We need to find out why family life is falling apart
F or generations it has been taken for granted that the family unit is the cornerstone of the local community and, more generally, of wider society. But in recent years, almost unnoticed, changes of fundamental importance have steadily had a substantial impact on the structure and nature of family life.
Office for National Statistics figures show that the number of marriages has fallen by 40 per cent in less than half a century and the birthrate has now reached an all-time low of 1.44 children per woman. As Professor Kathleen Kieran wrote in 2022: 'As well as relatively more children being born into lone-mother families, Britain has high and increasing rates of parental separation.' So much so that 'families in Britain are notably more fragile and complex compared with other western European countries, with high and increasing rates of parental separation: 44 per cent of children born at the beginning of this century will not have grown up living with both their biological parents (to the age of 17), more than double the figure for those born in 1970.'
Last month Unicef published a report concluding that the UK was 21st out of 36 countries in terms of the wellbeing of children. It may be significant that the number of children assessed as 'persistently absent' from school is stubbornly high at about 1.5 million.
The number of young people not in education, employment or training aged 16 to 24 is now estimated at just short of one million. In addition, The Times reported last month that 'nearly a quarter of parents with adult children have seen them move back in to the family home only two years after leaving it', the average age of return being 26.
As the population continues to age, and as more young people survive with profound disabilities, demands on family members grow. A House of Lords report estimated that there are between 4.2 million and 6.5 million unpaid carers in the UK, and the actual figure is likely to be much higher. The average person, it said, now has a 50 per cent chance of becoming an unpaid carer by the time they reach 50.
The above examples simply touch on the many changes that are now affecting family life in this country. Allowing the current changes to drift on while being little understood and neglected is the worst of all possible actions. The time has surely come for the government to establish a serious study in the form of a Royal Commission to better understand the forces which are driving these changes in family life and to preserve those elements of family life we hold dear.
Lord Laming was chief inspector of the social services inspectorate from 1991 to 1998
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