Multi-faith Britain and family life : changing patterns of marriage, cohabitation, and divorce among different faith groups 1983–2005

Abstract

The inclusion of a question on religious affiliation in the decennial census for England and Wales, and for Scotland, for the first time in 2001 acknowledged that adequate profiling and interpretation of the contemporary multi-cultural landscape of Britain depended as much upon mapping religious identity as upon charting ethnic origin. Taking marital status as a key indicator of family life and family values in Britain, this study draws on the British Social Attitudes Survey data, collected annually since 1983 (except for 1988 and 1992), in order to model the changing patterns of marriage, cohabitation, and divorce among the six faith groups identified on the census form (Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism). The analyses draw attention to the limitations of the data source (the small number of adherents to the minority faith groups), to the clear and complex associations between faith traditions and marital status, to the persistence of these associations across the period for which data are available, and to the way in which members of faith groups are following the liberalising trends prevalent among the religiously unaffiliated.