Marriage & Divorce (AQA GCSE Sociology): Exam Questions

What term is commonly used by sociologists to describe a pattern of divorce and remarriage where an individual marries several times but only to one partner at a time?

Item A

Source: Office for National Statistics

From Item A, examine one weakness of using statistics to research divorce.

Item A

Source: Office for National Statistics

Describe the type of statistical data shown in Item A. Identify the trend shown by the data and explain one factor which may account for this trend.

Identify and explain one disadvantage of using secondary data to investigate attitudes towards marriage.

Source: Office for National Statistics

From Item A, examine one strength of using statistics to research cohabiting couple families.

Source: Office for National Statistics

Describe the type of statistical data shown in Item A. Identify the trend shown by the data and explain one factor which may account for this trend

Identify and explain one disadvantage of using postal questionnaires to investigate attitudes towards cohabitation.

Item A

Identify and explain one factor that may have led to a change in the age at which people first marry as shown in Item A.

Identify and describe one consequence of divorce for family members.

Item B

Writing in 1976, Eli Zaretsky argued that the nuclear family had an economic function that served the interests of capitalism. He believed the family to be a key unit of consumption; in other words families bought and consumed the products of the capitalist economy.

He also believed that it was through the family that each social class reproduced itself over time. Through inheritance, the bourgeois family transmitted its private property from one generation to the next, whilst the proletarian family reproduced the labour force by producing future generations of workers.

Source: Zaretsky, E, Capitalism, the Family and Personal Life

Discuss how far sociologists would agree that changes in the law are the main reason for the pattern of divorce in Britain since 1969.

Item B

This table appears in a paper by the sociologists Robert and Rhona Rapoport published in 1982, they have used a variety of sources to identify class based differences in relationships within marriage and child rearing.

Sources: Bott (1971), Goldthorpe (1969), Newson and Newson (1970).

Discuss how far sociologists agree that feminism has changed marriage in modern British society.

Discuss how far sociologists would agree that changes in the law are the main reason for the pattern of divorce in Britain since 1969.