UK families among most unstable in the developed world
from Marriage Foundation:
The United Kingdom has among the highest rates of family instability in the developed world, a study by an international group of academics has found.
Three in five (62 per cent) British children born to unmarried parents living together experience family breakdown before they hit their teens.
In contrast, only 45 per cent of American children, 15 per cent of Belgian children and six per cent of Spanish children born to cohabiting parents undergo the same seismic shift in their family dynamic by the age of 12.
Almost without exception across the world, cohabiting couples are more unstable than married couples, even when they have children. In the UK, children born to cohabiting parents are 94 per cent more likely to see their parents break up before age 12, compared to children born to married parents.
Even among married couples, the UK has some of the highest rates of family breakdown in Europe. A third (32 per cent) of British 12 year olds whose parents were married when they were born have experienced family breakdown. In Austria the figure is nine per cent and in France eleven per cent.
The study also blasts the myth that the stability of marriage is due to a higher level of education among those who choose to marry. In the overwhelming majority of countries, the least educated married couples are still far less likely to break up than the most educated cohabiting parents.
In the UK, four in ten marriages (39 per cent) among the least educated end in divorce during the twelve years following childbirth, but over half (53 per cent) of the most educated cohabiting couples split up during the same timeframe.
Read also: Suffer the little children by Peter Mullen
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