There are 15.8 million families in Britain. The family in Britain is very diverse; diversity means that there is a wide range of different ‘things’, in terms of family it means lots of different family types. There has been diversity in the family structure in Britain, an example of this is ‘lone parents’, lone parents have always been part of Britain’s family structure but even more so during the World Wars, this is due to the premature death of the partner. During the 50’s and the 60’s the most popular family was nuclear family, nuclear family is a family that only the parents and the children live together. There were also some extended families during this time; extended family is where the grandparents live with or near the children as well as the children’s parents. The reason why nuclear family and extended family were so popular is due to marriage being very popular and cohabitation was very rare. During these times some types of family were frowned upon, some examples of this are: Homosexual families, Single parent families and reconstructed families. Homosexual families were frowned upon due to the stigma towards homosexuals during these times. Due to marriage being very popular single parent families were also frowned upon. Reconstructed family was also frowned upon due to the popularity of marriage; you would have to be divorced to be able to have been able to have a reconstructed family. However over the last 50 years there have been significant changes in the family structures due to various social changes in society.
One example of a social change that has affected the family structure in Britain is industrialisation. Parsons, a functionalist, believed that the industrialisation created the nuclear family and moved Britain away from the extended family. This is due to the fact that families had to follow the man to find work, therefore leaving the