State of the Family in the UK
The best way to be family
Throughout the world marriage, between a man and a woman, has been the foundation of most societies wether they are Christian or not. In the UK Christian marriage has been the basic building block of our society for over a thousand years. Yet what we are seeing in the UK today is the demise of this institution that has played a vital part in our society. Christians often forget that we call it Holy matrimony, because God ordained it and that makes it special.
Evidence of a crisis
The media is increasingly dominated by the tragic story of the death of children at the hands of their parents or guardians. The recent story of "baby p" follows that tragic pattern as reporter by the Telegraph "Mother arrested over murder of 21-month-old boy ". But sadly it's not the first and it will not be the last despite promises from politicians. 
Remember the death of Victoria Climbié from abuse by her great-aunt Kouao on 25th of April 2000 that lead to a full public inquiry, the Child Protection Act of 2004 and the creation of the ContactPoint project ( costing £224M to set up and £41M per year to run), but despite all of the additional expense and new laws we seem back where we were eight years ago. It may seem obvious but new laws are unable to stop people who are prepared to break a wide range of existing laws covering offences against the person (e.g. assault, battery, kidnapping, manslaughter or even murder).
The violent nature of gangs of teenagers on the streets of many towns in the UK is an increasing problem for many people. For example the Times reporting "Most adults think children ‘are feral and a danger to society’" which came out of an advert by "Bernado's." As they said in the advert the frightening thing about the dialog was that it used words the public themselves used in recent newspasper articles.
The story of Sannon Matthews who was drugged and kidnapped by her own mother gripped the media. The story of Sannon Matthews' mother Karen explained how this could happen in our society, the headlines in the Independent read "Shannon Matthews case; Five fathers, one mother and a muddled family saga." It seems this dysfunctional family was just an accident waiting to happen and how many more families do we have like this?
The demise of marriage
Back in the swinging 60's the society wanted to be liberated not just in the approach to sex but also in how a family was composed. They not only wanted sex outside marriage, but also to live together without getting married. Until then marriage was the norm for a family, but now we have cohabiting and single parents families as well. The bar chart shows how this has changed from 1986 to 2010. In 1986 marriage still dominated the family with an 83% share with cohabiting and single parent families with 5% and 12% respectively. In 2010 the predicted shares for marriage, cohabiting and single parenting become 49% , 18%, and 33%.
Composition of the family
Source: Religious trends 5 Brieley 2005 Tables 4.10.1
Single parent families can arise though death of a partner, divorce or separation. The new trend is for young women to start families without ever being married or being in a long term cohabiting arrangement. Marriage is also under pressure from cohabiting, but while its growth is strong it's not as strong as for single parents. If the current trend in single parenting continues then in another decade it will become the norm for families in the UK. Whatever the social and economic cost this will incur, that is were the Society in the UK is heading.
Last year's lowest ever marriage led campaigners to blame Labour politicians for failing to safeguard the institution of marriage. The Telegraph reported "Labour ‘kills off marriage’ as rates lowest ever." It seems that labour politicians fear that by talking about the rate of marriage will be seen as discriminating against single people. This political correctness leads in effect to a bias against marriage. The government has oversean the removal of the terms "marriage" and "spouse" from many official documents. Put the other way around no one is worried about offending a married person by calling their husband or wife their partner.
Births inside and outside of marriage
Recent statistics show that in 2006 93% of births to teenagers occurred outside of marriage, and 57% of conceptions by teenagers were ended in abortions. This bar chart shows just how big a change our society is going through. In 1990 72% of births were inside of marriage, this is now down to 52%. So in a few short years the norm in this country will be for babies to be born outside of marriage.
Births inside and outside marriage
Source: Religious trends 5 Brieley 2005 Table 4.4.2
Single parent trends
The trend in births outside marriage or cohabiting relationships by single mothers that is the biggest factor fuelling the increase in "Single Parent" families. This chart beaks down "Single Parent" families into six types:
- single mother
- separated mother
- divorced mother
- widowed mother
- father
- those with non dependent children
It shows that while increase in breakdown of relationships gives rise to higher rates of single parenthood today, the largest component of growth in single parent families caused by single mothers. The trend suggests this was a recent development and a very strong one.
Single parent type trends
Source: Religious trends 5 Brieley 2005 Table 4.10.2
The expectation is that by 2010 "Single parent" families will make up 33% of families in the UK with "single mothers" at 14% of all UK families. The statistics make it clear that this form of parenthood is becoming a lifestyle choice for many, who simply find that the being a single mother offers them a preferable way of life than the alternatives. This may be especially true for those living in deprived area's and in times of recession we may see a steep increase in this figure.
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ISBN: 978-0-310-25947-3
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