Family Study Packs

Simple Study Packs covering a range of family diversity issues (marriage, cohabitation,divorce, family and household structures, ethnicity) plus a couple on contemporary childhood.

Explaining Declining Divorce Rates

Since the turn of the 21st century divorce rates have been falling across many Western societies.

This short article offers some explanations as to why this is happening - and what the future may hold for both marriage and divorce.

Alternative Family Structures

"The Last Queendom of Women" is a short piece of research, carried-out by a student at the Shenzhen College of International Education in China, that looks at a rare contemporary example of an alternative to the “conventional nuclear family” that touches on a wide-range of concepts, including: family structures, marriage, divorce, motherhood, fatherhood and social status, sexuality, old age and family size.

Family, Sex and Society

A range of podcasts, from the BBC World Service, that focus on areas like Gender, Family Structure and Social Change.

History of Marriage

This online article offers a brief - but concise - "history of marriage" in Britain that includes useful observations about things like divorce, cross-cultural perspectives and alternatives to marriage.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation

The Foundation publishes a wide range of useful research into areas like family life and this particular piece of research looks at the concept of cohabitation in terms of why people cohabit and, most interestingly, what happens when a cohabiting relationship breaks down.

Marriage Quiz

Although not, in itself, particularly useful this short quiz entitled "Choosing the Right One: 16 Questions to ask yourself before you marry" contains some interesting material that can be adapted for classroom use when considering questions about who marries and who divorces.

Families and Households

More family revision stuff than you can shake a very sharp stick at.

Or, to put it another way, 9 resources (PowerPoints, Spider Diagrams, Notes...) designed to help with family revision.

Sex and Marriage

This site describes itself as "Introduction to the cultural rules regulating sexual access and marriage", in the course of which it offers a range of notes covering various aspects of marriage around the world (although with a North American bias in terms of focus). Amongst other things (such as quizzes) there's a useful glossary of family terms, an interesting feature of which is the use of sound files to illustrate the pronunciation of some of the more difficult concepts.

2-in-2-1

An online article that poses the question "Can Governments Rescue Marriage?" through an examination of American New Right attempts to "stabilize marriage".  

Changing Families, Changing Food

Research from the University of Sheffield that "took food as the lens through which to observe recent changes in family life and examined how changes in family form have affected patterns of food consumption".  The site includes both the Final Report and a range of useful PowerPoint presentations - both the Report Summary slides and Fathers and Foodwork are particularly useful and interesting.

The Farm

Contemporary examples of communes (or "intentional communities" if you prefer) are few and far between - so this American example that's been around for nearly 50 years is a welcome addition.

Different cultures, different childhoods

Brief, but useful, examples of how childhood differs across different cultures.