Now more than half of parents who split up are unmarried

MORE than half of breakups among couples with children involve unmarried men and women, a study showed yesterday.

While there are nearly four times as many families with children headed by married couples, the number of breakups among cohabitee parents is now higher, according to the Marriage Foundation think-tank.

It said 51.4 per cent of couples with children who parted last year were cohabitees and 48.1 per cent were married.

Analysing figures from the Office for National Statistics, it found a further 0.5 per cent were same-sex couples, thought to be divided almost equally between cohabitees and those who are married or civil partners.

It is estimated that in 2006, 45.3 per cent of family breakdowns were among cohabiting couples and 54.5 per cent among married parents. Family breakups among unmarried couples living together are thought to have outnumbered those among married men and women for the first time in 2015.

The ONS has estimated that in 2015 around a third of babies born in England and Wales – just over 224,000 – had parents who were unmarried but living together. There are thought to be more than six million people living together as unmarried couples.

Harry Benson, research director of the Marriage Foundation, said: ‘The barely acknowledged epidemic of family breakdown continues unabated, caused by the trend away from marriage.

‘These new figures show yet again how the odds are stacked against couples who don’t marry. Cohabiting parents account for one in five couples with children, yet more than one in two break-ups.

‘If we want to improve family stability – with all the advantages that stability brings for adults, children and society as a whole – we need to rediscover the importance of commitment and marriage.’

Mr Benson added: ‘Our politicians are strangely ambivalent about marriage, yet 89 per cent of our current Cabinet are married. For the sake of the next generation, I hope their new year resolution can be to preach what they practice.’

Advocates of greater state support for marriage have long argued that married couples are more likely to stay together than those who cohabit.

Cohabitees who do not marry are estimated to be around three-and-a-half times more likely to break up than married couples. A marriage that ends in divorce typically lasts more than ten years, compared with a three-year relationship for a cohabiting couple who split.