Nearly half of all children see parents divorce by 16

Some 48 per cent will have experienced the break-up of their family by the time they reach the milestone – an increase from 40 per cent a decade ago.

Meanwhile extramarital births are at an all-time high and nine in ten couples lives together before getting married, compared with fewer than one in 30 before the Second World War.

The figures disclosed by the Centre for Social Justice think tank lays bare the speed at which traditional family life is crumbling in modern Britain.

Forty-six per cent of children are now born to unmarried mothers – a situation that was once regarded as a social taboo.

A child in a single-parent family is 75 per cent more likely to struggle at school, 70 per cent more likely to become addicted to drugs, 50 per cent more likely to develop a drinking problem and 35 per cent more likely to be unemployed in adulthood, the think tank said.

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