Lone Parent Families Essay

There is a lot of uncertainty about the character of families as they vary between societies and cultures and they are constantly changing. They vary on the basis of structures, kinship systems as well as the roles which they fulfil, based on all of this there is no real definition about what a family is. There are many individual factors that influence the way in which the family has changed and these factors have contributed to making the character of families uncertain. These factors can include increases in cohabitation, births outside marriage, the level of separation and divorce and the number of lone-parent and stepfamilies as defined by Allan and Crow (2001, p. 2).
Similar factors which have contributed to making the character of families

One reason due to which the family has become more complex is secularisation which resulted in people being more accepting of homosexuality, this means that there now exist homosexual families. Furthermore legislation which has been passed regarding homosexuality such as the 1967 Sexual Offences Act which decriminalised homosexual sex for over 21s has also made homosexuality more accepted throughout society.
Secularisation has also meant that it is easier to get a divorce and there is no pressure on people to get married therefore lone parent families are more likely to exist, lone parent families are usually matrifocal. Both of these have resulted in the decline of the nuclear/traditional families. There has been a steady increase of lone parent families with dependent children since 2001. In 2001 there was 1.7 million of lone parents with dependent children, in 2011 there was 2 million of lone parents with dependent children as found by Office of National Statistics (Families and Households,