Social Trends

The National Centre for Social Research released the British Social Attitudes annual report today. Amongst the findings were the following [my comments in brackets];-

• 70% of people think there is nothing wrong with sex before marriage, up from 48% in 1984.

• Only 28% of people think married couples make better parents than unmarried ones

• Only 17% of men think that a ‘man’s job’ is to earn money, while a woman should stay at home, down from 32% in 1989

• But women continue to have more liberal views about gender roles than men. Four in ten men (41%) and three in ten women (29%) think that ‘a pre-school child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works
[Until attachment based child care for under threes is widely available I am firmly in the camp that pre-school children do suffer from group child care]

• Men and women disagree when it comes to saying how much of the housework they do. Two-thirds of women (68%) say that in their relationship they usually or always do the cleaning – but only 54% of men say this of their partner
[Does it really matter, as long as it gets done? I thought that 's what children were for anyway!]

• There is widespread confusion about what protection cohabiting couples have under the law, with 51% of people thinking (incorrectly) that there is such a thing as ‘common law marriage’

• No less than 84% of full-time women and 82% of full-time men would like to spend more time with their family. In 1989, only 75% and 70% respectively felt that way. Among part- time women, 68% would like to spend more time with their family compared with 59% in
1989

Professor David McCrone, co-author, comments:
‘Considerable numbers of English and Scots do feel British. But we have seen a steady long-term shift away from being British towards being English and being Scottish – though for most people it is still a question of being both English (or Scottish) and British, rather than a choice between them.’