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Marriage in the UK - Facts and Figures

Marriage in the UK - Facts and Figures

6^th August 2026

This page is the statistical record: how many people marry, who is married now, at what age, in what kind of ceremony, and how cohabitation and divorce have moved, for every part of the United Kingdom. It now includes the divorce figures the Office for National Statistics published on 23 September 2026. What marriage does for children, health and household finances is a different question, answered at https://www.c4m.org.uk/marriage-support/why-marriage-matters, which opens with the headline figures in a numbered list.

In brief: In 2023, England and Wales registered 216,901 marriages between a man and a woman, 46 per cent fewer than fifty years earlier. With same-sex weddings, the total was 224,402. The marriage rate for women aged 20 to 24 has fallen 97 per cent since 1972, and for men of the same age the fall is 98.

Marriage between a man and a woman is now the arrangement of under half of adults - 49.8 per cent in 2025. Religious ceremonies, half of all weddings in 1992, are now 15 per cent of the total - around one wedding in seven. Cohabiting-couple families have grown to 3.5 million, and the median age at marriage is among the highest ever recorded.

But most marriages don't end in divorce. More than eight in ten couples who married in 2015 - 83.7 per cent - had not divorced by their tenth anniversary. Large majorities of the unmarried young say they want to marry. And the share of babies born inside marriage or civil partnership, having fallen every decade since the war to a low of 48.6 per cent in 2022, has risen three years running to 53.2 per cent in 2025.

Nobody can now say how many children see their parents divorce. The Government's count stops at 2014, and since 2017 its own divorce application hasn't even recorded them.

Here are the official statistics for every part of the United Kingdom, each with its source. They are the story of the institution the Coalition for Marriage exists to champion - marriage, the voluntary, exclusive, lifelong union of one man and one woman, the gold standard for families and society.

How many marriages - and the scale of the fall
Who is married now
Older at the altar
The collapse of religious marriage
Divorce - lower than you think
What Britain has stopped counting
The rise of cohabitation
Marriage and the birth of children
The families children live in
Britain in the world
What the numbers mean
Related pages on c4m.org.uk
Key sources

HOW MANY MARRIAGES - AND THE SCALE OF THE FALL

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) bulletin Marriages and civil partnerships in England and Wales: 2023, released on 18 November 2025, records 231,949 marriages and civil partnerships formed in 2023 - an 8.6 per cent fall on 2022. Marriages between a man and a woman made up 216,901 of them, 93.5 per cent of all legal partnerships formed. The 7,547 civil partnerships - 6,179 opposite-sex and 1,368 same-sex - come off the total, leaving 224,402 marriages, 7,501 of them same-sex. The full bulletin is at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/marriagecohabitationandcivilpartnerships/bulletins/marriagesinenglandandwalesprovisional/2023. The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) went back fifty years in its report I Do?, published in February 2026 and built from the ONS's own series. The number of marriages in England and Wales has sunk from 400,000 in 1973 to 224,402 in 2023, same-sex weddings included. The report is at https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/CSJ-I_Do.pdf. Counting only marriages between a man and a woman, the fall is from 400,435 to 216,901 - 46 per cent - in Table 1a of the ONS marriages workbook, at https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/marriagecohabitationandcivilpartnerships/datasets/marriagesinenglandandwales2013/2023/marriagesworkbook2023.xlsx.

The rates tell the story more sharply than the raw counts. In 2023 there were 18.1 marriages per 1,000 unmarried men and 16.4 per 1,000 unmarried women - each down by around a tenth on 2022 alone, and back on the long downward trend that the pandemic years interrupted. The ONS bulletin gives the series. The long view is worse. Working from the ONS records back to 1862, the CSJ notes the men's marriage rate had never fallen below 47.7 - its First World War floor - and it now stands at 18.1. Among the young the collapse is steeper still. The marriage rate for women aged 20 to 24 has fallen 97 per cent since 1972, from 249.1 per 1,000 unmarried women to 7.1, and for men of the same age 98 per cent, from 168.5 to 4.1 - see https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/CSJ-I_Do.pdf.

Scotland registered 27,191 marriages in 2025, of which 26,083 were between a man and a woman and 1,108 were same-sex. It also registered 944 civil partnerships, the highest number since 2006, the first full year they were available, and 82 per cent of them were between a man and a woman. National Records of Scotland published the tables on 25 August 2026, at https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/publications/adoptions-births-deaths-marriages-and-civil-partnerships-in-scotland-2025-registrar-generals-annual-statistical-tables-of-vital-events/. Northern Ireland's marriages have fallen for two years running - 8,564 in 2022, then 7,494 in 2023 and 7,251 in 2024 - alongside 52 civil partnerships in 2024. The Registrar General's reports from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) are at https://library2.nics.gov.uk/pdf/dof/2023/PDF230105.pdf, https://www.nisra.gov.uk/news/annual-report-registrar-general-2023 and https://www.nisra.gov.uk/publications/registrar-general-annual-report-2024-marriages.

WHO IS MARRIED NOW

The 2021 Census found 46.9 per cent of adults aged 16 and over in England and Wales married or in a civil partnership - down from 58.4 per cent in 1991 - while the share who had never married or been in a civil partnership rose from 26.3 to 37.9 per cent. Among 25 to 29 year olds that share was 84.2 per cent. Among 30 to 34 year olds, 58.9 per cent. The ONS census analysis is at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/marriagecohabitationandcivilpartnerships/articles/marriageandcivilpartnershipstatusenglandandwalescensus2021/2023-02-22. And the retreat has continued since - on the ONS's 2025 marital status estimates, 51.1 per cent of adults aged 18 and over were married or in a civil partnership, down from 52.3 per cent in 2015. Take out civil partnerships (0.9 per cent) and same-sex marriages (0.4 per cent) and marriage between a man and a woman stands at 49.8 per cent - see https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/bulletins/populationestimatesbymaritalstatusandlivingarrangements/2025. In Northern Ireland, 45 per cent of the population was married or in a civil partnership at the 2021 Census, down from 50 per cent in 2001 - see https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cpini/irelandandnorthernireland-ajointcensuspublication2021-2022/maritalandcivilpartnershipstatusandhouseholds/.

Adults of the five largest religions are 24 per cent more likely to be married, and 21 per cent less likely to be divorced, than those with no religion - Civitas's analysis of the 2021 Census, at https://www.civitas.org.uk/2023/05/10/who-gets-married-and-who-doesnt-evidence-from-the-2021-census/.

Marriage varies sharply by class too, though Britain publishes no official series on it. The nearest measure comes from birth registrations. Among parents of babies born in England and Wales in 2022, 71 per cent of those in the highest-earning occupational group were married, against 35 per cent in the lowest-earning group and 20 per cent in the group the classification leaves unassigned. The gap between highest and lowest was 36 percentage points, against 19 points in 1988 - Marriage Foundation, The Marriage Gap, March 2025, at https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/MF-paper-Marriage-gap-March-2025.pdf.

Same-sex marriage is a small part of the total. In 2023 there were 7,501 same-sex marriages in England and Wales, 3.3 per cent of all marriages, of which 59.8 per cent were between two women and 40.2 per cent between two men - https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/marriagecohabitationandcivilpartnerships/bulletins/marriagesinenglandandwalesprovisional/2023. At the 2021 Census, 134,000 people in England and Wales were married to a same-sex spouse and 67,000 were in a same-sex civil partnership. Those are counts of people, not of couples - https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/householdcharacteristics/homeinternetandsocialmediausage/bulletins/householdandresidentcharacteristicsenglandandwales/census2021. In Northern Ireland, where same-sex marriage became legal on 13 January 2020, there were 158 in that first year, 396 in 2021, 266 in 2022, 318 in 2023 and 255 in 2024 - https://www.nisra.gov.uk/publications/registrar-general-annual-report-2024-marriages.

OLDER AT THE ALTAR

The ONS puts the 2023 medians among the highest ever recorded - 34.8 years for men and 33.0 for women marrying someone of the opposite sex, with more marriages in the 30 to 34 bracket than any other age group. The bulletin is at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/marriagecohabitationandcivilpartnerships/bulletins/marriagesinenglandandwalesprovisional/2023. The CSJ goes further, finding the median age lower in the 1970s than it had been for much of the twentieth century. At the turn of the century, the women's median had never exceeded 30, but it now stands at 33. The CSJ's report is at https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/CSJ-I_Do.pdf. Each generation has married later than the last. Among women born in 1973, half had married by 31. For women born a decade later, more than half had married by 35. The figures by year of birth are in Table 14b of the ONS marriages workbook, at https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/marriagecohabitationandcivilpartnerships/datasets/marriagesinenglandandwales2013/2023/marriagesworkbook2023.xlsx. Northern Ireland's averages - 35.7 for grooms and 33.9 for brides in 2022, against 28.9 and 27.0 three decades earlier - have risen roughly seven years in thirty, in the Registrar General's report at https://library2.nics.gov.uk/pdf/dof/2023/PDF230105.pdf.

Today's brides and grooms are among the oldest on record, and there are 46 per cent fewer of them than fifty years ago.

THE COLLAPSE OF RELIGIOUS MARRIAGE

In 1992, religious and civil ceremonies split the wedding year roughly in half. By 2023, 85 per cent of ceremonies were civil and 15 per cent religious - around one wedding in seven. The CSJ's I Do?, compiled from the ONS's 2023 marriage records, traces the fall - 215,711 religious ceremonies in 1973, halved to 107,020 by 1997, then halved again between 2014 (68,028) and 2023 (32,473). Church of England and Church in Wales weddings are down 84 per cent in fifty years, to the lowest number since records began in the 1830s - despite a population four times the size. The figures are at https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/CSJ-I_Do.pdf.

Scotland shows where the trend leads. In 2024, humanist ceremonies numbered at least 5,944 - more than one in five of all Scottish marriages, nearly five times the Church of Scotland's 1,252, with the Roman Catholic Church at 647. National Records of Scotland's tables are at https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/publications/vital-events-reference-tables-2024/.

Marriage was once understood as a covenant before God as well as a contract before the state. These tables show fewer couples making their vows before God, year by year, and that vow helped keep marriage a promise for life.

DIVORCE - LOWER THAN YOU THINK

There were 105,002 divorces in England and Wales in 2025, plus 959 civil partnership dissolutions - much the same as in 2023 and 2024, and well below the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, when there were around 150,000 divorces a year. The ONS divorce bulletin, released on 23 September 2026, is at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/divorce/bulletins/divorcesinenglandandwales/2024and2025. The divorce rate for opposite-sex couples was 8.4 per 1,000 opposite-sex married people in 2025, against a peak of 14.2 per 1,000 in 1993. The median opposite-sex marriage ending in divorce had lasted 13.0 years, the longest since the ONS series began in 1963. Of the 2025 divorces, 102,879 were of opposite-sex couples and 2,123 of same-sex couples, the latter comprising 1,454 female couples and 669 male couples - Table 1 of the ONS workbook, at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/divorce/datasets/divorcesanddissolutionsinenglandandwales. None of this is comfort. Fewer couples now marry at all, and when parents who never married split up, divorce statistics can't record it.

Here the popular wisdom fails. The claim that half of all marriages end in divorce is a myth - of the couples who married in 2015, just 16.3 per cent had divorced by their tenth anniversary. More than eight in ten, 83.7 per cent, had not. And the ONS's own comparison shows the couples who married in 1995 divorced more at the same point - nearly one in four (24.7 per cent) within ten years, and 38.1 per cent within twenty. Of all the years' weddings recorded since 1963, none has reached one in two. The highest, the couples of 1987, stood at 45.3 per cent after thirty-eight years, in Table 9b of the same workbook. The couples who marry now are fewer, but they hold.

The Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act 2020 - no-fault divorce - came into effect on 6 April 2022, bringing what the ONS described in its 2023 bulletin as "the removal of grounds for divorce and dissolution" together with new mandatory waiting periods, at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/divorce/bulletins/divorcesinenglandandwales/2023. The September 2026 bulletin shows that in 2025, 94.2 per cent of all divorces and civil partnership dissolutions were granted under the new law. Of the divorces granted under it, 74.3 per cent were applied for by one spouse alone. The Act's full text is at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2020/11/contents. Scotland's divorces have fallen too - 7,744 in 2022, down from 13,365 in 1985, in the Scottish Government's civil justice statistics at https://www.gov.scot/publications/civil-justice-statistics-scotland-2022-23/pages/5/. Northern Ireland retains fault grounds for divorce - and when its Department of Finance consulted on reform, from June to September 2025, some two thirds of online respondents saw no need to change the law and 80 per cent wanted fault grounds retained. The report, published in January 2026, is at https://www.finance-ni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2026-01/Consultation%20on%20Divorce%20and%20Dissolution%20of%20Civil%20Partnerships%20-%20Report%20and%20Analysis%20-FINAL.pdf.

WHAT BRITAIN HAS STOPPED COUNTING

A statistical record should say what it doesn't know, and this one has a hole in it that Government and Parliament put there deliberately.

England and Wales no longer count the children of divorce. Since Parliament passed the Children and Families Act 2014, divorcing couples haven't had to give details of their children. The Office for National Statistics stopped publishing statistics on those children from the 2015 data year, so the count ends with 2014. And since August 2017 the Ministry of Justice's divorce application hasn't recorded children at all. The discontinued series, which stops at 2014, is at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/divorce/datasets/divorcesinenglandandwaleschildrenofdivorcedcouples, and the ONS user guide that records each step is at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/divorce/methodologies/userguidetodivorcestatistics. So nobody in England and Wales can now say how many children see their parents divorce in a year. It is not that the answer is disputed. The question is no longer asked.

Other countries still ask it. New Zealand published that 5,715 children under seventeen had parents granted a divorce in the year to December 2025 - Statistics New Zealand, released 4 May 2026, at https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/marriages-civil-unions-and-divorces-year-ended-december-2025/.

Nor is there any national count of the children whose unmarried parents separate. Those separations aren't registered anywhere, because the parents never married. They appear only in survey research, years later and at second hand. The break-up of unmarried parents, not divorce, now accounts for the greater part of family breakdown in the United Kingdom - Marriage Foundation, Source of Family Breakdown, at https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/research/source-of-family-breakdown/. So the Government doesn't measure most family breakdown.

The Government once measured family stability itself, and then stopped. The Department for Work and Pensions' Family Stability Indicator, an annual Official Statistic of its Social Justice Outcomes Framework, found that in 2013-14, 82 per cent of babies under one but only 63 per cent of fifteen-year-olds were living with both their birth parents - 71 per cent of all children up to sixteen. That edition, published on 22 March 2016, was the last, at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a80875e40f0b62305b8bad8/social-justice-family-stability-indicator-2013-2014.pdf, and the Department's collection page lists no later one, at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/social-justice-outcomes-framework-family-stability-indicator. In October 2017 the Department added the note that its social justice indicators "are no longer being updated and have been replaced by indicators used in the Improving Lives: Helping Workless Families analysis and research pack" - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/social-justice-outcomes-framework-indicators. In plain words, the Government stopped counting how many children live with both their parents, and it hasn't counted them since. Even the Parental Conflict Indicator, which gave the proportion of children affected by parental conflict, was released for the final time on 12 March 2025 - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dwp-statistical-work-programme/changes-made-to-dwp-statistics-since-april-2025.

Children's mental health has gone the same way. England's 2017 national survey reported children's mental disorders by the marital status of their parent. The NHS Digital report is at https://files.digital.nhs.uk/85/7FFC57/MHCYP%202017%20Predictors.pdf, and what it found is set out at https://www.c4m.org.uk/marriage-support/why-marriage-matters. The published tables of the follow-up surveys, to 2023, don't break the figures down by family type or by parents' marital status at all. The comparison stopped just as the share of 8 to 16 year olds with a probable mental disorder rose from 12.5 per cent in 2017 to 20.3 per cent in 2023. NHS England's 2023 tables are at https://files.digital.nhs.uk/2D/D88231/mhcyp_2023_tab.xlsx.

Three more gaps are worth naming. There is no official United Kingdom series for marriage by income, education or social class. There is no current United Kingdom count of step-families outside the census. And the four nations publish same-sex marriage, civil partnership and conversion figures on different definitions and different start dates, so no harmonised United Kingdom series exists.

These gaps aren't neutral. The Government should stop airbrushing marriage out of the picture and start publishing the figures: how many children see their parents divorce, how many see their unmarried parents separate, and how many grow up with both their parents.

THE RISE OF COHABITATION

Cohabiting-couple families stood at 3.5 million across the UK in 2025 - 17.6 per cent of all families. The ONS's Families and households in the UK: 2025 is at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families/bulletins/familiesandhouseholds/2025. Cohabitation before marriage is now all but universal - the ONS recorded its highest level yet in 2022, with nine in ten opposite-sex couples living together before marrying, against 59.6 per cent in 1994, the earliest year measured - see https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/marriagecohabitationandcivilpartnerships/bulletins/marriagesinenglandandwalesprovisional/2021and2022. And among couples aged 25 to 29 living together in 2021, 72 per cent were unmarried - up from 56 per cent in 2011 - the clearest sign that cohabitation is functioning less as a prelude to marriage and more as its replacement. The CSJ's analysis is at https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/CSJ-I_Do.pdf. The stability consequences of that shift are set out at https://www.c4m.org.uk/marriage-support/why-marriage-matters.

Childbearing is falling generation by generation too. Women born in 1979 averaged 1.95 children, and the ONS projects 1.48 for women born in 2008 and 1.43 for a girl born in 2026 - the cohort fertility bulletin, published 10 June 2026, is at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/conceptionandfertilityrates/bulletins/childbearingforwomenbornindifferentyearsenglandandwales/2024. Fewer couples make the lifelong promise - and fewer children follow.

MARRIAGE AND THE BIRTH OF CHILDREN

Marriage used to come before children. The registration record shows how far the two have come apart, and it's the one series on this page that has turned.

In 2025, 585,396 live births were registered in England and Wales. Of those, 311,703 - 53.2 per cent - were inside marriage or civil partnership, and 273,693 were outside it. The Office for National Statistics released the final figures on 7 September 2026, and the registration workbook is at https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/datasets/birthsinenglandandwalesbirthregistrations/2025/2025birthregistrations.xlsx. The long series runs one way for sixty years and then turns. In 1960, 94.6 per cent of births in England and Wales were inside marriage. In 1970 it was 91.7 per cent, in 1980 88.2, in 1990 71.7, in 2000 60.5, in 2010 53.2, and in 2020 51.0. In 2021, for the first time in the record, most babies were born outside marriage, with 48.7 per cent born inside it. The low point was 2022, at 48.6 per cent. Then 50.5 per cent in 2023, 52.4 in 2024 and 53.2 in 2025. Three years of recovery don't undo sixty years of decline, but the direction has changed.

The registration form also records where the parents live. Of all 2025 births, 188,863 - 32.3 per cent - were registered jointly by parents at the same address, which is 69.0 per cent of the births outside marriage or civil partnership. A further 59,648 were registered jointly by parents at different addresses, and 25,182 were registered by the mother alone. That address test is a proxy for living together on the day of registration, not proof of a stable home, and it should never be read as one.

The order of events has reversed within a generation. The mean age of first-time mothers in England and Wales was 29.4 in 2024, and the standardised mean age of all mothers in 2025 was 31.1, with fathers at 34.0 - https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/bulletins/birthsummarytablesenglandandwales/2025finalrates. The median ages at opposite-sex marriage in 2023 were 34.8 for men and 33.0 for women - https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/marriagecohabitationandcivilpartnerships/bulletins/marriagesinenglandandwalesprovisional/2023. These are not the same measure and not the same year, so the gap is indicative rather than exact. But on the face of the official record, the average mother now has her first child some three and a half years before the average bride marries.

Scotland's series runs the same way. In 1960, 95.6 per cent of Scottish births were inside marriage. In 1971 it was 91.9 per cent, in 1980 88.9, and by 1990 72.9. National Records of Scotland holds the series at https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/publications/births-time-series-data/. In 2025, 49.0 per cent of Scottish births were to married parents. That was up three years running from 45.4 per cent in 2022, the lowest in a table that begins in 1974 - National Records of Scotland, Table 3.02, at https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/publications/adoptions-births-deaths-marriages-and-civil-partnerships-in-scotland-2025-registrar-generals-annual-statistical-tables-of-vital-events/. In Northern Ireland, 10,492 of the 19,416 births registered in 2024 were inside marriage or civil partnership - 54.0 per cent - and 8,924, 46.0 per cent, were outside it. The Registrar General's birth tables are at https://www.nisra.gov.uk/publications/registrar-general-annual-report-2024-births.

THE FAMILIES CHILDREN LIVE IN

There were 3.2 million lone-parent families in the United Kingdom in 2025, 16.0 per cent of all 19.9 million families, against 3.0 million and 16.2 per cent in 2015 - the ONS families bulletin of 17 April 2026, at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families/bulletins/familiesandhouseholds/2025. Married couples of a man and a woman made up 64.7 per cent of families, down from 66.5 per cent in 2015 - Table 9 of the ONS families workbook, at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families/datasets/familiesandhouseholdsfamiliesandhouseholds.

One caution about everything on this page that comes from the Labour Force Survey, which is the source of the family and household counts. The ONS is reweighting that survey back to 2012 against the 2021 Census, so the married, cohabiting and lone-parent family series for 2012 to 2025 may be revised - see https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families/methodologies/familiesandhouseholdsqmi.

The fullest count of recomposed families is the 2021 Census for England and Wales, published on 5 March 2024. It found exactly 780,885 step-families, of which 546,715 contained dependent children. Within them, 251,165 were identifiable blended families - households containing children from the current relationship and from a previous one. The ONS is careful to say that this is an undercount, because it can only trace every relationship in households of five people or fewer, and it expects the exclusion of larger households to matter. The bulletin is at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families/bulletins/childreninfamiliesinenglandandwales/census2021 and the tables behind it are at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families/datasets/stepfamiliesblendedfamiliesanddependentchildrencensus2021.

The same census counted the children. Of the dependent children in England and Wales, 7,059,590 lived with a married or civil-partnered couple, 2,041,000 with a cohabiting couple, and 3,298,255 with a lone parent.

Two further figures from British cohort research complete the picture of who lives with whom. By their fourteenth birthday, 46 per cent of first-born children in the United Kingdom are no longer living with both natural parents. Among those whose parents are still together, 84 per cent of those parents are married - Marriage Foundation analysis of the Millennium Cohort Study, at https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/research/source-of-family-breakdown/. Cohabiting parents were around 19 per cent of couples with children in the Understanding Society data for 2009 to 2012 - Marriage Foundation briefing note, December 2013, at https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/MF-briefing-note-proportion-of-family-breakdown-from-cohabitation-v2.pdf. What follows from these arrangements for the children in them is a separate question, answered at https://www.c4m.org.uk/marriage-support/why-marriage-matters.

BRITAIN IN THE WORLD

The retreat is Western. Across the European Union, the crude marriage rate has more than halved since 1964 - from 8.0 marriages per 1,000 people to 3.9 in 2024. Eurostat's figures are at https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Marriage_and_divorce_statistics. England and Wales' own half-century tells the same story - marriages down from 400,000 to 224,402 since 1973, same-sex weddings included. The CSJ's figures are at https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/CSJ-I_Do.pdf.

WHAT THE NUMBERS MEAN

The Coalition for Marriage reads these tables from a settled conviction. Marriage - the voluntary, exclusive, lifelong union of one man and one woman - is the gold standard for families and society, and its retreat is the most consequential social trend in modern British life.

The numbers on this page are not neutral. They record a generation marrying far less often, a decade later, with the religious understanding of the covenant collapsing fastest of all. The loss has landed on the poorest first - the evidence for that is at https://www.c4m.org.uk/marriage-support/why-marriage-matters. Government and Parliament removed the last requirement to give any reason for ending a marriage, in a law that came into force in 2022. That completed fifty years of law telling the country that the public, lifelong promise of a man and a woman is a private lifestyle choice, not one of the foundations it stands on.

The Government stopped counting the children of divorce after 2014, and since 2017 its own divorce application hasn't even recorded them. That was a decision not to know, and a judgement that those children's experience doesn't matter.

Yet the record holds three better facts. The marriages that do form are holding better than the 1995 cohort did at the same point - more than eight in ten of the 2015 cohort, 83.7 per cent, had not divorced at ten years. And the desire to marry runs far ahead of the practice. Among unmarried under-30s in a relationship, 86 per cent of women and 80 per cent of men said in 2021 that they would like to get married at some point - a OnePoll survey for the Marriage Foundation at https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/research/tiktok-generation-say-i-want-to-get-married/, reported in the CSJ's I Do? at https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/CSJ-I_Do.pdf. Three quarters of Gen Z adults want to get married (75 per cent), according to an Opinium survey of 2,000 Gen Z adults aged 18 to 27, at https://www.charlesrussellspeechlys.com/en/insights/expert-insights/private-client/2025/gen-z-and-milestone-planning/. Yet on present trends only 58 per cent of Gen Z women and 56 per cent of the men in England and Wales will ever marry - the Marriage Foundation's analysis of ONS data is at https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/research/the-collapse-of-marriage-among-gen-z/. And the share of babies born inside marriage or civil partnership has risen three years running, from its 2022 low of 48.6 per cent to 53.2 per cent in 2025. The wish to marry is still there, but Government and Parliament have made marriage easier to leave and stopped counting what its loss costs children. Rebuilding marriage - in law and in culture - is what the Coalition for Marriage exists to do.

Receive the Coalition for Marriage briefings at https://www.c4m.org.uk/subscribe, and support the campaign at https://www.c4m.org.uk/donate.

RELATED PAGES ON C4M.ORG.UK

https://www.c4m.org.uk/marriage-support/why-marriage-matters - the evidence for marriage, opening with the headline figures, with the objections answered

KEY SOURCES