Introduction

In this chapter I summarise some key social and demographic statistics from England and Wales which illustrate the scale of the challenge which faces any governments should they wish to develop strategic preventative social and legal policies to better support children and young people caught up in the critical family transitions following the breakdown of their parents’ relationship (see further below in Part II).

Aggregated statistics by themselves do not of course convey any idea of the real impact of individual experience. So I have attempted to compensate for this in Chapter Five, which illustrates children's own individual experiences of living through their parents’ separation and divorce. Even so, policy makers and law reformers do need to have an idea of the scale of the issues that they are dealing with and the direction of social trends. In this particular chapter I wish to make several preliminary observations which may not be immediately apparent from the bold figures.

First, in the past, considerable attention has been paid to divorce statistics, particularly by social commentators who believe that marriage breakdown and divorce are indicators of moral decline. However that may be, the evidence suggests, as we shall see, that divorce is related to marriage rates. These have declined over the years because marriage nowadays normally occurs after couples have cohabited for some time. Unsurprisingly, it is early marriage and early cohabitation which tend to carry the greater risk of separation.

Second, as far as the welfare of children is concerned, which has come to be the paramount concern of the state, it has become increasingly clear that it is the social institution of parenthood rather than marriage that is of greater social importance. Yet this is not always reflected in the way social statistics are collected and compiled, nor in the way politicians, religious leaders and establishment figures in general usually refer to these matters.

Third, attempts to quantify the numbers of children affected by serious conflicts, separation and divorce are hampered by the way they are compiled. Thus it is very difficult to get an overall picture. This is largely because such official statistics as are collected are gathered by individual government departments and particular services reflecting their particular policy areas of responsibility.