The review claims that, outside good schools and teachers, ‘the family is the only other factor that can have that same or even more of a transformative effect’ on the lives of children. It reports that in 2021, there were around 8.2 million families with children in the UK. Of these, 63% were married couples with children, 14% were cohabiting couples, and 23% were headed by a lone parent. The rate of lone parent households in the UK is much higher than in most European countries, where the average figure is 13%. Around 90% of lone parents are women.
In 2021, equal proportions of families with children had one or two children (42% each) and 15% have three or more children. Cohabiting families and lone parent families tend to be smaller than married families. Figure 1 shows a breakdown in family type by ethnicity in 2020. What are the interesting patterns here?
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