Single parents now head a quarter of all British families

Single parent families now comprise one quarter of all families with dependent children in Britain following a trebling of their numbers in the past 30 years, new figures revealed yesterday.

One in four children, or 2.9 million, now live with just one parent and an increasing number of youngsters will spend part of their childhood in a single parent household, the data showed.

The growth in lone parenthood has been fuelled in recent years by more women choosing to have children without a permanent partner, the Office for National Statistics said.

Lone mothers who have never married now form one in nine of all families with dependent children – their proportion having increased from 7 per cent to 11 per cent from 1996 to 2000.

In 1971 the UK had 570,000 one parent families, with one million dependent children. But by 1986, one in seven families, or just over one million, were headed by a lone parent who was not cohabiting.

This proportion grew to one in five by 1991, and by 2000, 26 per cent of all families, or 1.75 million in total, had just one parent. They were looking after 23 per cent of all dependent children.

John Haskey, of the ONS, said that historically, most lone parent families were the result of widowhood. But during the 1960s and 1970s, increased rates of divorce started an upward trend in lone parenthood.

By the 1980s, the increased number of women having children outside relationships began to overtake family breakdown as the main cause of lone parenthood, Mr Haskey said. "From the mid-1980s onwards, having birth outside marriage has meant that single lone mothers have begun to eclipse or overtake the total number of single lone parents by divorce."

He added: "One in nine of all families is now a single lone-mother family – that is one where the mother has never married. Births outside marriage have increased consistently in recent years and more women may be deciding to have children without a permanent partner."

In the four years to 2000, the proportion of families headed by two parents, who were married or cohabiting, decreased from 79 per cent to 74 per cent of all families. During the same period, the proportion of separated and divorced lone-mother families grew as a result of marriage breakdown and a further decline in second marriages.

But the rate of growth was highest among single lone mothers, who now constitute 41 per cent of all lone parents compared with 34 per cent in 1996, Mr Haskey said. This group has an average of 1.5 children each, which is less than separated or divorced lone mothers mainly because the women tend to be younger.

He said the rate of growth in lone mother and lone father families, who account for 12 per cent of all single parent families, appeared to have "moderated".

"Nevertheless, it is certain that an increasing proportion of all dependent children are spending at least a part of their childhood in a one-parent family," Mr Haskey said.