cutiepieBroken families are breaking youth
By Tshikululu Social Investments on 12 May 2011
Categories: Social Development

We argue that the fact that two thirds of children do not live with their parents is damaging our future workers, entrepreneurs and leaders.
Written by Lucy Holborn for the South African Institute of Race Relations. This article is an executive summary of the second report on research conducted by the Institute into the state of South African families and youth.
Unemployment, teenage pregnancy, crime and drug and alcohol abuse all affect South Africa’s youth. Family breakdown and the absence of fathers in particular, may contribute to these social ills.
“œNine million kids with no dads” was the headline on the front page of The Sowetanon 5 April 2011. It was based on the Institute’s Research into family breakdown and its harmful consequences for children. The following week Ms Phumla Matjila cited our research in her column in The Times, but argued that being brought up by her grandmother had been good for her.
There are exceptions, but in general the odds are stacked against South Africa’s young people succeeding. Only 68% of candidates passed their matric in 2010 and to pass a subject they only had to get 30% right anyway. Of those who enrolled in university in 2002, more than half dropped out. One in two young people who want a job cannot find one, and a third of 15-24 year olds are not in education, employment or training. In other words, they have nothing to do.
More than a third of the country’s prisoners are aged 18-25, whereas this age group accounts for only about 15% of the total population. Nearly 50 000 schoolgirls fell pregnant in 2007, a 151% increase since 2003. Drugs and alcohol seem to be easily accessible to many young people. Nearly a third of 12-24 year olds said they had easy access to marijuana and 8% had easy access to crack cocaine.
We argue that the fact that two thirds of children do not live with their parents is damaging our future workers, entrepreneurs and leaders. There is no doubt that family breakdown is part of a cycle. After all, if parents are not involved in their children’s lives, how do they know what their children are doing? How do values get imparted to young people? How do children benefit from the experience of older generations?
More worryingly, young people with absent parents, living in poverty and with few prospects in life are more likely to go on to have unplanned children or perhaps children with multiple partners, and another generation will be born without stable families.
One in five children from broken homes lose touch with one parent for EVER
By JAMES CHAPMAN
UPDATED: 02:15 GMT, 25 January 2012 * Comments (154) * Share * * * *
One in five children from broken homes lose one parent from their lives for good, official figures reveal.
Preparing to unveil plans to tackle the problem, families minister Maria Miller said parents should take responsibility for their offspring for life and reach civilised agreements.
‘We want to make sure parents are aware of the effect and the importance of working together to support their children,’ Mrs Miller told the Daily Mail.

Breakdown: Many children from broken homes lose touch with their parents
‘Really that should be the case irrespective of whether their relationship is intact or not.
‘They are parents for life and that responsibility is for life.’ More... * Pupils as young as five being offered anger management classes at out-of-control school which excluded 40 children * British pervert who blackmailed teenage American girls with naked internet pictures is jailed for six years
Figures show that 20 per cent of children from a broken home lose touch with absent parents within three years and then never see them again.

MP Maria Miller is calling for new reforms to prevent the collapse of parental relationships
As they grow older, many others lose contact with a parent, most often with fathers when mothers are awarded custody.
Mrs Miller said the child maintenance system had failed, with only around half of the three million children growing up in separated families benefiting from it. The rules are also said to encourage conflict.
Parents who insist on the state intervening to sort out maintenance payments will be hit with an initial fee of £100, Mrs Miller said, to encourage them to come to their own agreements.
But Lord Mackay of Clashfern, Lord Chancellor under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, said he would oppose proposals to charge single parents a fee of up to 12 per cent of any maintenance collected.
The fees will be levied for using the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, which is taking over the work of the discredited Child Support Agency.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2091355/One-children-broken-homes-lose-touch-parent.html#ixzz3qHFqUwFg
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Custody, Access and Child Support: Findings from The National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth * [ Previous Page | * Table of Contents | * Next Page ]
III - WHEN PARENTS SEPARATE: CANADIAN CHILDREN FROM BROKEN FAMILIES AND THE LAW
As we have seen, increasing numbers of children from broken homes were born to parents who did not marry. How then do these parents settle the issues of custody, access and child support and what kind of impact do these decisions have on the day-to-day lives of the children? Do unmarried parents act differently when they separate, or is the care of the children settled in a similar way regardless of the type of union?
Children from Broken Families Come Disproportionately from Common-Law Unions
Of all children from birth to age 11 born in a two-parent family who were sampled by the NLSCY, 13 percent were born into a common-law union that had not been formalized into a marriage at the time of the survey. The majority of children (52 percent) were born to couples who had not lived together before marriage and another 32 percent were born to married parents who had first lived together (See Figure 6).
Figure 6: Distribution of Children Aged 0-11 and of Children from Broken Families, According to Type of Parents' Union--Canada--NLSCY 1994-1995

[ Description ]
Looking only at children whose parents have separated, we see that the distribution is quite different: only 30 percent of these children came from married couples who had not lived together before marriage and a slightly greater proportion (34 percent) were from common-law couples who had not married at the time of the survey. Children born to common-law unions were clearly over-represented among children who experienced the break-up of their families. Moreover, when we look at the data by birth cohort, the trend is clearly more pronounced for the younger cohorts (see Table 1). As the percentage of children born to common-law unions increases, it naturally makes up a larger proportion of all children who have experienced their parents' separation. Among children from broken families in the 1983-1984 cohorts, 21 percent had parents living common-law and that proportion jumped to 54 percent for the 1991-1992 cohorts.
It will be seen below that the type of broken union has an impact on the likelihood that the parents will obtain a court order for custody and child support.
Table 1: Distribution of All Children and of Children from Broken Families 1 by Cohort and Type of Parental Union at Time of Birth--NLSCY, Cycle 1, 1994-1995 1983-1984 Cohorts (10-11 years) | Birth Cohorts | Common-
Law | Common-
Law,
Married Since | Marriage,
Common-
Law
Before | Marriage,
No
Common-
Law
Before | Total | N 2 | All children | 6.9 | 3.5 | 25.8 | 63.7 | 100 | 3574 | Children from broken families | 21.2 | 4.9 | 31.8 | 42.1 | 100 | 733 |

1985-1986 Cohorts (8-9 years) | Birth Cohorts | Common-
Law | Common-
Law,
Married Since | Marriage,
Common-
Law
Before | Marriage,
No
Common-
Law
Before | Total | N | All children | 8.3 | 4.1 | 31.4 | 56.2 | 100 | 3514 | Children from broken families | 27.1 | 6.6 | 32.9 | 33.4 | 100 | 594 |

Cohortes de 1987-1988 (6-7 ans) | Birth Cohorts | Common-
Law | Common-
Law,
Married Since | Marriage,
Common-
Law
Before | Marriage,
No
Common-
Law
Before | Total | N | 1987-1988 Cohorts (6-7 years) | 12.6 | 3.9 | 31.2 | 52.3 | 100 | 3344 | Children from broken families | 34.0 | 6.9 | 32.5 | 26.6 | 100 | 532 |

1989-1990 Cohorts (4-5 years) | Birth Cohorts | Common-
Law | Common-
Law,
Married Since | Marriage,
Common-
Law
Before | Marriage,
No
Common-
Law
Before | Total | N | All children | 13.6 | 3.5 | 33.8 | 49.1 | 100 | 3512 | Children from broken families | 48.6 | 2.6 | 31.0 | 17.8 | 100 | 425 |

1991-1992 Cohorts (2-3 years) | Birth Cohorts | Common-
Law | Common-
Law,
Married Since | Marriage,
Common-
Law
Before | Marriage,
No
Common-
Law
Before | Total | N | All children | 18.3 | 2.6 | 34.8 | 44.3 | 100 | 3429 | Children from broken families | 53.5 | 1.6 | 28.9 | 16.0 | 100 | 254 | * 1. These children have witnessed their parents’ separation before the last birthday celebrated by all cohort members. Example: before the 10th birthday for the 1983-1984 cohort. * 2. N = Weighted data brought back to the original sample size.
Were these findings observed uniformly across the country? Yes, with the exception of Quebec where the trend was more pronounced. In Quebec, a larger proportion of all NLSCY children were born to common-law couples (29 percent), so it is not surprising to find that children born to these couples constitute a larger fraction (50 percent) of those children who experienced a family break-up (See Figure 7).
Figure 7: Distribution of Children Aged 0-11 and of Children from Broken Families, According to Type of Parents' Union--Quebec--NLSCY 1994-1995

[ Description ]
The next question to address is how custody and child support are resolved, whether or not the parents were married. Is the existence of a custody or child support court order linked to the type of union (marriage, common-law) and to the legal status of the separation (divorce, legal separation, de facto separation)? To begin answering this question, we first examine the trends in divorce rates among married couples.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
BACKGROUND
In the spring of 1998, the Child Support Team of the Department of Justice Canada commissioned an analysis of the data relating to custody, access and child support from the "Family History and Custody" section of the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY).
The NLSCY will follow a group of children until they reach the age of 20. Over 22,000 children from birth to age 11 were first surveyed in the winter of 1994-1995. The survey will be repeated every two years until at least the year 2002. These data provide a unique means to study, over an extended period, how different aspects of children's environments influence their development. Statistics Canada has released the first cycle results and, for the first time, national data are available on the changes in family life that Canadian children experience, including detailed information on their living arrangements and patterns of contact with their parents.
MAIN FINDINGS
Children are born into diverse family contexts and in increasing proportions to unmarried parents
Thirty years ago, most children were born to first-time married parents who had not lived together nor lived with another partner before marriage. Today, a similar proportion of children are born into two-parent families but, increasingly, their parents are not married. This trend is particularly strong in Quebec, where only 23 percent of the 1993-1994 birth cohorts in the survey were born to parents who married directly.
An increasing proportion of children experience life in a single parent family and they do so earlier in life
One in four children born in the early 1960s had experienced life in a single parent family by the age of 20. One in four children born 10 years later had experienced their parents' separation by the age of 15. According to the NLSCY, almost one in four children born in 1987-1988 had experienced their parent's separation by the age of 6.
Children born to common-law couples face a greater risk of experiencing their parents' separation
The risk of separation is greatest among common-law couples. By the time children born to common-law couples between 1983-1984 reached the age of ten, 63 percent had already experienced the separation of their parents, compared to only 14 percent of children born to parents who married without first living together. This trend is not as strong in Quebec. Nonetheless, common-law unions remain less stable than unions where the partners married directly.
After their parents' separation, the vast majority of children live with their mother
Court orders place 80 percent of children under the age of 12 in their mother's care. Seven percent of children are placed in their father's custody and 13 percent of children are covered by what their parents described as a court order for joint physical custody. Interestingly, most children (69 percent) for whom parents had obtained a shared physical custody order actually lived with their mother only. A very small number of children lived under arrangements where care was shared equally: less than 2 percent of children for whom custody orders were obtained and less than 4 percent in other cases.
After separation, most children see their father less than once a week
After separation, very few children (7 percent) lived with their father only and another small fraction shared residences, although mostly unevenly, with both parents (7 percent). The rest lived with their mother and visited their father with varying frequency: less than one third (30 percent) visited every week, and another 16 percent visited every two weeks. One quarter of children visited their father irregularly and 15 percent never saw him.
The frequency of contact with the father is associated with the type of child support agreement reached, the existence of a court order for custody and the regularity of support payments
One of the striking findings of the survey was that, for most children from broken families, parents said there was no court order for support. For 32 percent of children, parents said there was no agreement at all; for another 32 percent, parents described the arrangements for child support as a private agreement and, for the remaining 36 percent, parents said there was a court order for child support.
When the arrangements for child support were described as a private agreement between the two spouses, 18 percent of children were residing with their father at least part of the time, 44 percent saw their father weekly and only 4 percent never visited with him. When parents said there was a court order for child support, only 5 percent lived with their father full or part-time, 22 percent saw him weekly, and 17 percent never saw him. When there was no child support agreement the numbers were in between: 18 percent lived with their father full or part-time, 25 percent visited weekly, and 24 percent never visited.
Where there was a private agreement for child support, children received more regular support payments than when there was a court order (66 percent vs. 43 percent). Fathers who tended not to pay child support also saw their children less frequently. Of the fathers who had not made a child support payment in the last six months, only 15 percent saw their children weekly and 28 percent never saw their children. Conversely, fathers who supported their children financially tended to see their children regularly: almost half (48 percent) of regular payers saw their children every week and only 7 percent never saw them.
CONCLUSION
The NLSCY provides invaluable data on the family histories of children in Canada. Further cycles will allow us to assess the impact of the many challenges that face Canadian children as more and more experience the separation of their parents, and at increasingly young ages.
The first cycle results show that the type of union parents enter into raise their family has far-reaching consequences on the lives of their children. Common-law unions are more likely than marriages to end in separation. Children of these common-law unions are more likely than children from broken marriages to live exclusively with their mother; they are more likely to see their father irregularly or not at all; and they are less likely to benefit from regular child support payments. Children whose parents divorce rather than separate are more likely to be covered by a court-ordered child support agreement, but children covered by a private agreement are more likely to receive regular support payments than those covered by a court-ordered agreement.
Further analysis is required to look at such variables as the impact of separation on the level and sources of income for custodial parent households, or the impact of new unions by either parent on existing agreements regarding children from previous unions. It is these questions that we will turn to in our future research.

II - THE COMPLEX FAMILY LIVES OF CANADIAN CHILDREN
Before turning to the specific questions about custody, living arrangements and child support, it is important to look at the extent to which the family circumstances of children have changed over the years. For example, it is important to know whether the proportion of children who are not born to first-time married parents is changing, and whether the risk of parental separation is linked to the type of union into which the children are born. To provide this context, we will summarize the main findings of work previously carried out by one of the authors. [2]
Increasing Numbers of Children are Being Born to Unmarried Parents
Thirty years ago, most children were born to first-time married parents, parents who had never cohabited nor previously lived with another partner. Today, almost as many children are born into two-parent families but, increasingly, their parents are not married. We will first examine the changes in Canada as a whole before turning to the situation in Ontario and Quebec, provinces where the changes have been the smallest and largest, respectively.
Figure 1: Family Context at Birth for Various Cohorts of Children--Canada

[ Description ]
Sources: 1961-1963 Cohorts = Family History Survey 1984; 1971-1973 Cohorts = General Social Survey 1990; 1983-1984 and 1993-1994 Cohorts = NLSCY 1994-1995.
Figure 1, which presents the family context at birth for various cohorts of Canadian children, shows that nearly all children born in the early 1960s were born to parents who married without living together before (over 90 percent).[3] A small percentage (about 5 percent) of children were born to single mothers, that is, unmarried mothers who were not living with a partner. Strikingly, this percentage has not changed much over time. However, this fact has been masked by birth statistics that classified all births to unwed mothers as "illegitimate" until 1974. Since then, the more politically correct term "out-of-wedlock" has been used to refer to these births. The impression remains, however, that the births were occurring to single mothers who were not living with the fathers of their children. The situation has since changed radically. In the NLSCY 1993-1994 cohorts, children born to parents who married directly represented less than 40 percent of all births. The biggest changes were in the proportion of children born to married parents who first lived together (nearly 33 percent), and the proportion of children born to cohabiting parents (20 percent). These changes, however, did not occur uniformly across the country.
In Ontario, the proportion of births to common-law parents never reached the levels observed elsewhere in Canada: only 12 percent of the children in the youngest birth cohorts (1993-1994) of the NLSCY were children of common-law parents (Figure 2). Births to parents who had lived together before marrying rose to about 30 percent in those cohorts. Nevertheless, the main pattern in this province remained one in which children were born to married parents who had never lived together before getting married (almost 50 percent).
Figure 2: Family Context at Birth for Various Cohorts of Children--Ontario and Quebec

[ Description ]
Sources: 1961-1963 Cohorts = Family History Survey 1984; 1971-1973 Cohorts = General Social Survey 1990; 1983-1984 and 1993-1994 Cohorts = NLSCY 1994-1995.
In contrast, the percentage of births to parents who married directly in Quebec was only 23 percent in the 1993-1994 cohorts. Barely half of all births were to married parents, including those who cohabited before, while 43 percent were to common-law couples. The proportion of out-of-wedlock births reached 50 percent if one takes into consideration children born to lone mothers, as do Statistics Canada and the Bureau de la statistique du Québec.

An Increasing Proportion of Children are Experiencing Life in Single Parent Families and at an Increasingly Young Age
Figure 3 presents the proportion of Canadian children who experienced life in a single parent family among various birth cohorts. More specifically, it shows the cumulative percentage of children who were born to a lone parent or who had experienced their parents' separation before their last birthday.
Figure 3: Cumulative Percentage of Canadian Children Who Were Born to a Lone Parent or Have Experienced the Separation of Their Parents, for Various Birth Cohorts

[ Description ]
Sources: 1961-1963 Cohorts = Family History Survey 1984; 1971-1973 Cohorts = General Social Survey 1990; 1983-1984 and 1987-1988 Cohorts = NLSCY 1994-1995.
Figure 3 illustrates that an increasing proportion of children are living in single parent families and at an increasingly young age. Let us first examine the family situations of children who were born 30 years ago (1961-1963 cohorts). In these cohorts, almost 25 percent of the children were either born to a single mother or had seen their parents separate before they reached the age of 20. Half of the parents of this group had separated after the child reached the age of 10, which means the separation occurred after the 1968 amendments to the Divorce Act which made it easier for couples to divorce.
Children who were born 10 years later (1971-1973 cohorts) experienced their parents' separation at an even younger age. By age fifteen, 25 percent of these children had already experienced life in a single parent family. Three times out of four, the child had experienced this before the age of ten.
Children from the NLSCY who were born after 1983 experienced their parents' separation even earlier. By age 10, one child out of four born in 1983-1984 had experienced life in a single parent family and nearly 23 percent of children in the younger cohorts (those born in 1987-1988) experienced the same by the age of 6.
There is little reason to suggest that these trends will slow down in the near future, since the rising proportion of children born in common-law unions face a higher risk of experiencing their parents' separation, as we shall now see.