DadTalk

Nuclear family is broken

the traditional family model is no longer the norm

The traditional nuclear family has irretrievably broken down and it will soon become normal for children to be raised by relations other than their parents, the head of a Government-funded parenting group has predicted.

Aunts, uncles, grandparents and even siblings will take on increasing childcare responsibilities in a form of “communal parenting” to cope with the effects of marital breakdown and growing pressures in the workplace, according to the Family and Parenting Institute.

Rising divorce rates, fewer marriages and the growth of civil partnerships mean that the traditional family model is no longer “the norm” and Government efforts to rescue it are futile, according to Dr Katherine Rake, the organisation’s new chief executive.

With mothers beginning to play a less dominant role in children’s lives because of greater work commitments, fathers will experience a change comparable in scale to that seen by women since the 1950s, she predicts.

An estimated two million families in Britain already rely the older generation for help with childcare while about 200,000 grandparents are now sole carers. But the trend is set to rise with the “whole family” set to take on greater responsibility for children, Dr Rake said.

Her remarks on the decline of the nuclear family are likely to attract criticism in some quarters from those who say that there is no substitute for children being brought up by a mother and a father.

But rather than fragment, families will evolve to cope with the changes, according to Dr Rake. She predicted that there will be no such thing as a “typical family” in the next 10 to 20 years. “People are constantly redefining what it means to be a family,” she said.

Read more on this story at the Telegraph