Once upon a time, a prince met a princess. They fell in love with other, had a fancy wedding and had two children after marriage, a boy and a girl. They lived happily ever after. This is a story about how a traditional family forms, in which a man and a woman are the main characters. We don’t hear many stories about two men or two women very often because that is not the traditional way to form a family.
However, with the development of society and economy, things are changing. According to the Office for National Statistics (2017), more non-traditional families are emerging: 1)Cohabiting couple family has become the second largest family type in the UK, following the married or civil partner couple families. 2)More children are being raised in singe parent households. 3)The number of same-sex couple families in the UK has been increasing steadily since 1996.
To know more about non-traditional families, we interviewed some people from Britain and China and tried to get some idea about how things go with non-traditional families in these two countries.
Cohabiting couple family- Do you think marriage is important?
Marriage is important for some people, especially people with religion. However, some people, in fact, more and more people in UK get married just for some legal reasons, such as getting the pension automatically and legally after one of them dies. Some people don’t feel the need to be married, but they feel they have to get married to make some procedures easier or pay less tax. More and more people choose to live together without marriage and they form cohabiting couple families. Cohabiting couple family has become the second largest and the most fast growing family type in the UK.
In China, marriage after dating is the most expected way to form a family. No matter how two people meet each other, they get married or get separated. Actually, there’s a saying in China,”Love without marriage is hooliganism.” If two people cohabite for a long time, other people will talk about it as a strange thing and the parents from both sides would put pressure on the cohabiting couple to push them into marriage.
Single parent household-How do they support the family?
According to the Office for National Statistics, more children in UK are being raised in singe parent households. There are many reasons for the forming of single parent households: in modern society, it is easier to walk away from marriage than before; some people just want a child but not a partner; one of the parents is not a qualified parent, etc.
Life in a single parent household-even though common-can be quite stressful. Luckily, single parents in UK can get some help from the state, the community or the church. State has to support the single parents to some extent, for example, pay for the rent or give a certain amount of money to live on until the child is 5. The single parents also get help from community and church. If someone is referred by a social worker, a gp, a health visitor, he/she can get a bag of food once a week for free. It is waste from supermarket which would have been thrown away. Single parents can also get some cheap meals from the community or the church projects which prepare food for 1 or 2 pounds.
Life for Chinese single parents can vary. Normally, the grandparents get involved and offer help and support to the family. Other people feel sympathy for a widow with a child and try to help them, but they would possibly keep away from a single mother who has a child without marriage because the child can be the living proof of the “dishonored” woman. What should be mentioned is that people in big cities tend to have more tolerate attitude towards single parents.
Same-sex couple family- What’s the difference?
Marriage with the same sex has become legal in UK since 2014. The number of same-sex couple families in the UK has been increasing steadily since 1996. For lesbians, it’s easier to have children. One of them may get pregnant with some donated sperms. For gays, it could be more difficult, but they can still get a friend to have children for them, foster or adopt a child.
Most British people are quite open-minded in same-sex couple families-it is not traditional but modern life. They don’t think there is difference between marriage of different sexes and marriage of the same sex. For children in a same-sex family, it should be no difference from traditional families as long as the parents love each other. Actually, some people think the marriage of the same sex is probably more stable because they worked harder and overcame more obstacles to be together. After all, two loving parents of the same sex is much better than a mother and a father who hate each other.
However, it is quite different in China. Some people in modern cities such as Beijing and Shanghai claim that they can accept gays and lesbians but life for them can be very difficult because marriage of the same sex is not allowed in China and people are more conservative.
Generally speaking, British people are more open-minded and tolerate to non-traditional families. The reasons of the differences can be legal or cultural. In UK, it is legal to have children without marriage or get married with the same sex. Cohabiting families are entitled to almost the same rights with the married couple. However, single parents need to pay penalty to get citizenship for their children without marriage. It is very difficult for cohabiting couples to split the property properly because they are not legally married. It is also not legal to get married with the same sex in China.
Another reason for the differences between the two countries is cultural. Compared with British, Chinese are more conservative. Many of them prefer traditional lifestyle. The collective lifestyle makes people closer to each other but also more critical to each other. British used to be conservative too because their religion doesn’t allow some non-traditional families. However, people are now quite open-minded and have more freedom choices. That is probably because people’s belief also change a lot. Though there are a lot of churches in this country, people in UK are much more flexible now. What Bible says and what practising Christians believe is not always the same. There are even many gay priests in Catholic churches. (Maybe because Catholic priests are not allowed to get married.)
To be continued. Too sleepy now~~
