Nursery World - Under-fives have 'strikingly different' lives to a generation ago

Children today are more likely to have older parents who are in paid work, be in smaller families, and have more formal education than the previous generation, according to a report out today.

Fathers are doing more housework and childcare, though still less than mothers

A new review of family life in the UK, published by the Nuffield Foundation, found that the majority of children under five now grow up in a household where both parents work, reflecting increases in state-funded care such as the 30-hours funded entitlement.

It cites data showing that 66% of women whose youngest child is two-years-old were employed in 2018 compared with 49% in 1996.

Family structures are also changing. Nearly two thirds (61%) of children spent their childhood in families with married parents in 2019, compared to 71% in 1996, as public attitudes towards parenthood preceding marriage have ‘relaxed significantly’. In 2012 41% of people said people who want children ought to get married compared with 71% in 1989. Conversely, just 14% of people in 1989 thought same sex relations were ‘not wrong at all’, compared with 66% in 2018.

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