Excerpts: " births outside marriage are at their highest level in two centuries ... 46 per cent of children are born to unmarried mothers, according to research by the Centre for Social Justice. ... a child growing up in a one-parent family is 75 per cent more likely to fail at school, 70 per cent more likely to become a drug addict, 50 per cent more likely to have an alcohol problem and 35 per cent more likely to be unemployed as an adult.
Some 48 per cent of children are likely to see their family break up before they are 16. Ten years ago, it was 40 per cent."
"Gavin Poole, executive director of the [Centre for Social Justice], which was set up by Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, said: ‘Current high levels of cohabitation are a key factor in the rise in family breakdown in our country and this paper shows that we have not been here before. ‘Marriage and commitment tend to stabilise and strengthen families and cannot be ignored. The peculiarly high levels of family breakdown found in Britain are at the heart of the social breakdown which is devastating our most deprived communities.
‘Strengthening families is vital, both to the health of Britain and in ensuring a more socially just society.'"
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Professor Probert and Dr Callan say in their report: ‘It is not our intention to suggest that all marriages in the past were happy and long-lasting, nor that there were no examples of successful and stable cohabiting relationships.
‘But the quality of family life should be distinguished from its form. The fact that a number of marriages were brutal and fleeting should not obscure the centrality of marriage to family life in previous decades. The UK’s retreat from marriage has had negative effects for children, families and society, given that 80 per cent of relationship breakdown in young families takes place in unmarried families.
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"The UK stands almost alone among European countries in failing to recognise traditional family structures in the tax system.
"France, Germany, Denmark and Norway all recognise the role of stay-at-home spouses.
"In 2003, the term ‘marital status’ was deleted from official forms. Most Government-sponsored research, meanwhile, refers only to ‘couple parent families’.