Publication type
Report
Author
Publication date
March 12, 2025
Summary:
Evidence shows that poor relationships between parents can damage children’s short-term and long-term wellbeing. Frequent, intense, and poorly resolved parental conflict can adversely affect their mental health, overall wellbeing, and future employment.
In 2017, 'Improving Lives: Helping Workless Families' presented evidence demonstrating links between parental conflict and worklessness. This document also set out how the government, at that time, planned to address the root causes of worklessness, and how they planned to monitor and track progress using a set of national indicators.
This publication sets out the methodology underlying one of these indicators, the parental conflict indicator, and reports its latest results.
The parental conflict indicator comprises two measures:
1) the proportion of children in couple-parent families living with parents who report relationship distress; and
2) the proportion of children in separated families who see their non-resident parent regularly.
Within couple-parent families, we measure the proportion of children in families where at least one of the adults is experiencing relationship distress, as evidence suggests this adversely affects child outcomes.
Where parents are separated, analysis of the available data on frequency of contact shows that regular contact between the child and their non-resident parent is a good indication of a better relationship between the parents.
The measure of the proportion of children in separated families who see their non-resident parent regularly is therefore used as a proxy for the existence of reasonable relations between parents.
Both measures are calculated from survey data which cover the United Kingdom.
Subjects
Link
#588553