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The British Social Attitudes Survey was published recently, by the National Centre for Social Research; and it seems that according to their researchers, 70% of Britons think premarital sex is acceptable, while less than a third believe that homosexuality is wrong.
The researchers pointed out that Britain’s marriage rate is falling, and that there is a corresponding rise in the number of unmarried people who live together. There were 244,710 marriages in England and Wales in 2005 (the last year for which figures were available), which was the lowest number since 1896.
- Two-thirds of those surveyed felt that there was little difference socially between being married and living together. And only 28% agreed with the statement “married couples make better parents than unmarried couples”
- Opinion on single parents were evenly split, with 42% of respondents saying one parent could raise a child as well as two, and 41% disagreeing.
- Slightly under a third of people said two gay men in a couple could be as good parents as a man and a woman, whilst 42% disagreed.
- Only 17 percent of men agreed with the statement “a man’s job is to earn money; a woman’s job is to look after the home and family”. However, more than three-quarters of respondents in heterosexual relationships said “the woman does the laundry”.
The survey interviewed 3,300 randomly selected adults across the country, and error margins for sections of the report were claimed to be between two and three percentage points.
Posted by Jonathan in Sociology