From attitudes to gay sex and single parenting to views on abortion and the role of women in the home, Britain has evolved into a dramatically more liberal-minded country over the past four decades, a leading study has found.
Examples of the ascendancy of liberal views include attitudes towards same-sex relationships – 50% of respondents said they were “always wrong” in 1983, compared with 9% in 2022 – and a woman’s right to choose an abortion, supported by 76% now, against 37% when the question was first asked 40 years ago.
There have been similarly sweeping changes in public attitudes towards sex before marriage, having children outside wedlock, and traditional gender roles in the workplace and the home, to the extent that Britain “now looks and feels like a different country from 40 years ago”, according to the BSA.
From the celebration of same-sex relationships and references to “partners” rather than “husbands” or “wives” to the general acceptance that family and sexual matters should be a question of personal choice, not social conformity, “our citizen would find her 1980s moral and cultural compass of limited value – and perhaps wonder whether it will ever be of much use again”, it says.
The BSA researchers point out wryly that while attitudes towards whether the man or the woman in a heterosexual couple should carry out household chores have changed hugely – 75% regarded ironing as the women’s job 40 years ago, compared with 16% now – the reality lags far behind.
“So far as the public are concerned at least, the era of smaller government that Margaret Thatcher aimed to promulgate – and which Liz Truss briefly tried to restore in the autumn of 2022 with her ill-fated ‘dash for growth’ – now seems a world away,” the study concludes.
The original article contains 869 words, the summary contains 299 words. Saved 66%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
From attitudes to gay sex and single parenting to views on abortion and the role of women in the home, Britain has evolved into a dramatically more liberal-minded country over the past four decades, a leading study has found.
Examples of the ascendancy of liberal views include attitudes towards same-sex relationships – 50% of respondents said they were “always wrong” in 1983, compared with 9% in 2022 – and a woman’s right to choose an abortion, supported by 76% now, against 37% when the question was first asked 40 years ago.
There have been similarly sweeping changes in public attitudes towards sex before marriage, having children outside wedlock, and traditional gender roles in the workplace and the home, to the extent that Britain “now looks and feels like a different country from 40 years ago”, according to the BSA.
From the celebration of same-sex relationships and references to “partners” rather than “husbands” or “wives” to the general acceptance that family and sexual matters should be a question of personal choice, not social conformity, “our citizen would find her 1980s moral and cultural compass of limited value – and perhaps wonder whether it will ever be of much use again”, it says.
The BSA researchers point out wryly that while attitudes towards whether the man or the woman in a heterosexual couple should carry out household chores have changed hugely – 75% regarded ironing as the women’s job 40 years ago, compared with 16% now – the reality lags far behind.
“So far as the public are concerned at least, the era of smaller government that Margaret Thatcher aimed to promulgate – and which Liz Truss briefly tried to restore in the autumn of 2022 with her ill-fated ‘dash for growth’ – now seems a world away,” the study concludes.
The original article contains 869 words, the summary contains 299 words. Saved 66%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!