Cohabitation is an arrangement where two people who are not married live together in an intimate relationship, usually an emotionally and/or sexually intimate one, on a long term or permanent one. Before 1970, cohabitation was illegal in certain countries, like America. But due to a change in the law, Cohbitation is now a common way of living, all over the world. As well as sex/birth outside of marriage, leaving at least 50% to 60% of couples cohabitating, this started in the late 1990s. This lead to the decline of traditional nuclear families as people want to live in companionship because nearly half the amount of marriages now end in divorce, as well as cohabitating being cheaper, easier and less hassle. The new right see the decline in the traditional nuclear family and increase on family diversity as negative trends on modern society. From the new right perspective, these changes are the cause of many social problems in Britain today.
Seeing as in today’s society there is plenty of access to contraception couples/married couples are not having children for various reasons which has impacted the number of children being born, and therefore the decline of the traditional nuclear family. There has been an increase in marriage of 9.2% between 2006 and 2011. George Murdock, an American anthropologist, argued on the basis of his studies that the nuclear family was a universal social institution and that it existed universally because it fulfilled four basic functions for society: the sexual, reproductive, economic and education functions.
Attitudes towards the family may also be a threat to the traditional nuclear unit as nowadays it is much more accepted and easier to get a divorce. It was around the 1970s when divorce was first legally introduced into the world. The changes in the modern law, declining in social