The choice of localities for the empirical research under Strand 3 was carried out with reference to differences in partnering and parenting practices, as shown by statistical analysis using 1991 census data and other statistical sources (e.g. register of births).*

This ‘geography of family formations’ generated a whole of host of exciting findings:

• Places where you were more likely to find families with traditional breadwinner/female homemaker were concentrated in the older industrial towns and cities of South Yorkshire and Humberside, and also the prosperous small towns and rural areas.
• Places with a traditional family type, but with mothers likely to be in full-time work were concentrated in the former textile areas of Lancashire.
• Smaller areas with ‘alternative’ family forms were found in some ‘cosmopolitan’ inner cities and ‘escape areas’ ins some resorts and old Pennine towns.

On the basis of this analysis by Simon Duncan and Darren Smith, six localities in Yorkshire and Lancashire provided the setting for the empirical work of strand 3, each representing type cases of parenting and partnering behaviour. These are:

A well-off area of North Yorkshire dominated by Skipton, the traditional ‘male breadwinner’ family is prevalent, and there is a low proportion of lone parent families.

The traditional family is also prevalent, but this is a much more working class population than Craven and is showing higher rates of ‘family restructuring’ with divorce, separation and lone parenthood.

Also a working-class industrial town, mothers are much more likely to be in full-time work and there are particularly high rates of family restructuring.

In some inner-city areas of Bradford, families were more traditional, but many maintain family ties across national boundaries.

Located to the north of the city centre, we found a high level of people choosing to live alone, with more non-traditional families and a broader ethnic mix than most areas.

Centred around Hebden Bridge, this was an escape area of high rates of cohabitation, births outside marriage, and gay and lesbian households.

Click here to view the CAVA localities map

* For more information on this analysis, see Duncan, S. and Smith, D. (2002), 'Geographies of family formations: spatial differences and gender cultures in Britain', Transactions Institute British Geographers, 27, No. 4, pp.471-493 [click here for a summary of this analysis].

Duncan and Smith’s (2002) work on the geography of family formations in the UK and its regions (which demonstrated that Yorkshire and Lancashire have as much variation within them as the UK has overall) is a particularly innovative piece of analysis. Using the 1991 British Census including the Sample of Anonymised Records, as well as other national data, they developed four indices. First, the Motherhood Employment Effect describes geographical variations in adherence to and deviation from ‘traditional’ male breadwinner/female homemaker partnering practices. Second, a Family Conventionality index indicates spatial differences in the social evaluation of the importance of marriage for parenting. They combine these two indices to provide an overall measure of adherence to, or departure from, the ‘traditional’ family formation - the married breadwinner/homemaker parent couple. Third, a Traditional Household index describes patterns in adherence to, and departure from, the ‘traditional’ heterosexual couple/dependent wife household model more generally, for non-parents as well as parents. Finally, a Family Restructuring index gives information on spatial patterns in departure from marriage as a partnering and parenting form. These indices were mapped onto the District Council scale.

This research shows that, just as there has never been a standard family historically, nor is there a standard geographical family at any one time. Different areas show different norms in terms of their relative adherence to the male breadwinner family, and in understandings of the value of marriage in parenting. This ‘geography of family formations’ does not simply correspond to the better-known regional geographies of economic and social prosperity. More detailed analysis of Lancashire and Yorkshire showed that more particularistic explanations of spatial differences in partnering and parenting practices can be related to the history of gendered divisions of labour in the workplace and the household, and linked to current class, ethnic and religious distributions. The research concluded that the social processes that bring these factors together, and in so doing create a geography of family formations, seem to be associated with regional gender cultures. This also means that there will tend to be a numerical dominance - and an idealised normative dominance - of certain forms of partnering and parenting in particular areas. Secondly, these trends are important for how communities work and for how individuals and families interact with others. This will then confirm differences in the geography of family formations all the more. There are two wider implications. First, there is a need for particular, geographically-situated accounts of changing families, and of the way this relates to changing socio-economic circumstances. A commitment to difference and diversity requires more than post-modern rhetoric, and substantive research is needed to understand the patterning, layering and structuring of lived experience. In turn, this implies that policies and strategies aiming to influence family life, work and employment must take into account these geographical differences in partnering and parenting. Space, it is periodically claimed, makes a difference. But this research goes on to show how space actually does make a difference, and what do we do about this in empirical research.