Statistics on Family Life in the United Kingdom

Table of Contents

This post outlines some of the ‘key facts’ students should know for the A-level sociology families and households topics.

The statistics below are taken from range of different topics covered as part of the families and households specification (AQA focus), and I find it useful to introduce students to them as part of the ‘introduction to families’ lesson.

The activity I use is to give students a series of cut up cards, some with the ‘fact’ and some with the ‘number’, students can then match them as a pair work activity, or you could do it as a stand up walk around whole class activity (one card per student).

The list of facts for students to puzzle out is as follows:

Insert image of card matching (cut up)

Once students have tried their best to puzzle out the correct answers, I give them a gapped answer sheet and get them to research the different sources of the data and comment on how valid they think each piece of data is, by thinking about HOW the data was collected, or how the figures were calculated.

Insert image of gapped answer sheet (link to teaching resources eventually!)

This blog post is effectively the extended answers to the above gapped hand-out.

What percentage of marriages end in divorce?

Almost 44% of marriages in 1987 had ended in divorce by the year 2018.

Source: The Office for National Statistics – Marriages and Divorces in England and Wales.

How valid is this divorce data?

That 43.9% figure may sound alarming, but this is only true for marriages which took place in 1987, which is the ‘peak year’ (so far) for marriages ending in divorce.

If you look at marriages from slightly earlier years, then you get slightly lower figures. If you look at the divorce rate for the years after 1987, then the figures are also lower, and they could well stay that way because of the marriage rate declining since the late 1980s. Over time, as marriage has become more of a choice, this should lower the long-term divorce rate.

It follows that if we took an average divorce rate for several years surrounding 1987, we’d see a percentage lower than 43.9%.

So the data is valid, but only for two static years – 1987 to 2018. Any other selection of years will give you a different rate. Having said that, if you look at the lines in the graph above, they do seem to follow a predictable trend, so it’s unlikely that this figure is outright misleading! Just keep in mind it’s probably the very peak!

What percentage of households in the UK are cohabiting?

In 2018, almost 18% of family households were cohabiting compared to 67% married and 15% lone-parent.

The cohabiting family household has been one of the fastest growing household types in recent years

Source: ONS – Families and Households in the UK 2018

What is the average age a woman has her first child in the UK?

The average age of first-time mothers in the UK was 28.8 years in 2017.

Source: ONS.

How many babies does the average woman have?

The Total Fertility Rate in the United Kingdom in 2018 was 1.8 – an average of 1.8 babies per woman.

Source: ONS – Births in England and Wales, 2018.

How much does it cost to raise a child to the age of 18?

The overall cost of a child up to age 18 (including rent and childcare) is £151,000 for couples.

Source: Child Poverty Action Group: The Cost of a Child 2019.

How valid is this data?

If you work it out per year, that’s about £8300 per year that parents are spending on their children on average, which sounds suspicious.

This might be an invalid figure because it includes housing costs, and it’s a bit dubious whether this is the actual cost, given that parents need a home to live in anyway. You can’t necessarily attribute the cost of an extra bedroom in a house to having a child as many childless couples live in houses with spare bedrooms.

It follows that a figure without housing costs might be more valid as that would be closer the money that’s spent exclusively on the child.

The report also makes it clear that the figure does not represent all families – it is more expensive for lone parent families to raise a child to age 18 – it costs them £185 000.