Latest figures from the ONS reveal babies born in 2012 will suffer higher rates of family breakdown than any previous generation.
Around 354,000 of the 729,674 children born last year will experience the breakdown of their parents’ relationship by the time they are 13-15 years old, according to projections made based on current trends by the Marriage Foundation think tank.
Harry Benson, of the Marriage Foundation, found that of the 51% of children who will still be living with their parents at their fifteenth birthday, only 5% will have unmarried parents.
Commenting on the new figures, Harry Benson said: “Almost all intact parents, 89%, will be married. Of the teenagers not living with both parents, just 32% of cases involved divorce.
“We continually hear about divorce rates shooting up and causing the exponential rise in family breakdown, but this is demonstrably not the case.
“The percentage of marriages ending in divorce has actually fallen since 2005 to 42%. For all marriages lasting over ten years, the divorce rate has barely changed since the 1960s.
“It is the declining rates of marriage which provide the only conceivable explanation of the doubling of family breakdown since the 1980s.”
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