Unmarried parents living together 'more likely to raise kids in unstable environment'
UNMARRIED parents who live together are more likely to raise their children in an 'unstable' family environment than married parents, a new study claims.
Data from 16 European countries and the US indicates that the children of unmarried but cohabiting parents are more likely to see them split than those whose parents are married.
This is especially true, the study's authors claim, in Britain where over half of all children born to unmarried parents will apparently see them split up before they reach the age of 12.
The negative correlation between unmarried cohabitation and family stability was revealed in a report sponsored by the Institute for Family Studies, which campaigns to strengthen marriage.
Academics working on the report - entitled the World Family Map 2017 - gathered data on 16 indicators of family structure across 17 countries worldwide, including Britain.
Children born into cohabiting families are more likely to see their parents split by age 12
They found that a child born to unmarried but cohabiting parents is more than twice as likely to see its mother split from its father by age 12 than a child raised by married parents.
The report's authors said: “Children born into cohabiting families are more likely to see their parents split by age 12 than children born into married families in almost every country.
“This is also generally true across countries regardless of the mother's education level”, they go on.
The report includes striking survey data from the UK which purports to shows how over half (53 per cent) of children born to unmarried parents see them split before age 12.
This compares to the 27 per cent of children born to married parents who see them split by the same age, the report claims.
The report's authors claim the negative correlation between unmarried cohabitation and stability holds true across most countries, and across all social classes as measured by the mother's education level.
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Indeed, in a rejoinder to those who claim that education level is more important a determinant of family stability than marriage, the report shows that highly educated cohabiting couples with children are more likely to break up than less-educated married couples with children.
Despite its implied criticism of unmarried cohabitation, the report also shows how the children of unmarried parents generally experience far less family turmoil than those raised by a single parent alone.
The report says: “Few children are raised stably by single mothers from birth to age 12 in any country: less than 10 percent everywhere besides the United Kingdom and Belgium, where about one-quarter of children born to single mothers."