The Future of the Family

In 2020, family time will be even rarer, divorce rates will double and more people will be happy single. At least we won’t complain that all the good men are married.

The nuclear family – male breadwinner, female homemaker and 2.2 children – is now a minority. The proportion of traditional households fell from 38 per cent in 1961 to 23 per cent in 2000, and half of all married mothers with pre-school children are in paid work today compared with a quarter 20 years ago. The birth rate is in decline (almost a fifth of women born since the sixties are predicted to remain single).

Serial divorce

The culture of marriage is rapidly making way for the culture of divorce. The proportion of people willing to tie the knot is predicted to shrink from 57 per cent in 1992 to 49 per cent in 2020. Each successive generation becomes less intent on marriage. Of those who do, almost half are predicted to divorce. By 2020 the proportion of divorcees should double. Women’s heightened aspirations and financial independence are at the heart of the issue. (Women already initiate 70 per cent of all divorces.) This “genderquake” is nothing less than a shift in power from men to women. If men fail to measure up to women’s growing expectations in the new century, more women will abandon unhappy relationships.

Living in sin – again and again

More of us prefer live-in relationships rather than getting married. There has been a fourfold increase in the number of people living together since the sixties. Half of all women born in 1960 have lived with a partner, compared to under 20 per cent of women born in the forties. Cohabiting couples are actually more likely to break up than married couples, but as we all living longer, serial cohabitation is now the norm.

The new singletons

In the space of a generation there has been a significant increase in the number of single people, a trend partly caused by high rates of relationship breakdown. The market research group Mintel predicts that by the year 2010, there will be eight million single-person households. Part of the reason for this is that we are living longer. But the biggest increase in the number of single people has been in the group below pensionable age. In 1995, 37 per cent of those living alone were under the age of 55, compared to just 15 per cent in the 55- to 64-year-old age group. The fastest rise in single-person householders has been among young men. A new generation of singletons are likely to see being single as a positive lifestyle choice. “Virtual lovers” – who do what you want, when you want – will become cult purchases.

Delayed adulthood

Each successive generation is settling down and having children much later. In 1971, men married for the first time at an average age of 22. Today, the average age is 29. In 1971, the average age of first-time brides was 20; by 2002 it was 27. Women are also having children later – the average age for a first child is now 29, up from 23 in 1971. In 2002, for the first time, more children were being born to women in their early thirties than women in their early twenties, and there has been a 33 per cent increase in the number of women having children in their forties in the past decade. As more people pursue higher education, the twenties is becoming a transition period in which adulthood is delayed.

Time-squeezed families

Quality time – devoted to nurturing relationships and family – has become very squeezed. Between 1993 and 1997, the Henley Centre for Forecasting found that the proportion of people claiming they never had enough time rose by almost 10 per cent. Recent surveys show that women and men both want to spend more time with their families.

Eventually, the “time squeeze” could jeopardize relationships. There could be less opportunity for procreative sex, thus accelerating the baby drought. For single people, longer working hours and greater job insecurity will mean fewer opportunities to meet new partners.

The extended family makes a comeback

We are all living longer, so tomorrow’s families will incorporate four generations. The Henley Centre recently predicted that 2020 Waltons-style households will flourish. Three generations could live in the same home to reduce the costs of caring – for children and grandparents – and to share such responsibilities as parenting.

The Renaissance of family rituals

Changes in family life have produced new rituals. Divorce ceremonies are now common, as are child-naming rituals and baby showers, while christening and other church functions are in decline. In the twenty-first century, people seek new forms of intimacy and connection. After 2020, marriage and parenthood are likely to become fashionable again. We should also expect to see new and more authentic marriage rituals involving same-sex couples as well as heterosexual couples. Ten-year renewable marriage contracts and renewing ceremonies – in which couples renegotiate and reaffirm their marriage vows could become commonplace, as people start to see such lifelong commitments as more sustainable, realistic and achievable.

The virtual family

More and more people are turning to technology to ease the time-squeeze that haunts their lives. Mobile phones, laptops and palm PCs for teenagers show how important telecommunication technology can be in uniting families. Teleconferences, too, can be used to facilitate communication and aid the family’s process of decision-making – proving useful when mum and dad are away on business trips. And just as a minority of today’s busy parents use teleparenting systems, virtual monitoring will become commonplace. Thousands of British families are already setting up websites and posting family albums on the Internet. In 2010, using a website to communicate with family members around the world will be as normal as using a telephone is.

Fertility management

As puberty sets in earlier, the explosion in pre-teen pregnancies will be offset by mass immunization programmes offering 5- or 10-year protection against pregnancy. With reproductive spans stretching to 80 years or more and serial sexual partnership and the menopause a non-event, the big change will be that you have to opt out of contraception rather than in. As sperm counts continue to fall, assisted conception will become the norm and contraception the exception.

Sex life

Viagra or no Viagra, the more men and women we have in their nineties, 100s and 100-plus, the less sex feature in our spiritual lives. The three great monotheist religions that hitherto focused a great deal of their energy and attention on the sins of the flesh, will find that many of their flock are well past this particular temptation. Mercifully, other issues will thus come to prominence – divine authority, free will and, above all, eternal life. This freeing of spirituality from the stranglehold of sexuality will have a distinct impact on contemporary religious art, where luscious representations of lusty humanity will make way for asexual prophets, virginal maidens and a surfeit of Madonnas.

Дата добавления: 2015-12-08