THE FAMILY GREEN PAPER: Traditional households welcome intervention, but others resent `being told how to live our lives'

The Lone Parent

Julie Singleton, 34 is a lone parent and lives with her five-year- old son Michael. She works for a national charity.

She has brought up Michael on her own since he was three weeks old. She says the only reason she survived was the constant support of her parents. "I was also lucky in that I got a generous redundancy package. If you're not in an area where you have a lot of families and friends to support you then I don't know how you would survive. I also think parenting classes are a good idea as no one knows what they should do when they first have kids.

"It's not up to the Government to make people live a certain way. If they want to look at how to make family life less stressful, what were they doing cutting lone parent benefits?"

The Step Family

Stacey Hartshorn (above) is married to Carlo. His sons Jack, 14, and George, 11, live with them.

Stacey, 32, who works in marketing, has known her stepsons for nine years, although they have not always lived together. Now that they do she feels the Green Paper has little to offer them. "The focus is very much more on traditional families. They are looking at biological families, not people who are coming into relationships where there are already children. The needs of step-parents are quite different ...

"It all sounds a bit too theoretical and a bit too much `one size fits all' ... The paper is sparking off debate and discussion about families but I think they would be better off investing in children in a more practical way, such as better education, nursery education and childcare."

The Married Couple

Jenny and Jonny Baker are married with two children, Joel, eight, and Harry, six. They were married in church and since the children were born have arranged their lives to fit in with school hours and holidays.

Mrs Baker, 33, who works for a charity in London, said she broadly agreed with the Green Paper and thought the Government was right to try to confront the problems facing marriage. "It is a very important signal to be giving - that children need to be protected and research has shown that marriage is the best environment to bring up children.

"I'm not sure that parenting should be taught in schools. It is up to the parents to do that." She added that people should not be forced into particular types of relationships.

The Unmarried Couple

Claire Stevens, 36, has been with her partner Neville Ackerley for 10 years. They have two children and see no reason to get married. Both feel that the Government has no right "to interfere". Ms Stevens works as a part-time graphic designer, which gives her more time to spend with Charlie, four, and Tommy, one.

"We have been together for a long time now and we have never been interested in the wedding thing. It is partly because we have never got round to it but we have seen lots of our friends get married and some of them go through the pain of divorce, which hasn't encouraged us to think about marriage.

"Our children come first and our lives are built around them and being married would not make any difference to that."

The Gay Couple

Elizabeth Wilson (above) and Angela Mason have been in a relationship for 20 years. Ms Mason has a 14-year-old daughter by artificial insemination and they feel the Government is simply trying to "keep Middle England happy" by placing so much emphasis on marriage.

Ms Wilson believes that the Green Paper is superficial and will not work. "They are just playing to the gallery and trying to please everyone," she said. "Society is going through a very fluid period at the moment but it is not disintegrating. Most of our daughter's friends have both parents at home and marriage is more successful than people make out. "Having said that it doesn't matter whether children are brought up by a heterosexual married couple or a gay couple as long as they are happy and well cared for."