THE CHANGING FACE OF families

THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF FAMILIES in the UK, by year

MORE and more couples are choosing to live together without saying “I do” - as married families decline in popularity.

In 1996, there were 12.6 million married couples in the UK - 5.2 million with dependant children, 1.7 million with children who had flown the nest, and 5.7 million without children.

They made up 76% of all families in the UK.

However, since then that proportion has fallen to just 67% of all families in 2018.

In comparison, the number of couples who are cohabiting but who aren’t married has soared during that time.

There were 3.3 million opposite sex couples who were living together but were not married in 2018 - up from 1.5 million in 1996.

They included 1.3 million families with young children, 182,000 with adult children, and 1.8 million with no kids.

It means cohabiting, opposite sex couples now make up 17% of all families, compared to just 9% in 1996.

Similarly, the number of same sex cohabiting couples has increased from 16,000 in 1996 to 117,000 in 2018.

While they now only make up 1% of families in the UK, that’s up from practically 0% of families 20 years ago.

And while almost all the same sex families in 1996 had no children, there were 7,000 same sex cohabiting couples with dependent children last year.

Meanwhile, the number of lone parent families has remained relatively stable.

There were 2.4 million of these in 1996, rising to 2.9 million in 2018 - 15% of the total number of families in both years.

The vast majority of these continue to be single mothers - 2.5 million compared to just 387,000 single dads.

At the same time, civil partnerships have been falling in popularity.

These were not an option in 1996, and were only introduced in 2006. That year, 13,000 couples were in a civil partnership, rising to 67,000 in 2012.

However, that number has since dropped to 47,000 couples in 2018 - and civil partnerships make up less than 1% of all families.

Sophie Sanders, Population Statistics Division, Office for National Statistics, said: “The number of families and households in the UK has continued to rise in line with the growth of the UK population over the past decade.

“However, the ways that people live have been changing.

“While married couple families remain the most common, cohabiting couples are the fastest growing family type as people increasingly choose to live together before, or without, getting married.

“There are also more people living alone than ever before, an increasing number of same-sex couple families and more young adults living with their parents.”