Since unmarried partners are now so common, few people believe that it is impossible to bring up children in security and love unless one is married. Those who do get married want to declare their lifelong commitment to each other publicly, whether in a civil or religious ceremony. But it must be admitted that typical weddings, the kind of weddings that girls dream about, have become ridiculously expensive in the last fifteen years or so. Thousands of pounds are spent on a ceremony and party lasting few hours. So, besides an unwillingness to submit to official pressure (which seems to be the main reason), new would-be brides often decide that they do not want to marry because they cannot imagine a simple wedding. So partners have a choice: a wedding, an informal party if you choose not to marry, or no celebration at all, merely a daily confirmation of the fact that you are a committed couple.
Language note: unmarried couples usually call each other 'my partner'. When spoken to by people who do not know them, many are quite willing to accept 'your husband' or 'your wife'.
Although family size in Britain has dropped significantly over the last forty years, single children are still unusual. Most one-child families have turned out to be like that because the parents for one reason or another cannot have another child. Mothers are starting their families much later - the average age of a mother when her first child is born is now 29. Many women wait until they are in their thirties before thinking about a family, although if they wait until they are 35, the chances of conceiving begin to decline rapidly. While there are women who become pregnant as late as 45, children born to mothers aged more than forty are very unusual. What often happens is that a woman decides to start a family at 35, conceives when she is 36, gives birth when she is 37 and discovers that bringing up a child is an exhausting business. Her body is older, her emotions are already well-developed, and her energies are less. Of course tens of thousands of healthy, happy children are born to mothers who are older than 35 every year. But on the whole, energetic youthful mothers find the whole process easier, and have much more time ahead of them to have more children.
The other reason for single children is that an increasing number of couples discover that they have fertility problems: something is wrong either with the man's sperm, or with the woman's ovaries and eggs. IVF treatment (in vitro fertilisation) has helped people all over the world, but the process is lengthy and exhausting, and fails more often than it succeeds. For some people it is never going to succeed. IVF treatment is now available on the NHS for a limited number of cycles but in the 1990s when Peter and Linda were trying for an IVS baby, they had to pay.
The number of women who remain childless by choice is also increasing. About 18% of women who are now in their forties have chosen not to have children.
In the previous chapter I have given dates for the births of all the children to illustrate typical family patterns. Sarah and Mark wanted two children and had them when Sarah was in her twenties. Peter and Linda did not seriously consider a family until Linda was thirty-two. Kate was twenty-eight when she married, and was keen to have children immediately. Preferably, several children. They arrived at two-year intervals; two years, nine months is the average time between having children in Britain. As you know, the typical interval between children in Russian families is much greater.
Stephanie became pregnant at the age of 29; she and Jonas wanted to ensure that they had a home, that Jonas (like Peter) could earn enough money from his business to keep a family, and that they were sure they could cope with a family. Stephanie's idea of her future family hovers between two and three children. Jonas kept saying that he wanted a girl, but Stephanie had no strong views. Fate has decided to give Jonas the daughter he longed for.
When children are born, British fathers are expected to take an active part in bringing them up. Of course there are variations in both what fathers are expected to do and what they actually do, but it is normal in Britain today for a father to attend the birth of his child, to share in looking after her, changing her nappies, cleaning, bathing and feeding her, and baby-sitting at times so that his wife can go out. Once the child is a toddler fathers often take them out to play, talk and read to them, and help to introduce them to the big grown-up world. The British have a poor reputation in their attitudes to children, but as compared with Russian fathers they seem to be much more involved in bringing up their children. Hence the big debates over keeping contact between children and their absent fathers in cases of divorce. (See below).
Because there are fewer single children in Britain, and because we tend to have our children close together, the relationships of siblings (brothers and sisters) are more in evidence, more important. This changes the dynamic of family relationships. Russians often talk with great affection of the significance of their grandmother or grandparents in their life, but less often of a brother or sister who is close in age and who grew up with them. In Britain it is the other way round (though see the chapter on Grannies). Where there are three children or more (three children are quite common), the dynamics and relationships are even more varied and complex, and the exclusive attention of parents (and often grandparents) on one child does not and cannot exist.
Stella's story illustrates the way in which, with divorce and widowhood, families can become very extended with complicated sibling relationships. We can see this from the experience of Holly. She begins by living with her mother, father and brother. When she is four, her parents divorce. She then lives with her mother and brother, until her mother sets up home with Ken, a widower. So she acquires a stepfather, a stepbrother, and two years later, a half-brother. Her father, Dave, now has a partner, Jacky, who was herself previously divorced. Jacky has a son from that marriage whom Holly scarcely knows. But Holly also has two little half-sisters, the children of Jacky and Dave. So her immediate family includes four parents and five brothers and sisters. Sometimes she feels confused!
Divorce is sadly common in Britain. We can estimate that if more than a third of marriages end in divorce, then at least the same proportion of serious couples end their long-term relationships. Nearly half these divorcing and separating couples are childless; even so, tens of thousands of children every year undergo the painful experience of their parents 'splitting up'. In Britain there is a strong tendency for such divorced and separated individuals to find another partner and settle down to another marriage or similar relationship. Single mothers who do not settle into another more-or-less permanent relationship are comparatively unusual - that is, when we look at the Russian situation.
The argument of the Russian women with whom I have discussed this difference is that there are too few educated men around, and too many alcoholics! Plenty of women find the available men here very unsatisfactory too, but most of them would not be so sweeping in their condemnation. About the same number of men as women get a higher education in this country, so that it is highly probable that a woman looking for a husband can find a man as well educated as herself. As we know, such similarities tend to make for happier relationships. It seems that the British are a romantic race, who like, and always have liked, their marriages to be little long-lasting democracies, for if you ask the British what their 'ideal' of life is, whether or not they themselves have achieved it, the 'ideal' that comes top always is 'a loving and kind marriage between equals'. Unfortunately, it seems that a substantial proportion will never achieve such happiness, or pass the expectation of such happiness on to their children. Nevertheless, it remains the ideal, and we must assume that it is the reality for many.