Family Structure Trends in Europe

The implication for social policy as a result of the changing face of

the ‘family’ has been enormous. In order to evaluate them

adequately, I shall look at 4 main transitory factors which have had,

and are continuing to have, implications for social policy,

specifically within Europe. These are: Downward trend in marriages,

the rise in single parent/lone parent families, increasing

participation of women in the workforce and their consequent

economical success, and the incessantly declining rate of fertility.

The notion of family thirty years ago was relatively simple. A

married couple, two children, an extended family in the form of

grandparents and even a pet were seen as constituting the norm. One

of the main factors that influenced the fragmentation of this image,

in Britain at least, was the introduction of The Divorce Reform Act in

1969 (Glennester, pg 163). The immediate period after the introduction

of this law, brought on by considerable pressure from feminists in the

1960s period of liberalism, witnessed a sudden influx in the number of

women abandoning their marriages in search of bigger and better

things. Married couples were increasingly becoming separate

entities, and, over time, this pattern has altered to an extent that

marriage is now losing its hold as an important social institution.

Lewis (1992 In: Glennester Howard:British Social Policy since 1945 pp

164) made use of the Male Breadwinning Model to depict the belief

system upon which social policies were initially formed; women were

dependent upon the male, unlikely to participate in the labour work

force after marriage and likely to remain in the domest...

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...ng policies. The rising irregularities in family

life can also be seen as a result of the contradictions

within existing policies. Whereas on the one hand the state urges its

members to show increasing participation in the labour force, it also

encourages the maintenance of the traditional notions of 'family.'

This requires females to remain at home and men to dominate in the

financial domain, a lifestyle which is unlikely; financial

requirements of raising children are now are so high that it

needs dual work, which in turn increases individualisation, one

primary reason the state is in a frenzy with regards to childcare.

What is required is a balance between the two variations; the

traditional and the new, but whether social policy can incorporate

the new 'fluctuating' family into it's make up remains to be seen.