Seven in ten people think it’s best for children to grow up with both their natural parents

Oct 1, 2017 by Jill

by Steve Doughty, Mailonline:

Seven out of 10 people believe it is best for children to grow up with both their natural parents, a report on family breakdown found yesterday.

A similar number count the fragility of millions of families as one of the country’s most serious problems, it said.

The scale of public worry about the impact of breakdown on children, and on the wider problems of poverty and crime, was charted by the Centre for Social Justice, the think tank founded by former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith.

Mr Duncan Smith and a like-minded group of Tory MPs and peers have been pressing ministers to do more to support marriage, encourage fathers, and remove the rules that penalise couples from the tax and benefit system.

The new report was based on a series of polls designed to test the strength of public feeling on family breakdown and released in advance of the Tory conference.

Only one in six unmarried cohabiting couples will stay together until their children reach the age of 16, and the cost of family breakdown in benefits, education and NHS spending has been calculated at £48 billion a year.

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