Professor Sara McLanahan, who pioneered the US Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, explained: “I had been taught as a sociologist that there were no negative consequences of divorce or single parenthood”.

But after looking closely at ‘all the data she could find’, she discovered “over and over again” that there were negative consequences.

This was “not at all what my original intention was”, she added.

Prof McLanahan’s research, first published in 2010, states: “Children born to unmarried parents do not fare as well as children born to married parents.”

(Coalition for marriage)