SCOTLAND is in the midst of a "baby boom" with the number of births reaching a ten-year high – and almost half the babies were born out of wedlock, according to figures released yesterday.
More than 57,000 births were registered last year, 2,000 up on the previous year and the highest annual total since 1997. It was the fifth consecutive rise.
Provisional statistics from Duncan Macniven, the Register General for Scotland, show 49.1
per cent of last year's births were to unmarried parents.
The number of couples walking up the aisle is nearing its lowest level since Victorian times. Last year saw 29,866 marriages, 32 fewer than the previous year.
Last night counselling and family mediation experts said the figures reflected social trends but said children were not necessarily disadvantaged if their parents were unwed.
Sue Maxwell, principal for sexual and relationship therapy at Relate Scotland, said: "While these figures are interesting, they don't give us a real flavour of the different constellations of family life which exist.
"Society has changed drastically. There is now less need to make a public statement – partly caused by people having 'dislocated' from their families and living further away.
"But people are aware that when you become a couple you don't necessarily choose to demonstrate it by making a big statement. Everyone knows you are in a relationship.
"But getting married or having a civil partnership is going on to the next stage and you make a bigger commitment, engaging with a wider audience." Ms Maxwell said some couples were put off marrying because of unsuccessful past relationships, seeing the break-up of their parents' marriage, or fearing loss of freedom or equality.
Gay Cox, of Family Mediation Scotland, said she was not surprised by the figures. "From our point of view, children in a happy family where the parents are not together will tend to do better than those in an unhappy but intact family.
"If married couples stay together just 'for the sake of the children', but the children are caught in the parental conflict and witnessing the warfare between the adults, it can lead to problems educationally and socially, and to low self-esteem.
"We also have to remember that there is no way of monitoring how relationships between unmarried couples end up. We can make the assumption that relationship breakdown between unmarried couples will be at least equal to married couples but we don't know. What we can say is that as many people are getting together and having babies as ever."
Peter Kearney, director of the Scottish Catholic Media Office, said: "For the last ten years this government has penalised married couples by moves such as cutting the married couples' allowance and altering the tax and benefits system, which is appalling and short-sighted."
Soaring costs force wedding cancellationsTHE rising cost of weddings explains why more than 100,000 engaged couples in Britain will probably never walk down the aisle, a report released today reveals.
Brides-to-be are demanding the perfect wedding and insisting on extravagant luxuries for the ceremony, causing costs to rocket.
Couples are now twice as likely to postpone their marriage than their parents' generation – with money problems being the main cause of delay.
The report, from the bank ING Direct, shows these financial concerns are well-founded. Twenty years ago couples paid on average £4,300 for their wedding, yet today this stands at £18,500 – a rise of more than five times the rate of inflation.
Costs are so high that one in six engaged couples do not think they will ever marry.
A quarter of couples now opt for luxuries such as fireworks, string quartets or ice sculptures. Other indulgences that have emerged in the last 20 years include flying the family abroad to marry in an exotic location or hiring a castle.
The full article contains 652 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
