The figure we came up with in here is drawn not just from the U.K. but pretty much from around the world. Almost every figure we show is that it appears there is a fundamental difference between cohabitation, particularly when children are involved, and marriage.
We have high divorce rates in the U.K. They are much higher than the rest of Europe. We in the U.K. also have the highest level of lone parenting and the highest level of teenage pregnancy. What was interesting about this was when we looked at what the main driver of this was, most people started to focus in on the early bit about teenage pregnancy. Actually, we found that while that is a growth area, a significant growth area, it isn't the main cause of lone parenting. The fastest growing cause of lone parenting is the breakup of cohabiting relationships. The ratio of breakup, if I remember off the top of my head, is that just under one in two families that are cohabiting and have a child will break up by the time the child is five. It's about half, or just below that. Almost all the figures demonstrated that. Compare that to a high level of divorce. What happens is that it's about one in twelve for a married couple who will break up before the child is five.
There are other breakup figures along the way, but I'm settling on the child at five because they cover the nought-to-three area, and it was interesting to us. We simply asked the question about what was going on.
I don't have all the details of how that is, but what we did seem to get to was that the arrival of a child to a cohabiting relationship seems to accelerate that breakup. The arrival of a child to a married relationship slows down the breakup levels. They actually go in two different ways. I don't make any lectures on this; I just make it as an observation of fact and that's what we found. I would be very surprised if the figures aren't similar here in Canada, but I don't know what the figures are.