AIBU to be very shocked only 3% of unmarried parents stay together until child is 16!

[littlemoominmamma]

3% is nothing!!! It is soooo sad. 1 out of every 3 couples have seperated before the child is 5yrs old

I am now glad that the tories are going to give married couples help.

That does not compute!

If unmarried parents split up how does giving married parents a bit more money change anything?

Wow, that is quite shocking if it's true. I didn't realise the figure was that low.

Where is the figure from?

another great statistic gathered by 'i pulled it out of my tory arse corp'

National Office of Statistics - these are government figures, so no disputing them unfortunatly.

Oh FFS.

Ever occurred to you that maybe......

Oh actually I can't be arsed. Go away. It's too early.

When I say government I do mean the current one so they are Labour figures (not that it matters, it is still very sad)

What is the percentage for married couples?

Government figures, so no disputing them... riiiight!

It's awful isn't it. Presumably Northerner it would be an incentive for people to get married. I suppose that is the idea. I suppose they must have figures showing that married relationships last longer than live-in relationships.

Just goes to show that marriage is more than "just a piece of paper".., it really makes me laugh when the unmarrieds call it that.....not getting married means you can do a runner whenever you like, there's no real commitment there.....which your stats prove.

Also it's a statement. Like the seatbelt thing: changes mindsets.

Agree with Daftpunk on this, shockingly!

It's rather sad ( the stat, not me agreeing with DP )

really? i and alot of my friends must be within the 3% then

I'm married myself, but 3% seems unbelievable to me.
Does that include: single mums who split up quickly, one night stands etc etc?
I know friends and family in solid (unmarried) relationships (decades) and with children, I can't believe they are only in the 3% of unmarrieds with kids.

Daftpunk - I also think that 'doing a runner when you like' is more a reflection on the individual (can happen to 'marrieds' and 'unmarrieds'), rather than commitment to the relationship.

Doesn't really matter if you believe it or not, does it. If you go to the source of the stats and find some confounding factors or flaw in calculation that would be more convincing.

I guess I was saying that many kids would be born with umarried mothers (who aren't in relationships anyway and so single mums from birth).

Do these figures include these instances?

I would be interested to know the % of mums who are in a relationship with the father when the child is born, who stay together until child is 16.

Would be interested to see the source of how this statistic was generated.

I could well believe it - I was a brand new graduate when I got pregnant and before I knew I was about to end the relationship to go off and start my fabulous(?!) new career in the nhs!

However, I found I was expecting and thought we should make a go of it. I had no real reason for wanting to split other than wanting a fresh start. Lasted till my son was 5 months.

I imagine a fair few people in our situation go the same way - nothing was going to change the fact I wasn't really "into" the relationship with his dad - not even my sunshine DS. Infact I would say it made it harder as we were nowhere near ready to have a family together.

People should get married because they love each other. Not because of some bribe from the govt.

Myself and my ExH got married because we were in the army and the govt stated we could only live together with our child if we were married. Incentives from the Govt won't keep MOST people together married if unhappy and not right for eachother (rightly so IMO). Divorced two years later.

Encouraging people to get married doesn't necessarily make them more commmmitted. You'll just be moving the people who are going ot split up anyway from the 'unmarried' to the 'married' group without changing their behaviour.

If money is the incentive then that makes it much more like 'just a piece of paper' than if it is done to show commitment without any financial gain.

Oh yeah - I forgot the main point of y post!! Getting maried would have solved nothing for us - infact ity would have just given his dad more access to my/our money and hewould have just got more debt!

I don't believe it. For a start a lot of parents who are not married when the DC is born may well marry within that 16yrs-are they included?