The family and marriage in Britain : an analysis and moral assessment / Ronald Fletcher.

  • Ronald Fletcher
Date:
[1973]
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: The family and marriage in Britain : an analysis and moral assessment / Ronald Fletcher. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION 21 and social support — despite industrial and urban change; and the 'standardization' of this family-type was found among all social classes. But more recent reports are of greater interest, both in their actual findings and in their indication of a breaking of new ground (and new depths) in research. A major study, so large and detailed that its significance is difficult as yet to judge, is Separated Spouses^ an investigation by the Bedford College Legal Research Unit (O. R. McGregor, Louis Blom-Cooper, and Colin Gibson), which at last throws much light on the 'submerged' proportion of broken families reflected in separation and maintenance orders rather than in the more conspicuous statistics of divorce. A related (though not similar, and by no means so extensive) development is represented by a few small articles in New Society* and the British Journal of Sociology^ which are probing beyond the formal statistics (which only record the legal termination of marriages, for example) to a better know¬ ledge of the actual duration of marriages, and the actual factors involved in family disruptions. A third, highly significant piece of research is that recently reported by Geoffrey Gorer, Sex and Marriage in England. When first writing The Family and Marriage in Britain^ I was able to draw on Gorer's earlier study. Exploring English Character^ published in the mid 1950s. Now, his new study compares his findings at the end of the 1960s with those of some fifteen to twenty years ago. This is, therefore, especially relevant to our argument. Also, Rhona and Robert Rapoport have just piloted and published several studies relating to what they regard as the creation of a new family pattern attendant upon the improved status of women and the problems of managing a stable family life whilst both husbands and wives follow careers of their own choosing, and to the extent they desire. This is best presented, despite the * See, for example, R. Chester and J. Streather, * Taking Stock of Divorce', New Society, 22 July 1971. t See Colin Gibson, *A Note on Family Breakdown in England and Wales', British Journal of Sociology, Vol. XXII, No. 3, September 1971, p. 322.
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