Examine the reasons for the increase in family and household diversity in the last 40 years.

Twentieth century brought big changes in priorities of people and their expectations of relationships.
Over the past 40 years people, generally, tended to marry later and didn’t consider creating the family as the most important thing in their life. Also more and more people choose living alone rather than with family and have freedom. And if before living alone gave negative status for women as they failed in finding partners, now views have changed and it is not blame to be alone. Also increasing number of people prefers cohabitation, that is living with a partner together but not marry, because it might help avoid conflicts. For 40% cohabitation is a good alternative to marriage, while for most people cohabitation is a kind of prelude which helps to test relationships and make them stronger. Main causes of an increase in family diversity are changing in attitudes that is how people now define the ideal family life, increased opportunities in going to University for everyone made people be more aimed in making their own career and be more independent; from 1967 contraception became more reliable and available for all women and sexual relationships became not only the way of social reproduction but also the expression of love.
Weeks suggested that nowadays there is an increased choice in personal mortality, that is choosing different kinds of families is individual choice rather than influence of values and attitude in the society.
Also family diversity has increased due to changes in expectations from marriage and as Fletcher said, now people place higher values on marriage. The Divorce act 1969 made it easier for people to divorce and they didn’t have to prove guilty of their partners.
Beck and Beck-Gernsteim argued that our society is characterized by increased individualization, women don’t need to rely on their husbands anymore and they can achieve the same statuses with them if not higher. High values are placed on self-expression and independence while marriages which were the norm in the society before will limit people’s actions. Another reason of increased divorce rates is that nowadays there is a trend towards confluent love (Giddens) that is when relationships are focused on expression of love, intimacy and support. And if people don’t find this love in their partners, they prefer to change their lifestyle.
Divorces for many people led to changes in values placed on relationships and they choose another lifestyle such as being alone or cohabiting. More people become to be lone parents as this make their life easier, and as feminists argued, women will escape violence, conflicts and destructive relationships for them and their children (Bernardes).
In recent years increased opportunities for same sex relationships have formed a big number of households based on same-sex relationships. Dunne suggested in her research that lesbian and gay couples are less likely to have conflicts as they share responsibilities and domestic duties.
So as we can see there are many alternatives to marriage which led to increased numbers of family diversity and as Giddens said, diversity is a reflection of opportunities and priorities in modern era. However, Gittins argued that still nuclear family consisting of heterosexual couple and their offspring acted and acts as powerful ideology for most couples and alternatives of the nuclear family are still considered to be abnormal. Her opinion was supported with another sociologist Chester who used the term ‘neo-conventional family’ describing that even if there was some growth in family diversity, generally, most people marry, have children; nuclear family remains the dominant family structure.
New Right ideas about the family diversity are that the decline in traditional values and appearance of new types of households are a big threat to the society and destruct it. Murray said that, for example, single mothers are a principle cause of crime.
In my opinion still a big importance is placed on societal values and expectations and most people will behave in a way that is considered to be normal for the society.