Britain will soon be the lone-parent capital of the Western world. This is partly because the absolute number of children living in one parent families is so large and partly because the birth rate among intact couples has fallen. As a result of these twin developments, the percentage of children who are living in a one parent household is now much higher in Britain than elsewhere in Western Europe and we are about to overtake the United States. Many of the children currently living in such households will eventually end up in step-families, or as they are described in Newspeak, “blended” or “reconstituted” families.
