Birth and Family Size

Since the family as envisaged by the law includes that with dependent children, it is important to consider the data relating to birth and family completion. The crude number of births in any given year will be reflective of the size of the total population (and of the population of fertile women), so it is more meaningful to look at the data on the average number of children in a completed family, or born to women at particular ages, in order to gauge the extent of any changes in family behaviour and attitudes regarding having children. The data show that family size in Britain has declined sig- nificantly since the late nineteenth century. Indeed, the Royal Commission on Population, reporting in 1949, noted that the ‘fall in the size of the family over the last seventy years … is the salient fact in the modern history of population in Great Britain’.31 In the mid-Victorian era, women in England and Wales completed their families after around five live births. By the turn of the century, they averaged 3.37 children, and the figure continued to decline to 2.19 in the 1920s.32

The total fertility rate (the average number of children a woman would have assuming that current age-specific birth rates remain constant throughout her childbearing years) in England and Wales has fluctuated since 1938 (the earliest year for which national data are recorded). The highest rate was in the 1950s–1960s, but by 2015 the rate was almost identical to that when records began, at 1.82.33 The mean age of mothers at the birth of their first child has risen from 23.8 in 1972 to 28.6 in 2015, and teenage pregnancy has declined sharply: the conception rate for women under 18 has more than halved since data were first collected in 1969, down from 47.1 to 21.0 conceptions per 1,000 women aged 15–17.34 Lastly, the average completed family size declined from 2.24 children to women born in 1943, to 1.91

A Demographic Picture 43

35 The latest age cohort of women to have completed their childbearing (taken as reaching age 45).

36 ONS, Childbearing for women born in different years, England and Wales 2015 (2016) at www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/conceptionand fertilityrates/bulletins/childbearingforwomenbornindifferentyearsenglandandwales/2015#teenage- childbearing-is-in-decline, Table 1. The peak in the 20th century was 2.42 to women born in 1935:

ibid, Figure 1.

37 There will also be a number of children ostensibly born within marriage but actually having a father other than the mother’s husband. However, chromosomal analysis suggests the proportion may be as low as 4%: M Jobling, ‘Founders, Drift and Infidelity: The Relationship between Y Chromosome Diversity and Patrilineal Surnames’ (2009) 26 Molecular Biology and Evolution 1093.

38 K Kiernan, The Illegitimacy Phenomenon of England and Wales in the 1950’s and 1960’s (1971) www.york.ac.uk/media/spsw/documents/research-and-publications/Kiernan_1971_Ille- gitimacyPhenomenonOfEnglandAndWales.pdf, 2. Kiernan warns that recorded data might be inaccurate and that the figures may be an underestimate.

39 About 5.4% between 1916–20, and a historically high 9.3% in 1945: ibid, Table 1. Ermisch and Murphy (n 19) note that less-educated women are more likely to give birth outside marriage.

40 Kiernan (n 38) 2; ONS, Birth Summary Tables, England and Wales 2015 (2016) at www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/bulletins/birthsummarytablesenglandandwales/2015, Table 1.

41 ONS, Birth Summary Tables (n 40).

for women who were born in 1970,35 and the proportion of families with three or more children declined from 36% to 27%. However, two children has remained the most common completed family size since the 1940s.36 In England and Wales, small families have therefore long been the norm;

possible reasons for this are explored in section III.

i. Births Outside Marriage

A more dramatic change in behaviour and attitude towards child bearing has been the increase in the proportion of births outside marriage.37 The ratio of illegitimate births as a proportion of total live births was 66 per 1,000 (6.6%) in 1842, the first year that the data were collected.38 As will be discussed in Chapter 5, this was around the time of the reform of the Poor Law, when ‘bastardy’ was regarded as a major social problem. The ratio declined in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and remained relatively stable, apart from peaks in the two World Wars,39 at around 45 per 1,000 (4.5%) until the 1960s.

However, from a post-war low of 4.7% in 1955, the ratio began to climb steadily thereafter, and indeed was regarded as having gone through an

‘amazing rise’ in the 1960s, nearly doubling to 8.5% in 1968.40 In fact, while the rate of increase was high, the actual proportion did not exceed 10% of all live births until 1978, but it continued to rise thereafter, exceed- ing 20% in 1986, 30% in 1991 and reaching 40% in 2001. In 2015, the proportion was 47.7%.41

42 The mother might also be in a relationship with a same-sex partner (as could male parents, of course) but these data are not available as yet in the birth statistics.

43 ONS, Births by Parents’ Characteristics England and Wales 2015 (2016) at www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/

bulletins/birthsbyparentscharacteristicsinenglandandwales/2015.

44 ibid, Figure 3.

45 As pointed out in ONS, Short Report: Cohabitation in the UK, 2012 (2012) 6. The average age of first marriage for women was 30.8 in England and Wales in 2014, compared with 28.6 for age at birth of their first child in 2015: see Tables 2.1 and 2.2.

The rate at which women have children outside marriage will be a func- tion of many different factors, including attitudes to sex outside marriage, the attractiveness of marriage, the stigma attached to ‘illegitimacy’ and the degree of economic autonomy that women enjoy. Given the rise in cohabitation outside marriage already noted, one also has to consider the extent to which the propensity to have children outside marriage is linked to being in a quasi-marital, cohabiting relationship with the father of the child.42 It can be inferred that where unmarried parents declare that they are living at the same address when they register their child’s birth, they are in a cohabiting relationship.43 In 1986, the first year for which such data are available, 10% of all registered births were to cohabiting parents. By 2015, reflecting the growth in cohabitation, the proportion was 32.1%.44 Whereas in ear- lier times a pregnancy would have been a prompt to get married, whether cohabiting or not, the average age at first marriage for women is now later than their average age at the birth of their first child.45

Table 2.2: Total fertility rate, birth rate, mean age of mother, births outside marriage, England and Wales

Year Number of live births

Proportion outside marriage %

Total fertility rate

Mean age of mothers

Mean age of mothers at

first birth

1938 621,204 4.2 1.84 29.0 25.9

1940 590,120 4.3 1.75 28.8 25.8

1955 667,811 4.7 2.22 27.8 24.8

1972 725,440 8.6 2.17 26.5 23.8

1985 656,417 19.2 1.78 27.3 25.1

1994 664,726 32.4 1.75 28.1 26.0

2000 604,441 39.5 1.65 28.5 26.5

2010 723,165 46.8 1.94 29.5 27.7

2015 697,852 47.7 1.82 30.3 28.6

Sources: ONS, Summary of key live birth statistics, 1938 to 2015 (2016) Table 1; ONS, Births by Parents’ Characteristics, England and Wales (2016) Table 4b.

A Demographic Picture 45

46 ONS, Families and households in the UK: 2016 (2016) 2.

47 ibid, 9; and I Macrory, Measuring National Well-being—Households and Families, 2012 (London, ONS, 2012) 3.

48 ONS, Families and households in the UK: 2016 (2016), Table 2.

49 ibid.

The Ostensible Purpose of the Decree

The Effect of the Decree after 1884