Disruptive broken homes children

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Disruptive broken homes children

October 15 2010

Children from broken homes are more likely to develop behavioural problems a study has revealed recently.

Researchers who tracked nearly 13,500 children from birth to age seven found living with a single parent or step-parents doubled a youngster’s risk of developing emotional problems, poor behaviour and hyperactivity.

Separately the study found almost a third of seven-year-olds are living without either their mother or father.

One in seven (15 percent) who lived with step-parents and one in eight (12 percent) from a single-parent family displayed serious behaviour problems, the Government-funded report found.

Their emotional health and well-being was likely to be “under considerable pressure”, according to the Millennium Cohort Study, which is tracking children born in 2000. By contrast, just one in 17 (six percent) living with both natural parents showed the same behavioural difficulties.

It means nearly one in three is living without either their mother or father. Some 22 percent live in lone-mother families and six percent with a natural mother and stepfather. Just 55 percent of youngsters live with married natural parents, the study found.

Living apart from natural fathers can be associated with poverty and negative outcomes for children.

Ethnic background was found to be strongly linked to the type of family a child is brought up in. About nine in ten Indian and Bangladeshi seven-year-olds were living with both natural parents. By contrast, black Caribbean children were the most likely to be living in a lone-parent family - 50 percent.