The British family has changed a great deal since the 1950s, in who lives together, who earns the money and what people count as a family. After the war marriage was almost universal, most households followed one pattern and the roles inside them were fairly fixed. The picture today is much more varied, and the causes include changes in the law, in paid work and in how people think about relationships.
Marriage, divorce and living together
Almost everyone married after the war, and because divorce was hard to obtain, most couples stayed married for life. The Divorce Reform Act 1969, which came into force in 1971, made it far easier to end a marriage, divorce became much more common, and living together before or instead of marrying gradually lost its stigma. Couples also tend to marry later than they once did, and many live together first. Civil partnerships arrived in 2005, and the first same-sex weddings in England and Wales took place on 29 March 2014, so couples of any gender can now marry. Each of these changes gave people more say over whether, when and who they married.
Single-parent, blended, adoptive and foster families
Family life now includes lone parents, blended families, adoptive families and foster families, as well as married and cohabiting couples. Foster Care Associates has helped people become foster carers across the UK since 1994, and each family it works with has its own social worker and access to advice at any hour. Fostering itself takes several forms, including short-term, long-term and emergency placements. Step-families are common, with the 2021 census counting 781,000 of them in England and Wales, and households headed by a lone parent or a step-parent are now an ordinary part of family life.
Work, money and who looks after the children
In the 1950s mothers generally stayed at home with young children while fathers went out to work, and that pattern has changed a lot. By 2015, almost three-quarters of women with children had paid jobs, compared with half in 1975, and the share of couples with children where both parents worked had risen to 68%. Fathers also spend more time with their children than earlier generations did, and childcare costs, flexible hours and shared parental leave are now decisions couples make together rather than something a mother arranged alone. The share of mothers working full-time has also grown, reaching 44% in 2017, while around a third of women still work part-time. Childcare now often involves nurseries, grandparents and after-school clubs as well as parents.
What has stayed the same
Around four in five dependent children still live with a married or cohabiting couple, even though lone-parent and step-family households are far more common than they were, and families still rely on grandparents, aunts, uncles and neighbours for childcare and company. Birthdays, school holidays and Sunday meals still bring several generations together, much as they did in the 1950s. What has changed is how many family set-ups now count as ordinary, and how rarely anyone has to explain one that doesn’t match the 1950s picture.