Image Credit: Rapeepong Puttakumwong / Getty Images 
A study from the Marriage Foundation suggested that nearly half of children in Britain are no longer living with both of their biological parents by the time they reach 14 years of age.
Drawing on a dataset of 4,476 first-born children in the UK conducted by the Millennium Cohort Study and weighing the sample to represent the national population, the Marriage Foundation revealed on Monday that 46 per cent of children in the country are not living with both their natural parents by the age of 14.
The Marriage Foundation found that the majority of such cases (70 per cent) were a result of breakups from non-married couples, while 30 per cent were from families of married couples. For children whose biological parents were still together by the age of 14, 84 per cent had married parents, compared to just 16 per cent who were unmarried.
The data also showed that 60 per cent of parents who had never married were separated at the time of their child’s 14th birthday, compared to 21 per cent who married before the child was born and 32 per cent who married following the birth.
Harry Benson, Research Director of the Marriage Foundation, said that even when “considering a wide range of socio-demographic controls – such as ethnicity, age, time lived together, education and relationship happiness”, the numbers still indicated a greater probability of never-married parents to split up at 46 per cent, compared to 26 per cent for those who married before the birth and 27 per cent after.