Divorce Reform Act and Its Influence on Marriage

A law that affected families and households was the divorce reform act in 1969, this made divorce for couples easier, cheaper and quicker and allowed couples to divorce o the reason of irreconcilable differences, this led to a dramatic increase in the divorce rate between couples. Due to this, social attitude of divorce lead to people not taking marriage seriously, also leading to an increase in lone parent families, which deprived children of their mothers or fathers. The divorce reform act was approved by feminists as it allowed women to leave unwanted marriages more easily.

Another act the 1975 sex discrimination act affected families and households by making it illegal for employers to discriminate against men and women when hiring them. This lead to an increase of women in the workplace that can be working independently or to provide for their family instead of having to rely on a male partner to provide for them.it effected families by changing the roles within the family, women can now easily contribute to the household income or become the sole breadwinner and the men can now become homemakers without having to worry about the household income. The new right opposed this, as they argued that it would lead to maternal deprivation among children which would have serious consequences on their primary socialisation.

A more modern act, the 2013 marriage act allowed Homosexual marriages to be recognised legally, which lead to a large number of same sex marriages in England and wales. With 1,409 marriages in the first 3 months. Legalising same sex marriages effected households by integrating same sex relations into common society alongside the traditional nuclear families. The new right disagreed with this as they found that it was against traditional heterosexual nuclear families

The child tax credit provided childcare support to families with an income lower than ?42,000 a year. The aim of the policy was to provide benefits to low income households to use on their children for things such as education resources. Although it supported families, benefit fraud also happened costing tax payers’ money with HMRC finding ?181.9 Million being cheated. The new right are against this policy as it is against their view that families should be self-sufficient instead of having to rely on external help