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www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk

18 April 2011

Britain’s levels of births outside marriage are at the highest point for at least 200
years, according to a major new study of the history of the family from a leading
think-tank. Cohabitation levels have also soared from under 5% pre-1945 to 90%
today.
The inquiry finds that births outside marriage were at low levels throughout the 19th
Century and stayed flat until the 1960s. But since then they have soared, from a
long-standing baseline of 5 per cent to 45 per cent today.
Research shows that children brought up by lone parents on average do much less
well than those brought up by two parents. For instance, they are 75 per cent more
likely to fail at school and 50 per cent more likely to have alcohol problems. Separate
studies have also shown that cohabiting couples with children are far less stable than
married couples with children.
The latest report, published by the independent think-tank the Centre for Social
Justice, refutes claims by some academics and campaigners that there is nothing new
about contemporary levels of family breakdown.
They have insisted that the so-called permissive 1960s were not a break with longestablished
patterns of family life
But the detailed examination of the evidence stretching back to the 18th Century by
Professor Rebecca Probert of Warwick University and Dr Samantha Callan, the CSJ’s
senior family researcher, confirms that the sexual revolution of the 1960s did indeed
mark a decisive break with 200 years of conventional family structure.
Their report amounts to a comprehensive refutation of Professor Pat Thane’s
research published last year by the British Academy, Happy Families? History and
Family Policy, which was widely reported in the media.
Their key findings culled from detailed historical documents are:
• The percentage of births outside marriage in the England and Wales hovered
around 5 per cent (except during the two world wars) before rising in the
1960s onwards.
• By the late 1970s, this figure was above 10 per cent, by 1991 it was 30 per
cent and today it is 45 per cent.
• Levels of births outside marriage were the same in the 1950s as the 1750s at
around 5 per cent.
• Claims that cohabitation levels, as opposed to marriage, were “high” in the
early part of the 20th Century are not borne out by the facts. The authors
point to research suggesting that in the 1950s and 1960s, only 1-3 per cent of
couples cohabited before marriage. Other research puts the pre-1945 level of
cohabitation at 4 per cent. Today, nearly 90 per cent of couples live together
before getting married.
• Records of unemployment claims from the 1920s point to minimal levels of
cohabitation.
Gavin Poole, Executive Director of the CSJ, says:
“Current high levels of cohabitation are a key factor in the rise in family breakdown
in our country and this paper shows that we have not been here before. The CSJ has
consistently argued, from the evidence, that marriage and commitment tend to
stabilise and strengthen families and cannot be ignored.”
Professor Probert and Dr Callan say in their report:
“It is not our intention to suggest that all marriages in the past were happy and longlasting,
nor that there were no examples of successful and stable cohabiting
relationships.
“But the quality of family life should be distinguished from its form.
“The fact that a number of marriages were brutal and fleeting should not obscure
the centrality of marriage to family life in previous decades.
“While many Victorian marriages were short-lived because of the untimely death of
one of the spouses, this does not mean that the experiences of the survivors were in
any way comparable to those undergoing a divorce today.
“Similarly, while one can of course find examples from all historical periods of
couples who lived together outside marriage, it does not follow that cohabitation
was remotely as common in the past as it is today.”