- Impact of cohort research
- Alcohol consumption
- Aspirations at school
- Cohorts and crime
- Diet at an early age
- Emotional wellbeing
- Escaping childhood poverty
- Family separation
- Impact of smoking on newborns
- Maternal stress in pregnancy
- Rising obesity
- Social disadvantage and health
- Social mobility
- Teenage parents
Families: separation and its potential consequences
Cohort studies have made a major contribution to understanding how family relationships influence the wellbeing of children.
Fewer than one in ten children born in 1958 saw their parents separate by the time they were 16 compared with more than a third of children today who have recently turned 16. Facts such as these highlight the dramatic changes affecting family life over recent decades. Cohort studies provide a unique insight into both the short and longer term consequences of such change not only for the individuals involved but for communities and society as a whole.
For example, it is now clearly established that far from being a single event in children's lives, divorce is a process that can begin years before their parents separate and has repercussions that reverberate through childhood and into adulthood. Relative to those who parents stayed together, children who experienced the break-up of their parents' marriage tend to have lower educational attainment and lower incomes, and they are more likely to be unemployed, to be in less prestigious occupations and to be living in social housing in adult life.
Children from separated families do less well in reading and maths tests in school and have more behaviour problems compared with children in families who stay together. Men and women from disrupted families are also more likely to experience the break up of their own partnerships and marriages. Children from divorced families also report higher levels of alcohol consumption and problem drinking in adulthood.
The key role of parenting and family life in shaping longer term outcomes of individuals that has been highlighted by cohort research evidence has encouraged central government to provide greater support to families. The 2008 Cabinet Office Strategy Unit discussion paper, Families in Britain [1], contains extensive references to birth cohort study evidence. For example, the paper cited the cohort finding that economic deprivation can lead to parental stress that in turn diminishes their parenting skills. As a consequence, ministers have developed family intervention programmes that work with 'at risk' families.
References
- Families in Britain, Cabinet Office Strategy Unit, 2008
