BritishReport-UniversityofEastLondon.docVIP

British Report on Category 3: Single Parents Susanne Rupp and Prue Chamberlayne, University of East London 1. Single Parenthood in Britain The 1960s were the heyday of marriages in Britain. Never before and never after were there so many marriages and so many births (Rimmer 1981:17). However, the percentage of families with four or more children had been continuously decreasing since the 1920s and by the 1960s the average family size was two children. Between 1961 (when Janettes mother was pregnant for the first time) and 1976 (the year of her marriage) the percentage of lone parent households with dependent children increased from two per cent to four per cent (Rimmer 1981:61). This was at least partly due to the fact, that with the high number of marriages the divorce rate also increased steadily by nine per cent each year, doubling within the decade. The Divorce Reform Act was passed in 1969. It allowed no fault divorces after a two year period of separation. By 1972 the divorce rate had doubled again. Since the 1980s the divorce rate has stabilised on a very high level compared to other European countries, e.g. higher than in France and West Germany (Clark and Haldane 1990). Though many one parent families developed through divorce, the increasing divorce rate does not necessarily remove children from a two parent family environment. About 75 per cent of divorced women and 83 per cent of divorced men remarry within three years. After a steady increase of lone parent households since the 1960s, the rate accelerated in the mid-1980s. In 1990 it reached twenty per cent of all families with dependent children (Social Trends 1992:39). In 1995 seven per cent of all households were lone parent households, while 25 per cent were ‘traditional’ family households of a couple with children (Social Trends 1996:51). This means that currently 1.3 million lone parents are caring for over 2.2. million dependent children. Most one-parent households are headed by women, and ma