New Family Survey

A new survey on family life has been published by the BBC today, you can find the story at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7074760.stm
with links to the full research, plus one or two comment articles.

I've not digested it fully, but there's some interesting stuff:
- around 1 in 6 families has a family member they never speak to. Yorkshire people seem to be the most forgiving (1 in 10), folks in Wales and the N.W are the worst.

- the average distance from adults to their parents is over 80 miles. This has a big effect on weekend activity, as a trip to see mum and dad is, with this kind of distance, more likely to take a weekend than just to be a trip down the road, which has a knock on effect to church attendance, and how Sunday works for people as a regular day of worship. There's a micro-trend of children going to their grandparents churches when they go to say, even though they are many miles away from where the children live.

- overall, attitudes to 'the family' are very positive - many people say they are happier with family than with friends, and see family life as very important.

- not mentioned in the BBC articles was that the research lumped together 'married' with 'partnered' (i.e. cohabiting) as a single category. It would have been interesting to see if there were any significant differences between married and unmarried couples. For example, given that cohabiting relationships have a much higher rate of breakup than marriages, the question about how often people argue might have been illuminating.

- with nearly 30% of families arguing once a month or more, could the church help people to learn how to argue well, and with relationship skills generally?

- we're still very relational: 38% of people who no longer live under the same roof as their children speak to them every day.

- half of families share a main meal together every day, 30% do so once a week or less.

- a strong majority put increased marriage breakdown down to the ease of divorce (61%) rather than marriages being less succesful (21%)

and now for my family tea.......