This chapter introduces the respondents and outlines key elements of their living situation. The chapter will concentrate mainly on the objective or structural conditions, detailing people's situations with regard to family composition and make-up, economic status, income, housing and health. The chapter also aims to convey a sense of the nature and trajectory of people's lives in order to reveal the roots of their current circumstances. Two types of evidence are presented for this purpose: people's own explanations of how they came to be in their current situation and real-life profiles of circumstances, organised in the form of vignettes. The latter, chosen to represent different situations and intended to give a sense of personal circumstance and trajectory, are presented at different points of the text so as to give greater depth and meaning to the more quantitative information. Key details that might identify people have been omitted from this chapter as elsewhere.

Personal and family characteristics

There were 21 lone-parent families in the sample and 30 couple families. This type of characterisation does not take one very far, however, for to describe any family simply in terms of family structure is to underplay the diversity of what goes to make up the family’s situation. These are families with diverse experiences of family life. Of the 30 couples, 26 were married and four were living together unmarried. The couple families involved some ‘reconstituted families’ where the male partner is not the father of all of the children. This was the case in four families. The lone-parent families, too, were a diverse grouping, with mothers who had never married or lived with a partner (two) and others who became lone parents either through the breakup of a relationship, divorce or separation (18) or widowhood (one). Only one lone father was represented among the study population, reflecting the general societal pattern whereby children being reared by one parent are mainly to be found in lone-mother families.

As mentioned, women were heavily represented among respondents, with some 46 female respondents as against five male respondents. Respondents were spread across the age range, with most aged between 25 and 44 years (Table 1.1). The sample also contained some older parents, however, many of whom were grandparents, so this allows insight into cross-generational relationships.