Social Trends 2010
Middle age is always a good time to take stock, to analyse where we have come from and think through where we are going.
Social Trends, the Office for National Statistics' annual survey into British life, is 40-years-old this week. It is now, officially, middle-aged and its latest publication offers much material with which we can take stock.
Some of the signs are good. Britons are living longer. We smoke less (surely not a disconnected fact). We are much richer, earning two-and-a-half times more today than forty years ago, and we holiday abroad much more often.
Some of the signs are ambiguous. There are five million more of us than in 1971, living in seven million more homes, spending less on necessities like food and non-alcoholic drink, and more on recreation and housing.
Some are negative. We are financially more unequal than we have been for generations. The prison population has more than doubled. We save less than we have for decades. We are choosing not to have children. And we are living unprecedentedly more fluid and isolated lives, the number of first marriages falling precipitously, while the number of single person households, divorces, and children born outside marriage rising.
Explaining this spaghetti junction of trends is not easy. Societies rarely undergo uniform or predictable change and are never amenable to single, simple explanations. Perhaps the best we can hope for is to tell stories that encompass and enlighten what is going on.
Listen to any funeral sermon and you will soon realise that what we value is not how rich or how independent we are, how far we travelled or how much we hoarded. It is how much we gave, how much we loved, how much we were loved.
Life is better for me today. I can expect to live longer, earn more and travel further. But it is worse for us. We are less likely to live together, stay together or maintain some measure of genuine equality. Our obsession with autonomy and choice may make us richer and more independent, but it is slowly eroding the bonds of trust, responsibility and perseverance that make loving relationships possible.
Are we so preoccupied with our desire to gain the whole world that we are in danger of losing our soul?
Nick Spencer
Comments
I find your article to be very thoughtful, and interesting enough, although you describe a situation happening in Britain, it is not far from the reality in my home country, which is Chile ( a country still listed as undeveloped country). We have become more like the people you describe in your article, selfish and proud of becoming wealthier, and so on, less focused on stable relationships. The divorce rate is rising, families having less children, becoming more isolated to one another. This culture is also entering the church.
I am always a little bit sceptical about those who regard choosing not to have children as a virtue. After all, who will provide our services in the future? It is today's babies who will grow up to be teachers, medical staff, serving in shops, manufacturing, or any other service we may require, including paying for our pensions out of their taxes. In my own daughter's circle of friends from school days, two are unmarried, one married and divorced and one married with 3 children. My married daughter is unable to have children. So who will provide their future services, but other people's children!! Barbara
I would agree with Gina. I think the piece overall is really helpful but statements like that about children are far to general and not that helpful. I would agree with the piece mainly and say thanks for flagging it up as its really interesting. Whilst I agree that living increasingly 'isolated' lives is not healthy for our society I wonder if 'living more fluid lives' is actually less negative than we think? Yes it is concerning that 'loyality' and commitment are vanishing but sometimes being to 'rigid' and locked into one or two organisations can't be that healthy e.g. the church. Does being more fluid enable us to have a go at doing life, church etc with more creativity and freedom?
I think we have to be careful when describing the decision not to have children as a negative. People may decide not to have a family for a variety of reasons which are not always clear to others who are not directly involved.
I have two kids but am with Gina on this one: why is choosing not to have children a negative? The world's resources are already being stretched by population growth, so surely not having children can be percieved as an ethically positive decision? I would also question whether saving less is a negative; I know that previous generations in my family (all committed Christians) have been exceptional at saving, only for huge sums to pass on to their offspring when they die, and the cycle be repeated. I am all for good financial stewardship, but too much saving - in my mind - undermines sacrificial generosity towards those who really need your money and increases dependence on your 'nest egg' for security rather than relying on God's provision and being prepared to adopt a simpler lifestyle if circumstances change. Similarly, more people living alone and having more fluid lives are not inherent negatives; had I not met my husband, the same would be true of me, as I would be keen to take advantage of the opportunities available to those without family commitments, including those for Christian service. Surely you are not asserting that getting married and having children is a more the positive, Godly thing to do than remaining celebate? This is not only unsupportable from a Biblical perspective but also impractical - there are, quite simply, not enough Christian men around for us Christian ladies to all marry one and have kids... and that's before you take into account the fact that 10% of couples struggle to conceive. The data does raise questions about what it means to be part of community, how we foster that, and which social problems we expect these communities to be able to address. The kind of inter-dependent community described in Acts is certainly counter-cultural in modern-day Britain. I would have rather Nick had focussed on that and avoided a simplistic dissection of the data into positives and negatives.
Date:
2010-07-12 11:28:58
Author:
Heather Williams