See UK Office for National Statistics
Focus on Families. This "looks at family types
and explores similarities and differences between them. It also examines
the relationship between families and health, unpaid care and education."
- See Subject Index
Family Statistics
Statistics - United Kingdom - 2001
Source:
Focus on Families 2007 Office of National Statistics.
Based on 2001 Census, Office for National Statistics; General Register
Office for Scotland; Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency
Total Families 16,545,777
with no children 6,796,057
with dependent children 7,220,594
with non-dependent children only 2,529,126
Married couple family 11,641,007
with no children 5,504,332
with dependent children 4,559,060
with non-dependent children only 1,577,615
Married couple stepfamily 502,150
with dependent children 377,333
with non-dependent children only 124,817
Cohabiting couple family 2,191,165
with no children 1,291,725
with dependent children 814,939
with non-dependent children only 84,501
Cohabiting couple stepfamily 373,902
with dependent children 313,328
with non-dependent children only 60,574
Lone mother family 2,342,966
with dependent children 1,664,081
with non-dependent children only 678,885
Lone father family 370,639
with dependent children 182,514
with non-dependent children only 188,125
One of the reasons
family is discussed by social theorists is
its
theoretical implication for social theory generally.
Robert Filmer, in the 17th
century, and
and
Roger Scruton, in the 20th,
for
example, both construct views of society around the idea of
family. Both
theorists contrast the idea that
"contract" is the foundation
of society,
with their own view that society is better understood by
thinking about the
relations that exist in the family, between parents and
children.
Scruton
sees the family model as a "conservative" model and contract
as the
"liberal" model.
The title of Jean
Jacques
Rousseau's The Social
Contract shows
that it is in
the contractual, liberal camp. However he combines his
contractual theory
with an analysis of family bonds as the basis of society:
"The family then may be called the first model of political
societies:
the ruler corresponds to the father, and the people to the
children; and
all, being free and equal, alienate their liberty only for
their own
advantage."
Family relations include those between adult partners as well
as those
between adults and children.
Aristotle
conceptualised
the difference
between these
relations, but wives
have often been thought of theoretically as similar to
children in their
relation to the male "head" of the household.
Harriet Taylor and John Stuart
Mill, two
liberal theorists, argued in an
1848
essay that an authoritarian, hierarchical,
paternalist
relationship in which women are
dependent on men is unsuitable to a
modern society based on
self determination. Mill elaborated on this in
The Subjection of
Women
(1869),
arguing that egalitarian families would educate people for
democratic
political societies.
Sigmund Freud
contrasted his
theories of society and human relations, based on an analysis
of the
unconscious mind, with the consciously rational analysis of
Mill (and
Taylor). Mill imagined society and family based on freely
determined relations been autonomous adults,
educating
children in a
school
of freedom. Freud analysed the family as the site
of deadly
conflicts,
conflicts that are
paralleled in
society and history.
One of the issues in dispute between these theorists is the
nature of
science. Those who support the family model against a contract
model tend
to argue that their model is based on analysis of what is real
(a "thing" as
Durkheim
would
say)
rather than on a philosophic rationalism that relates more to
what some
people might want society to be then to what it is.
(See the
positivist
distinction between science and philosophy)
Dwell - Dwelling
The word dwell in original old English meant to delay someone. It
lost this meaning and became a word for pausing or staying somewhere. Now
its two usual meanings are to live somewhere (one's dwelling) and to
dwell upon an issue by continually thinking, speaking or writing
about it.
In
religious language, dwell can be used to locate
God and
humans in
spiritual space, as in this
psalm (91:1):
"He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under
the shadow of the Almighty".