6.1.3 Family life in historical context Back to 6.1.2 The past
half-century has seen really huge changes in family life in
Britain and in many other countries. It can be difficult to gain
a sense of these changes because it is easy to assume, at least
until we start learning about history, that the world has always
been pretty much as we’ve known it ourselves! We are following
the pastoral spiral in this unit which points us to the
importance of being aware of the historical context in which
current issues arise. This is the point of the second stage in
the spiral, social analysis. So we need to give some attention
to the changes in family life that have taken place. One way of
getting a sense of such changes is simply to look at statistics
that reflect them. Partly as there isn’t space in this unit to
give a proper historical account, this screen enables you to do
that. I hope that the various statistics below are presented in
a straightforward and accessible way, with enough information
but not too much. I