When babies are born, they enter the world with a certain endowment. Some characteristics are inherited; others come from the particular environment into which the child arrives. There are relationships with the immediate family, parents and others living in the home, finances and housing, the wider kin network, the neighbourhood, the local and national economy and the social framework provided by national and devolved government. In this chapter, we set out to review these circumstances of birth for babies born at the start of the 21st century. These are the initial conditions of life for this new generation. Of course, in future we will be able to see how the generation progressed from the different starting points represented here, and how easy or difficult it is for children to benefit or escape from their earliest origins.

In this chapter, we consider first the family into which the baby was born – in particular, parents and their relationship, siblings and wider kin. We then examine the ethnic identities and religion of parents, and their own languages and national and cultural heritages. Parents’ health is another important element of the ‘endowment set’ for cohort babies which may affect the extent to which parents can provide effective care for the baby. Finally, we describe the housing conditions and neighbourhood context in which these families live. The financial aspects of children's origins, broadly defined, are considered in Chapter 3.

Household structure

Of considerable importance to a new baby is the type of household they enter. As reviewed in the Introduction to this volume (Chapter 1), dramatic changes have occurred to the demography of the family brought about by changing relationships between men and women leading to a diversity of family types.

Parents in the household

In 1971, 92% of families with dependent children were married or cohabiting couple families. By 1994, this proportion had reached its lowest point – 77% – and by 1996 it had recovered to 80% of such families (Dex, 1999, Table 2). The proportion of families headed by a lone parent increased over the same period from less than 8% to approximately one fifth. The Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) families are distinguished from families at large in that they had a new baby around the Millennium. They are part of the subset of families who have very young children.