Does reducing the stigma of family breakdown make its consequences any easier to bear? A short item in today's Telegraph reports on the latest data from the National Child Development Study , which tracks the lives of children born in 1958 and compares them to those born in 1970. One of the biggest social changes in that period was the explosion in divorce and family breakdown. Those of us now hitting 50 had just a 9% chance of parental break-up, but for today's thirty-somethings, the rate more than doubled (21%). As sociologist Kathleen Kiernan comments in her report on the NCDS data, one might expect that the increased prevalence of divorce would have reduced its impact on children - after all, if break-up is 'normalised', wouldn't the consequences would be less disruptive?
Not so, says Kiernan: the damaging effects (such as poor educational outcomes, unemployment and depression) are just as prevalent in the 1970 generation. As the children of the millennium face an estimated 1 in 3 risk of family breakdown, this conclusion is disheartening. It certainly underlines the need for policymakers to find ways to increase family stability, and to reduce the number of children exposed to parental divorce and separation. Taking away the stigma is not the answer.
