Family breakdowns are at the highest level since records began – with almost half of teenagers not living with both birth parents by 14, a study has revealed.
It calculates that an astonishing 45 per cent of teens do not live with both parents – even though official figures suggest just 24 per cent of families are headed by a lone parent.
Official estimates for family breakdown have been ‘dramatically understated’ as they do not factor in parents who have new partners and those with young children who split later, researchers claim.
The study, by the Marriage Foundation think-tank, found the level of family breakdown has increased fivefold since the 1970s and has reached ‘epidemic proportions’, warning that, as the likelihood of familial collapse is intergenerational, ‘these figures will worsen in future years’.
The report also said: ‘Some level of family breakdown is inevitable. But 45 per cent? This should be a national scandal.’ Official figures from the 1970s show just 8 per cent of families were headed by one parent, but the think-tank’s analysis of data from the Millennium Cohort Study – a study of about 19,000 people born in 2000-02 – found this has dropped to just 45 per cent.
The key component of family breakdown is not divorce, which is at its lowest level since 1970, but rather the splitting up of unmarried couples with children, according to the study.
Married parents make up 85 per cent of families that remain intact when their children are teenagers and account for just 30 per cent of families that have broken down.
‘Two-thirds of family breakdown already comes from parents who never married,’ the study said, warning: ‘This proportion will increase.’
It also argued the rising figure has been ‘camouflaged’ by falling divorce rates and the level of lone parenthood remaining steady since 2000.
It pointed to family breakdown as the ‘number one predictor’ of teen mental health problems, poor exam results and lower self-esteem – all expected to worsen as the figure increases.
Study author Harry Benson said: ‘The level of family breakdown is at epidemic proportions and is set to get worse. Yet no politicians or policy makers are talking about this. Why this deafening wall of silence?’
Mr Benson argued that ‘senior politicians, who are overwhelmingly married, don’t want to be seen as “preaching” about the construct or make-up of families’.