Introduction

2009 marks the tenth anniversary of the Family and Parenting Institute. In the 10 years that the Institute has been working to improve the services that families use and the environment children grow up in, there have been considerable changes to the direction and momentum of family policy in the UK. Never before has there been so much discussion about the issues affecting families. Evolving circumstances such as the recession and the impending new parliament are creating great speculation about the future for British families. At this time the Family and Parenting Institute considered it useful to take stock of recent changes and conduct an overview of the family as it now stands in the UK.

Our new report predicts that fathers' lives are set to change radically over the next decade. Shifting attitudes among fathers, mothers' increased engagement in the labour market and impacts of the recession suggest that the time fathers spend with their children is likely to increase. However, the research also suggests that it may become more likely that fathers live apart from their children as co-habitation rates continue to rise since it has been estimated that 65 per cent of co-habiting relationships into which a child is born dissolve. This is more than twice the rate for equivalent married couples.

Summary of contents

Chapter 1 examines demographic changes since the 1970s.
Chapter 2 focuses on mothers and motherhood.
Chapter 3 looks at the contribution of fathers to the development of their children.
Chapter 4 examines the kind of issues that parents and families face at various stages of their children's development and how parenting may have changed over recent decades.
Chapter 5 concerns economic recession and the impact it has had historically and in terms of the contemporary situation.

Quick facts from Family trends

Marriage is still the most common form of partnership

Marriage remains the most common form of partnership for both men and women; in Great Britain in 2006 52 per cent of men and 50 per cent of women were married.
Marriage in the UK is less common now than it has ever been; although the marriage rate has fluctuated the general trend is downwards. By 2005 the annual marriage rate was the lowest it had been since 1862, the year the statistics were first compiled.
The number of 'married' and 'never married' women is predicted to be equal by 2031.

Divorce rates appear to be falling

The divorce rate rose steadily throughout the latter part of the 20th Century, stabilised in the mid 1980s, and then showed a distinct decline: in 2007 it fell to 11.9 per 1,000 married people – its lowest level since 1981.

Cohabitation is climbing

Couples living together before a first marriage has risen from little more than two per cent at the end of the 1950s to 77 per cent by 1996, and the figures for cohabiting prior to second marriage are even higher.
22 per cent of couples will be in a co-habiting relationship (as opposed to a marriage) by 2021, compared to 12 per cent of couples in 1996.
The break-up rate for co-habiting relationships into which children are born has been estimated as being as high as 65 per cent.

Lone parents look after nearly a quarter of our children

It is estimated that by 2008 about 11 per cent of households were comprised of a lone parent and their dependent children. In 1971 this figure stood at 4 per cent. Approximately one in four children are being brought up by single parents compared with one in 14 in 1972.
Between 1997 and 2008 the proportion of dependent children living with lone mothers increased from 19 to 22 per cent.
The percentage of children living with adults in a couple relationship fell from 92 per cent in 1972 to 77 per cent in 2008.

Motherhood has changed

There are increasing numbers of mothers in paid work:

Mothers' employment has tripled since 1951 to 2008, and this trend looks set to continue.
In 2008 around two thirds of mothers were employed.
38 per cent of mothers with dependent children worked part time.
It is projected that by 2010, 70 per cent of mothers will be in paid employment.
56 per cent of lone mothers with dependent children are in employment – compared with 72 per cent of cohabiting or married mothers.

But mothers continue to be responsible for most household and domestic chores:

The British Attitudes Survey showed that women in part-time employment do as much house work as women not in paid employment.
Where partners work more than 48 hours a week, only 20 per cent of women said their partner had the main responsibility for the washing and the cooking. A large majority of men also said childcare was still the woman's responsibility.

Mothers now spend more time with their children than they have done in previous decades

At least seventy five per cent of mothers have primary responsibility for childcare in the home.
Mothers were spending three times as much time with their children in 2002 compared with 1972.
ONS figures indicate that in 2001 29 per cent of parents reported being very involved in school life; and by 2007 the figure had reached 51 per cent.

Fathers are becoming more involved in family life

Father's involvement in family life has shown an increase particularly in terms of child care

There was a 200 per cent increase in the time that fathers are actively engaging with children between 1974 and 2000 (25 minutes a day compared to only 8 minutes in the 1970s).
A survey of 16 industrialised countries found time devoted to childcare for married fathers in full-time employment with children under five had risen from 0.4 hours per day in 1960 to 1.2 by 2000. Fathers said that they found the time to do this because they gave up on personal pursuits (mainly sleep) and because they are trying to cut down work.
Children whose fathers spend time interacting with them tend to do better at secondary school because children whose fathers play with them have more self confidence.

Parent-child relationships are shifting

72 per cent of parents perceive themselves to be less strict than their own parents.
71 per cent of adults reported playing in the street or near their home every day when they were children, compared to only 21 per cent of children in 2007.
There is a clear trend away from smacking as a form of discipline - the older the respondent, the more likely they are to have used smacking as a means of managing children's behaviour.

Changing lifestyles and the population

Women are having their first child much later: the average age for women giving birth to their first child in England and Wales in 2008 was 29.3 years, compared with 28.3 years in 1997 and 26.6 years in 1971.
Women are likely to have fewer children; the average number of children that each woman will have during her lifetime has dropped from 2.95 in 1964 to 1.95 in 2009.
People aged 65 or older accounted for 11 per cent of the UK population in 1951. By 2031 it is predicted to have risen to 23 per cent.
In tandem with the growing elderly population, the UK population under 16 is contracting and predicted to decline further, having a substantial impact on the population as a whole. By 2007, the percentage of the UK population of pensionable age became greater than that of teenagers for the first time.
Changing family forms are producing a so-called 'beanpole' effect, with more generations alive at the same time, but with fewer aunts and uncles etc.

Children and commercialisation

84 per cent of parents feel that commercial companies targeted products at their children 'too much'
50 per cent of 5- to 10-year-olds and 95 per cent of 11- to 16-year-olds had their own mobile phone in 2009.
One-third of households in Great Britain had internet access in 2000, rising to 65 per cent of households in 2008.

Wellbeing

Government Green paper

Family Trends new publication

Family Trends - British families since the 1950s