Читать книгу Sociology - Anthony Giddens - Страница 94

Comparative research is of central importance in sociology, because making comparisons allows us to clarify what is going on in a particular area of social life. Take the rate of divorce among opposite-sex couples in many developed societies as an example. In the early 1960s there were fewer than 30,000 divorces per year in England and Wales, but by 2003 this figure had risen to 153,000. However, since 2003 the annual number of divorces has been falling, and in 2017 it stood at 101,669. The divorce rate also fell, to 8.4 divorcing persons per 1,000 married population, the lowest level since 1973 (ONS 2018a). Do these changes reflect specific features of British society? We can find out by comparing divorce rates in the UK with those of other countries. Comparison with figures for other Western societies reveals that the overall trends are in fact quite similar. A majority of Western countries experienced steadily climbing divorce rates over the latter part of the twentieth century, which appear to have peaked early in the twenty-first century before stabilizing or falling back in recent years. What we may conclude is that the statistics for England and Wales are part of a broader trend or pattern across modernized Western societies.