What are the new forms of family in developed societies? Discuss. (2018)
For much of the twentieth century, sociology took Talcott Parsons’ isolated nuclear family (married couple, male breadwinner, dependent children) as the normal family of industrial society. Since the 1970s, what Ron Lesthaeghe and Dirk van de Kaa called the second demographic transition (later marriage, low fertility, rising cohabitation and divorce) has broken that template. Robert and Rhona Rapoport (1982) argued that diversity itself (organisational, cultural, class, life-course and cohort) is now the defining fact.
The new forms
| Form | What is new | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Cohabiting-couple family | Partnership and parenthood without marriage | 18% of UK families (2023); 42.2% of EU births outside marriage in 2022, 65.2% in France |
| Lone-parent family | Created by divorce, separation or choice | 3.2 million in the UK, 85% headed by mothers (2023) |
| Reconstituted and binuclear family | Remarriage links children across two households | Judith Stacey’s “divorce-extended” kin |
| One-person household | Solo living as a life stage, not only widowhood | 29% of US households (2024); about a third in Japan |
| Same-sex families | Kinship built on commitment rather than blood or law | Kath Weston, Families We Choose (1991) |
| Living apart together | Committed couples keeping separate homes | “Dating” versus “partner” LATs |
| Beanpole family | Four living generations, few members in each | Julia Brannen (2003) |
| Dual-career family | Both partners pursue careers; roles more shared | Michael Young and Peter Willmott, The Symmetrical Family (1973) |
Why these forms have emerged
- Individualisation. Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim (The Normal Chaos of Love, 1990) argue that as class and tradition lose their hold, each biography becomes a do-it-yourself project. Family is negotiated, not inherited.
- Transformation of intimacy. Anthony Giddens (1992) describes the pure relationship, which lasts only while both partners find it satisfying. Plastic sexuality, freed from reproduction by contraception, detaches partnership from parenthood.
- Women’s economic independence and the welfare state reduce the need to stay in marriage. No-fault divorce and secularisation remove stigma.
- Postmodern condition. Stacey (Brave New Families, 1990) holds that no single family form is now the standard against which others count as deviant.
A more cautious reading
- Robert Chester (1985) described a neo-conventional family. Snapshot statistics exaggerate diversity, since most people still live in a nuclear family at some stage of life, now usually with both partners earning.
- Nickie Charles, Charlotte Aull Davies and Chris Harris (2008) restudied Swansea. Three-generation households had shrunk from about 20% (1960) to 0.5% (2002), yet contact with parents and grandparents stayed strong, guided by a morality “far from individualistic”.
- Feminists note that diversity coexists with inequality. Arlie Hochschild’s second shift (1989) persists in dual-career homes, and lone mothers face higher poverty.
- David Morgan’s idea of family practices moves the question from what a family is to what people do as family.
Beyond the West
These forms are spreading unevenly. In Deepika Singh v. Central Administrative Tribunal (2022), India’s Supreme Court held that “atypical” families (unmarried partnerships, queer relationships, single-parent and blended households) deserve equal legal protection. Most Indian families, however, remain marriage-based.
Conclusion
The new forms signal the deinstitutionalisation of the family, not its death. A single prescribed structure has given way to chosen, revisable arrangements, while bonds between generations persist. What now differs between developed societies is less whether diversity exists than how far law and welfare recognise it.