Broken homes, broken children
The UK has the highest level of family instability in the entire developed world. Our epidemic levels of family breakdown were highlighted in a recent international analysis by the Social Trends Institute. Yet as a nation we seem to be completely unaware of what is happening to us. Our own analysis at Marriage Foundation confirmed that a quarter […]
Get married to keep kids off benefits, finds new report
British adults whose parents were married at the time of their birth were 16 per cent less likely to ever receive benefits, a new study by Marriage Foundation has found. They were also 23 percent more likely to have been to university and 10 percent more likely to have got married themselves. Although overall adults […]
Divorce day: the grain of truth behind the hype
It comes up every year. January is supposedly the month when lawyers and counsellors say they get more new enquiries than in any other month. And the first working Monday of the year, today, is supposedly “divorce day” – the busiest day of the year. But is there any truth to this or is it merely […]
The fish are doing just fine : Understanding how a headline upward blip in divorce conceals the long term downward trend
Imagine an enormous fish tank. In it are fish of all different sizes, all swimming around happily together. It’s easy to tell how long any particular fish has been in the tank because of its size. As fish mature, they get bigger. The bigger fish have been around for a long time. The smallest ones […]
Divorce has no effect on children? Not so fast …
Parents at war ‘more harmful than divorce‘, ran a headline in the Times yesterday. The accompanying article reports on a new study that claims “interparental conflict may be even more harmful to a child’s development than parental dissolution itself“. The study – which you can read in full here – attracted my attention for a […]
The myth of the ‘good divorce’
It all sounds rather sweet and innocent, doesn’t it? “We love each other very much … we are and always will be a family … in many ways we are closer than we have ever been … we are parents first and foremost” These were the words reportedly said by A-list couple Gwyneth Paltrow and […]