Abstract
Civil partnerships first became available to mixed-sex couples in England and Wales in December 2019. To date, there has been no research exploring the perspectives of mixed-sex couples who choose to become civil partners. We interviewed 21 people, as individuals or in couples, who were considering, planning, or had already entered into a civil partnership. Our thematic analysis resulted in two themes. In Free from the patriarchal baggage of marriage: Civil partnership as a clean slate of equality, we discuss how participants portrayed marriage as imbued with problematic traditions. In contrast, civil partnerships were portrayed as a contemporary form of relationship recognition that was in fitting for them and their relationships. In the second theme, Doing thing differently? Rejecting or reimagining weddings we discuss how participants critiqued traditions to navigate whether and how to reject them entirely, or attempt to creatively reimagine them. We consider the implications of our results.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1925-1948 |
| Number of pages | 24 |
| Journal | Journal of Family Issues |
| Volume | 45 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 14 Aug 2023 |
Bibliographical note
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the CreativeCommons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/),
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by the University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| University of the West of England |
Keywords
- heterosexual
- marriage
- patriarchy
- relationships
- weddings
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Social Sciences (miscellaneous)