Number of married couples falls

A RISE in the numbers of cohabiting couples and single parent families was flagged up by the ONS report.

The tally of cohabitees with children stood at 540,000 in 1996 but had risen to 1, 70,000 this year. Married couples with children went down over the same period from 5, 30,000 to 4,809,000.

Numbers of cohabiting couples overall more than doubled from 1.5million in 1996 to 3.3million now, the ONS said.

Lone parent families with children under 16 – or under 18 if still in school or college – went up from 1,631,000 in 1996 to 1,871,000 now. The ONS also reported that 86 per cent of lone parent families were led by a woman, and ‘this could be associated with women being more likely to take the main caring responsibilities for any children when a relationship breaks down and therefore becoming lone parents’.

Forty-five per cent of all families with offspring now have just one child, up from 4 per cent in 1996.

Some of these families may have older children from earlier relationships.