Talking point
As we launch Good Housekeeping’s new partnership with the charity Family Action, Joanna Moorhead reports on the financial and emotional challenges facing many families today
Family: it shapes us. It gives us our sense of who we are, and it’s the backdrop for the most lasting and important relationships of our lives. But what a family is, how it looks and feels, and the pressures on it – all this has changed exponentially in recent decades. Today’s families are very different to those of the past: smaller – women have fewer children, and they have them later – and more likely to have been affected by a relationship break-up. Half of all children in Britain come from parents who have separated, and a quarter of all families are headed by single parents – that’s a lot higher than in the EU, where the average figure is 13%. And more people today live alone in the UK – they make up 30% of all households.
So, the landscape has changed, and so too have the issues: social media and constant phone-scrolling (parents as well as kids) means there’s far less talking and a lot less in-person sharing. And yet families need to talk: these are the relationships through which we understand ourselves and the world. Mental health problems are on the rise, too, and they impact most keenly on families; and then there’s the cost-of-living crisis, which landed on the back of the pandemic and all the difficulties that brought to family life.
THE BIG SQUEEZE
The cost-of-living crisis has been affecting almost everyone – but it bites hardest in families. Research from the Child Poverty Action Group (2021/22 is its most recent data) shows 4.2m UK children are living in poverty – that’s nine children in each class of 30 whose families are unable to meet needs they could reasonably be expected to have with regard to diet, living conditions and activities.
And, whereas in the past poverty was often linked with unemployment, that’s no longer the case: seven in 10 children growing up in poverty live in households where at least one person has a job. Some families are at particular risk: 48% of children from Black and minority ethnic groups are now growing up in poverty, compared with 25% of children in white British families; and 44% of children living in lone-parent families.
‘Poverty and deprivation are nothing new,’ says Helen Cantrell, director of services and innovation at the charity Family Action, which was originally set up in 1869 to support and strengthen families. ‘But right now we’re going through a spike when families are particularly challenged. It’s partly a result of Covid; some areas of the country never recovered properly, and over the last four years we’ve seen a surge in food and fuel poverty.’ That’s reflected, she says, in a huge increase in calls to the charity��
