Families and Households

Is the family in terminal decline? Are new forms of living arrangement supplanting the nuclear family household in modern Britain? This book presents wide-ranging evidence, based on original research, about changes that have taken place in modern family and household forms, mainly in Great Britain but also with some reference to West Germany. There are specific chapters on different household types: on changes in the care for the elderly, on financial support to and from young adults living at home, on lone parents and on single householders. There are also contributions on the way in which households divide and arrange domestic labour and formal paid employment. Throughout the book, a contrast is drawn between the official assumptions made by policy makers and social institutions about the nature of the domestic group, and the actual living arrangements found by social researchers.