Nuclear family no longer the norm UK campaigner says

It will soon become normal for children to be raised by relations other than their parents, the head of a UK Government-funded parenting group has predicted. 

Aunts, uncles, grandparents and even siblings will take on increasing childcare responsibilities as marital breakdown and growing pressures in the workplace had led to the irretrievable breakdown of the nuclear family, according to the Family and Parenting Institute. 

Rising divorce rates, fewer marriages and the growth of civil partnerships mean that the traditional family model is no longer “the norm” and Government efforts to rescue it are futile, according to Dr Katherine Rake, the organisation’s new chief executive. Dr Rake is formerly head of the Fawcett Society, a campaigning feminist group. 

Dr Rake will use her first major speech in the post to warn against the “trap” of attempting to preserve traditional family structures through Government initiatives. 

She will also forecast a dramatic change in the role of parents in the next decade.

With mothers beginning to play a less dominant role in children’s lives because of greater work commitments, fathers will experience a change comparable in scale to that seen by women since the 1950s, she predicts. 

Her remarks on the decline of the nuclear family are likely to attract criticism in some quarters from those who say that there is no substitute for children being brought up by a mother and a father. 

A study published last week by respected US think-tank, the Brookings Institute, found that marriage was one of the key pathways out of poverty. 

The authors of the study, Isabell Sawhill and Ron Haskins, rejected suggestions that this approach was outmoded. 

“To those who argue that this goal is old-fashioned or inconsistent with modern culture, we argue that modern culture is inconsistent with the needs of children,” they wrote. 

David Willetts, the Shadow Cabinet member with responsibility for family policy, said that the traditional two-parent family remains the “mainstream aspiration” for most young people. 

The Tories are proposing tax breaks for married couples which would allow women who stay at home to pass on their allowance to their husband. 

A major report on the state of British families being published today by the FPI to coincide with Dr Rake’s speech highlights how one in four children now live in a single-parent family, compared to only one in 14 in the early 1970s. 

Almost half of children are now born outside marriage, against only one in 10 a generation ago. 

Meanwhile the report highlights forecasts that 70 per cent of mothers will be working by next year, with an almost 40 per cent rise in the number of single mothers also in employment since the early 1990s. 

It estimates that about 90 per cent of grandparents now provide some form of financial support for their grandchildren. 

Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader and founder of the Centre for Social Justice, warned that for many young people, extended family ties no longer exist because of break-ups in previous generations. 

“It is getting more and more difficult for parents in some poorer backgrounds, on estates, because the family structures have been collapsing now over the last 20 years, largely encouraged by the state,” he said. 

“For a young girl to get a council house near her relations is more and more difficult … that extended family link is often severed by the fact that they can’t get living near their parents.”

The Iona Institute
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

You can adjust all of your cookie settings by navigating the tabs on the left hand side.