A new BBC poll claiming that warnings about the breakdown of family life in Britain are unfounded has been 
attacked by the Centre for Social Justice which is headed by Tory Minister, Iain Duncan Smith.
The BBC poll shows that 97 per cent of people say they are happy with their family life. However, two-thirds of respondents said they believed parents should stay together for the sake of their children.
On the basis of the poll, a BBC press release suggested that “reports of the demise of family life are largely unfounded”.
CSJ executive director Gavin Poole said that the BBC’s conclusion was “superficial” and risked breeding complacency about the extent of family breakdown in modern Britain and the damage done to children and adults alike.
Mr Poole said: “It will come as no surprise to most people that families are a source of happiness. The vast majority of people find comfort every day in their family, which helps them through good times and bad.
“In fact, all the poll really does is highlight the importance of the family. It is for this very reason that over the past four years, the CSJ has investigated the state of the family and made a raft of recommendations to strengthen it, such as better relationship education and tax breaks for marriage.
“However, we should be in no doubt that the family is under pressure. Our research, published in the ground-breaking reports Breakdown Britain (2006) and Breakthrough Britain (2007) found that:
“Since the early 1970s there has been a decline in marriage, with a doubling in the numbers of lone parent families from 1 million in 1980 to at least 2 million today. One in four children grows up in a single parent household and is far more likely to experience poverty as a result.
As if to underline Mr Poole’s point, the BBC poll also showed that nearly two thirds of people, 65 per cent, disagree with the statement that people should stay together for the sake of their children even if they would not stay together otherwise, compared to a under a third, 29 per cent, who agree.
“The ongoing rise in family breakdown affecting young children has been driven by the dissolution of cohabiting partnerships. The majority of these are less stable than marriage (recent official figures showed that three times as many cohabiting parents had split up as married parents by the child’s third birthday).
“YouGov polling conducted for the CSJ showed that those not brought up by both parents are 75 per cent more likely to fail at school, 70 per cent more likely to be a drug addict, 50 per cent more likely to have alcohol problems, 40 per cent more likely to have serious debt problems and 35 per cent more likely to experience unemployment/welfare dependency.
“Crime is strongly correlated with family breakdown – 70 per cent of young offenders are from non-intact families and one third of prisoners were in local authority care.
“The Costs of family breakdown are estimated to be well over £20bn per annum.”
New statistics and commentary on the mistaken assessment of British family history are to be released this week by the CSJ to mark the fourth anniversary of the chilling state-of-the-nation report on family fragility – Breakdown Britain.
Family expert at the CSJ, Dr Samantha Callan said: “Whilst the vast majority of young people and adults aspire to marriage and most still get there eventually, it is now commonplace to have several less stable relationships en route. This is a problem when children are conceived along the way and go through these usually painful transitions and often lose track of their fathers in the process.”
“Around a quarter of all parents are no longer living together by the time a child is five, indicating a culture of breakdown described by senior family court judge Sir Paul Coleridge as a “never-ending carnival” of human misery.”
Mr Poole added: “With the majority of the population aspiring to marriage, the state does not reflect that aspiration. There is a lack of support into and through marriage and very little recognition of marriage in our state system.”