Meeting online or offline? Patterns and trends for co-resident couples in early 21st century Britain

Data from the 2010-12 National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (NATSAL-3) are used to document trends and patterns in where co-resident couples in Britain first met, focusing specifically on the rapid rise of meeting online, which both echoes and differs from a corresponding US increase; in Britain, meeting online largely appears to have substituted for meetings in settings to which access is relatively unrestricted, e.g. pubs and public places. While meeting online appears widespread across British society, variations are identified and linked to ideas from the online dating and place of meeting literatures. Offline partner availability, and how well the processes within offline and online settings suit particular types of people, are interpreted as underpinning many of these variations. Perhaps surprisingly, meeting online does not appear class-related, and involves levels of socio-demographic homogamy that do not differ systematically from those for compositionally-heterogeneous offline settings

Parental characteristics, family structure and occupational attainment in Britain

This article uses multivariate logistic regression analyses of the 2005 General Household Survey to assess the impact of parents’ occupational and educational characteristics on occupational attainment in Britain, focusing specifically on the salariat. Differences in outcomes according to family structure are then examined, controlling for such parental characteristics. The results indicate that both parents’ characteristics are relevant, and that their effects interact. A smaller chance of a salariat occupation is evident for those who lived in a lone-mother family, lone-father family, or biological-mother stepfamily as a young teenager, reflecting different features of these family types, but consistently reflecting lower educational attainment. Both number of co-resident siblings and parental worklessness affect the odds of having a salariat occupation, this being relevant to family-type comparisons

Couples’ places of meeting in late 20th century Britain: class, continuity and change

This article examines couples’ places or contexts of meeting in the second half of the 20th century in Great Britain, utilizing a typology developed by Bozon and Héran. The continuities are as striking as the changes, with social networks maintaining a consistent level of importance, but with trends towards meeting at places of education and work, and away from meeting in public places for drinking, eating or socializing. Rather than reflecting the impact of the rise of individualism and self-identity, these trends arguably reflect the changing importance of settings within people's daily lives, as may the recent growth in internet dating. Social class appears to have become more strongly related to the likelihood of meeting in ‘public’ settings, apparently more common in Britain than elsewhere. Achieved characteristics, especially occupational class, have a greater impact than parental class. Variations between place of meeting categories in the extent of occupational class homogamy appear to reflect levels of class homogeneity within settings more than the impact of either individualism or a homogamy norm. Regional variations in places of meeting highlight the ongoing importance of structural factors such as patterns of sociability or cultural norms

Measuring inequality in a cross-tabulation with ordered categories: from the Gini coefficient to the Tog coefficient

This paper introduces the Tog coefficient, which can be used to measure the level of inequality in a cross-tabulation of two ordinal-level variables. The Gini coefficient is a standard measure of income inequality which has been adapted by other authors for use in different contexts such as the measurement of health inequalities and the quantification of occupational segregation; the Tog coefficient represents a further stage in this process of development. The paper outlines the construction of the Tog coefficient and illustrates this using a social mobility table based on data from the 1972 Oxford Mobility Study. The trend in social mobility-related inequality as measured by the Tog coefficient is compared with the findings of Goldthorpe et al. based on odds ratios. A more elaborate application of the Tog coefficient uses a variety of data relating to the similarity of spouses' class backgrounds to demonstrate the existence of a long-term decline in the level of inequality in British society

Living together in a sexually exclusive relationship : an enduring, pervasive ideal?

Recent demographic trends constitute movement away from forms of relationship behaviour central to hegemonic heterosexuality. The perceived legitimacy of cohabitation, relationship dissolution and same-sex partnerships has also increased. Has a further shift occurred, among people not living with partners, away from conventional coupledom as an ideal? Using data from the second National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (NATSAL II), this article examines trends and patterns in the incidence of sexually exclusive co-residence as an ideal future lifestyle. While subscription to this ‘traditional’ ideal varies substantially with age and other salient factors, it nevertheless remains prevalent virtually throughout the ‘single’ population. Furthermore, there was no marked change across the 1990s in this ideal’s popular appeal, highlighting its continuing influence as a ‘meaning-constitutive tradition’ (Gross, 2005). Relationship practices and ideals thus appear to have diverged, with the former changing more. However, as lifecourses unfold, people sometimes relinquish the traditional ideal, not infrequently favouring ‘living apart together’ instead

Is social mobility an echo of educational mobility? Parents' educations and occupations and their children's occupational attainment

Quantitative studies of occupational attainment and intergenerational social mobility have often devoted little attention to the roles of parental education and educational inheritance. Informed by the ideas of authors who see class reproduction as reflecting more than occupations and economic resources (including Devine, Savage and Crompton), this paper assesses the importance of parents' educations, and considers the relevance of education to class analysis and class reproduction processes. Logistic regressions using British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) data establish the relative importance of parents' educations and parents' occupational classes as determinants of children's attainment of service class occupations. These multivariate analyses reiterate the salience of mother's class, but also show that mother's education has an independent impact. However, this is more limited if both parents can be assigned to classes. The only difference between daughters and sons that is found in the impact of parental characteristics is a weaker impact of father's class on daughter's occupational attainment than on son's occupational attainment. For both daughters and sons, mother's education and mother's class have an impact. The relationship between parents' and children's educations accounts for relatively little of the relationship between parents' and children's occupational classes. Hence intergenerational class mobility patterns do not simply echo intergenerational educational mobility patterns. However, an examination of the direct and indirect effects of parents' educations and classes on children's occupational attainment shows parental education to play a substantial role in the intergenerational transmission of advantage, and indicates that part (but not all) of the relationship between class origin and occupational attainment can be explained in terms of the intergenerational transmission of cultural capital. In contrast, a substantial part of the indirect effect of parental class via children's qualifications does not reflect parental education. Hence the conversion of parental economic resources into children's educational credentials also appears important

Party political homogamy in Great Britain

This paper focuses on husbands' and wives' party political identifications in combination. There is a high level of party political homogamy in Great Britain (i.e. spouses tend to share the same party political identification). Statistical analyses show that levels of homogamy vary according to strength of party political identification, parental homogamy, age, and marital status. Levels of party political similarity are also shown to differ between marriage and other social relationships, and between first marriages and remarriages. Attitudes towards homogamy are shown to vary with age. The implications of these findings for theories relating to the origins of homogamy and to the consequences of heterogamy are considered. Broadly speaking, the findings indicate that party political homogamy is a consequence of demographic constraints, utility-maximizing choices, and responses to cultural norms

Stated reasons for relationship dissolution : marriage and cohabitation compared

Data from the second National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles are used to examine stated reasons for the dissolution of co-residential relationships in Britain at the end of the 20th century. The findings exhibit a degree of continuity with earlier British studies, and resonate with themes identified within a broader international literature. While the ‘serious’ issues of violence and infidelity still feature prominently, a substantial minority of stated reasons appear indicative of relationships based on relatively ‘weak bonds’. Differences between marital and cohabiting relationships persist within multivariate analyses, suggesting that neither attitudes to relationships nor socio-economic or demographic factors provide satisfactory explanations for their existence. It is speculated that an adequate explanation of these differences would need to take account of an individual’s personal commitment to a specific partner and their level of investment in that specific relationship