Examine changes in the patterns of childbearing and childrearing in the UK since the 1970s

Since the 1970s, there has been less of a need to have as many children because many things have changed since the war. The 1970s rise in lone motherhood was largely a consequence of increasing divorce rates. Many of the traditional ideas on how children should be made and brought up have changed or evolved into new concepts that might have been a taboos or stigmatised in the 70s. The reason for and the result of these patterns range widely.

Infant mortality rate lowered a lot of births in the UK because more births were successful and more children were surviving to childhood and adulthood. This caused more parents to have less children so they can focus their love and attention on the children they have. When the IMR was high in the UK, the parent would have many children for work purpose and they would not care if the one child died because they could just replace that one. Children were used for mostly work and to get money, but since the act that stopped children working under a age, children were then becoming the child centre of the home, the parents would see their child more and the child would then need the mother or father to help the when they are at home, this lead to lower IMR.

Childbearing is having children and one of the greatest changes is the growing rate of children being born outside of marriage. Over four in ten children are now born outside of marriage, that is five time more than it was in 1970. The reason for this, is the fact that we are now living in a secularisation society, so people are less religious and don`t regard marriage as something holy. Therefore, it is not a sin to have children outside of marriage and this today has become part of the norm of society as people don’t look down on it anymore. Another new trend tied