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The rise of industrialization has brought a shift from extended family towards nuclear family due to the changing needs of the family, which were to be able to move freely around to places where there were employment opportunities (functionalism approach). (Waugh et al,2008).
Moreover, the events that occurred in the 20th century like world war II (1940) with the shortage of men in workplaces, the growing number of office jobs in 1920, and the Great Depression in 1930 have contributed to the entrance of women into the workforce, hence changing the marital division of labor.
Although the American Society equates marriage to monogamy, around 78% of other cultures have accepted polygamy which means being married to more than one person, with polygyny (a man married to more than one woman at the time) being the dominant one. In the United States, bigamy which consists of entering into another marriage while still being married to another person is illegal and socially unacceptable in more states. (University of Minnesota, 2010).
However, some religions like those of the Mormons faith, Muslims and most states in Africa (mostly for wealthy men, having more than one wife is also related to having more power) accept polygamy in their culture but nowadays, the percentage of people entering polygamy has steadily decreased, with more people getting into education and accessing mass media and technology.
Besides the cultural differences, the family has had some structural changes. The initial structure of the family considered in our study is the nuclear family which represents the ideal type in the United States and to sociological approaches like functionalism and New Right.
In recent years there has been a rise in variations of nuclear family with an increase in the divorce rate. According to the data from Wilcox (2009), the main events that contributed to that increase were industrialization, the great depression, and World War II; after that, the divorce rate dropped sharply in the 1950s, before rising sharply again around the 1960s and 1970s. Today the divorce rate has declined but it is slightly higher than its peak during World War II.
The reasons for divorce in those days could be the economic distress people were going through at that time and the family disruption caused by the war, the change in the divorce law resulting in more people applying to legally end their marriage example: The Divorce Reform Act 1969 with a new ground for divorce: irretrievable breakdown, the Matrimonial Family Proceedings Act in 1984 that reduced the amount of time couples have to be married before applying for divorce from 3 to 1 year).
The increase in divorce rate as well as the rise in several never-married women have contributed to the rise in single-parent families consisting of single parenthood (Allan and Crow, 2001 cited Waugh et al, 2008). According to the National Statistics (2007), the percentage of children living in lone-parent families in Great Britain more than tripled to 24% between 1972 and 2006. The death of a partner is included among the factors leading to single-parenthood. It is important to state that the children living in single parenthood are often in contact with their other parent not living with them and the other partner who remarried or cohabit with the parent whom they live with.
Cohabitation is when a couple is in a relationship without being married. In 2005 the proportion of people aged under 60 years old cohabiting in the United Kingdom doubled the one recorded in 1986. Some of the reason triggering cohabitation is the decline in the live in sin stigma that existed in the past as well as the decline in the influence of religion.
The last factor of change in family structure in our studies is the legalization of gay and lesbian families. In the past being gay or lesbian was considered a shame, although some people were living in same-sex relationships; nowadays gays and lesbians people can marry legally and adopt children and the research has proven their parenting not to be less effective than what is expected from normal parenthood, in gay and lesbian families, commitment is more negotiated than other types because they have what he terms “chosen family” (Week et al, 1999 cited by Waugh et al, 2008).
In summary, we can say that despite the structural changes and the cultural differences in the concept of family, the family still exists and takes its meaning according to the different contexts where it is placed. This matches with the symbolic interactionism view in which family is a concept that is subject to the flow of social norms and ever-changing meanings.
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