Work and Leisure

40 Chas Critcher and Peter BramhamFamily, life cycle and generationConsideration of the second of the leisure studies triumvirate, the family,must begin with demographic trends, without which changes in householdstructure make little sense. The United Kingdom has an ageing population.Of all adults, half are aged 45 or over, one-fifth over 65. It is too easy tomistake the activities of the young for those of the population at large andattribute to choice changes in household composition which are more likelyto be the outcome of ageing. Longevity has had a dramatic impact on householdsand family networks. In 2000 the average life expectancy was 75 for menand 80 for women, increases of seven years since the early 1960s. Classinequalities in health are still evident among elderly people, one-third ofwhom live in poverty. Two-thirds of women over 75 who live alone are cruciallydependent on family members to provide care and support but one inthree have no near relatives.These factors bear on household composition. Compared with the early1960s, the proportion of single person households has almost tripled, whilehouseholds containing couples with or without children have decreased by50 per cent. The biggest group of people living on their own are not surprisinglypensioners, especially women. The second largest group of people livingalone turns out to be men under 65, whose numbers are increasing at an evenfaster rate than pensioners. Since young men are comparatively slow to set uphome independently, it would appear that this group are men of middle age.If we consider persons rather than households, the ‘family’ has notdecreased to such an extent. In the early 1960s eight in ten people lived insuch units; now it is seven in ten. Four in five children still live in recognisablefamilies, if not necessarily with both biological parents. It is not, then, thatthe family is being rejected as a residential grouping but that it is no longer aconstant unit. It is also subject to ethnic variation. White society mobilisespolarised views of family structures among African Caribbeans as too looseand Asians as too close.Families for life have been disappearing much faster than jobs for life.Still, the process of family formation remains the most common pattern. It,and what follows, is undertaken later. Young women leave home earlier thanmen. Most will eventually live with a man whom they will then marry. Sincethe mid-1970s the age of marriage has increased by five years (to 27) andthe age of first childbirth for women by three years (to 29). The numbersdeclining to do one or the other have increased. One-quarter of womenborn in the mid-1970s will have no child by their mid-forties. One in sixcouples who live together are not married. Rising numbers of unmarried,separated and divorced mothers have resulted in one in five families beingheaded by a lone parent. Fewer than 10 per cent of births occurred outsidemarriage in 1961; by 2000 it was 40 per cent and rising – though mostly tocohabiting couples. At the turn of the millennium, 40 per cent of first