972 and spring 2006 to 24 per cent
• In 2005 the number of people living alone in
  Great Britain had more than doubled since 1971,
  from 3 million to 7 million
• In 2005 58 per cent of men and 39 per cent of
  women aged 2024 in England lived with their
  parents, an increase of around 8 percentage
  points since 1991
• There were 15,700 civil partnerships formed in
  the UK between December 2005 and September 2006.
  Of these, 93 per cent were in England and Wales,
  6 per cent were in Scotland and 1 per cent were
  in Northern Ireland
• In 2005, 24 per cent of non-married people aged
  under 60 were cohabiting in Great Britain, around
  twice the proportion recorded in 1986
• The average age for mothers at first child-birth
  was 27.3 years in England and Wales in 2005, more
  than three years older than in 1971

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BUT.

• Where is the geography (i.e. the uneven patterns)
  in all of this increasing diversification of the
  family?
• It gets lost in
• aggregated national data / scale of analysis
• Few sub-national representations of family change
  (exception of Duncan (1991) Jarvis, Dorling,
  Simpson, Phillips)
• Yet the diversity of the modern family is
  explicitly recognised within academic political
  arenas

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Gordon Brown the diversity of the modern family

• Party conference speech
• I say to the children of two-parent families,
  one-parent families, foster parent families to
  the widow bringing up children I stand for a
  Britain that supports first-class citizens not
  just some children and some families but supports
  all children and all families (quoted in BBC,
  8/11/07)

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• Why the interest (or infatuation) with the family
  in national politics?

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Sociological theory of family change
Demoralisation thesis

• Pessimistic view of family change
• Emphasises the negatives of increasing family
  breakdown and family change (lower incidence of
  traditional family relations)
• Moral decline and harmful effects (economic
  costs) on society
• Loss of family values replaced by selfish
  individualism
• Individual alienation and social breakdown
• Children are damaged socially, emotionally and
  educationally by divorce and lack of stability
• Cohabitation unstable unions and welfare
  dependency
• Link to crime and other social ills

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The family and politics

• 'Toxic cycle' of family breakdown (BBC, 18/03/08)
• If we are not careful we could reach that
  crossover point when no matter how much we invest
  in education and no matter how hard schools and
  teachers try, they will not be able to overcome
  the negative impact of broken and dysfunctional
  families.

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Politics and the family

• The State of the Nation Report Fractured
  Families (December 2006)
• This study also shows more clearly than ever the
  destructive effects of family breakdown upon
  millions of children, as well as the links
  between family breakdown and addictions,
  educational failure and serious personal debt
  (Rt Hon Iain Duncan Smith MP)

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The family and politics

• Social Justice Review Group (Conservative Party)
• It Breakdown Britain estimated the cost (20
  billion per year) of family collapse including
  the burden of welfare benefits on the taxpayer,
  the amount of debt incurred by single parents
  trying to survive, and the price to society of
  coping with associated problems like drug abuse
  (Daily Mail, 08/12/06)

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The family and politics

• Relate (The Relationship People)
• Stable families are the first unit in building
  unified communities and a stable society. Family
  breakdown is a private tragedy but on a wider
  scale is also a matter for public concern.
  Looking at social and family policy questions
  across government shows that family breakdown
  contributes to a wide variety of social problems
  causing distress for individuals, families and
  communities. The most influential relationships
  in families are those between the adults, whether
  they are together or separated these affect all
  family members.

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Representations of family change

• Today's report argues that the impact of these
  trends is particularly pronounced in white and
  black Caribbean families where the importance of
  family appears to be in freefall. Chinese or
  Indian boys from disadvantaged backgrounds, in
  contrast, come from cultures that place much
  greater importance on the family and value
  educational achievement and aspiration (The
  Telegraph, 15/11/07).

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A geography of family breakdown?

• And lastly (though this should be first) you
  have to point the finger at British family life
  or, rather, the colossal breakdown of it. Again,
  middle-class commentators completely
  misunderstand the problem. This isnt about yummy
  Islington mummies moaning that their teenage kids
  are never in for family meals. Its about kids
  who havent seen their father in months, who
  arent welcome in their own home because their
  mums new bloke hates the sight of them, who
  could disappear for days before anyone would
  raise the alarm, and who havent an adult in the
  world to whom they could turn if they get into
  trouble. That is what I mean by the breakdown of
  family life and I defy you to find a single
  high-rise estate in Britain that doesnt have a
  dozen kids in that predicament (Richard Morrison,
  The Times, 17/11/06).

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• BUT

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BBC Survey of Family Life (2007)

• 75 of people are optimistic about their family's
  future - a much higher figure than when people
  were asked more than 40 years ago
• 93 of people described family life as fairly
  happy or very happy
• More people describe their family as close
• People are more likely to say their parents did
  their best for them

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The optimists individualisation

• Giddens post-traditional society
  (de-traditionalisation)
• Individuals are freed from gender and
  generational relationships and obligations
• Weakening social structures of social class,
  religion, gender and the family pre-given life
  trajectories
• Unshackled from structural constraints, moral
  codes and boundaries (education, welfare state,
  economic prosperity)
• Intimacy and partnerships are essential for
  understanding how close personal relationships
  and families have changed (same-sex,
  mixed-ethnicity) THE PURE RELATIONSHIP /
  PLASTIC SEXUALITY
• Self-reflexive and personal biographies (projects
  of the self) emphasis on individual
  self-fulfilment, choice and personal development
• Social class no longer has the same structuring
  role that it once had. Where once there was a
  standard biography there is now a choice
  biography for people to create for themselves
  (Brannen and Nilsen, 2005 415)

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What / where are the geographies?

• The pure relationship is not tied to an
  institution such as marriage or the desire to
  raise children. Rather, it is free-floating,
  independent of social institutions or economic
  life (Cherlin, 2004 853)
• Instead
• We have families of choice whose make-up is
  diverse, fluid, unresolved, constantly chosen and
  re-chosen (Weeks et al., 2001)
• The postmodern household (Hardill, 2002)

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Duncan and Smith (2006)

• 3 geographic indices of central elements of the
  individualisation thesis
• Distribution of same-sex couples
• Pioneers of pure relationships/plastic sexuality?
• Forefront of processes of individualisation (a
  queering of the family)
• Births to cohabitants (unmarried)
• Trend to pure relationship
• (do-it-yourself marriage child longer-term
  commitment)
• Mothers withdrawal from the worker role
• Motherhood employment effect a marker of
  individualisation

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Same-sex families

• Rarity of same-sex couple reported in GB census
• Most of the country 0.3 defined themselves as
  same-sex couple
• Under-estimation (does not include living-alone)
• If the figures are doubled
• Brighton and Hove (5) only another three local
  authorities with over 3 (Manchester, Edinburgh,
  Glasgow)
• Islington (2.26) rest of Inner London (1-2)
• University towns (Oxford, Cambridge, Stirling,
  Exeter)
• Escape seaside towns (Bournemouth, Torbay)
• Escape rural idylls (west of Cornwall)
• Lifecourse effects
• Lewes near Brighton
• Hebden Bridge near Manchester

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Summary

• If same-sex partnerships are cutting-edge of
  individualisation
• Geography is numerically-weak and spatially
  limited
• But geography is important

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Births to cohabiting, unmarried, parents

• Radically different geography to same-sex couples
• Inner-London is conservative Britain when it
  comes to marriage and parenting
• Highest scoring is valleys of South-west Wales
  and ex-mining areas in North-east and South
  Yorkshire
• Brighton and Manchester score high on both
  indices
• Unmarried, cohabiting parenthood is pervasive in
  the UK (lone mothers not included) and is
  increasing (Duncan and Smith, 2003)
• Partnering and parenting have become
  de-traditionalised (more in the older industrial
  towns and cities than in suburban and small
  towns)
• Linked to social class and local economy
  (household deprivation)
• Shows more about de-traditionalisation
  (constraint) than individualisation (choice)
• Religious adherence

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Motherhood employment effect

• North-south divide but in a different way
• Prosperous South-east of England and rich west
  London high MEEs (greater withdrawal from the
  labour market with motherhood)
• Stagnant economies (e.g. Merseyside / east
  Lancashire) low MEE (fewer women withdraw from
  the labour market with motherhood)
• More significant and growing divide (Duncan and
  Smith, 2003)
• More jobs and higher wages withdrawal (and vice
  versa)
• Different gendered moral rationalities
  (motherhood and fatherhood) (Duncan and Edwards,
  1999)
• Government policies?

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Findings

• Pre-existing structures have not gone away
• Family forms are deeply influenced by local
  structural conditions / contexts
• People might be less constrained by older
  traditions but this does not necessarily mean
  individualisation
• Constraints / choices have a distinct geography
• Individualisation may be better understood as one
  part of pre-existing social and structural
  processes on the family

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Conclusion

• There is a pressing need for the interface
  between geography and sociology (social policy)
  to be forged at theoretical, conceptual and
  empirical levels, in light of the changing
  terrain and diversification of the contemporary
  geographies of the family and family
  arrangements.
• A new spatially-informed sociology of the family?
• A new sociologically-informed geography of the
  family?