Although marriage appears to be as popular as ever, one in every four British marriages ends in divorce; the number of one-parent families is close to a million; and a third of a million women are living with a man to whom they are not married. Is the family as we've known it, redundant?
Bernard Shaw condemned it for its 'unnatural packing into little brick boxes of little parcels of humanity of ill-assorted ages.'
Frank Delaney visits a family of eight, a family of four, a single mother and her son, and a married couple who have chosen to remain childless, and talks to them about the relevance of family life in the 80s. Research Pam Helton. Producer Jane Marshall.
BBC Birmingham.
(Repeated: Tues 8.20 pm)