ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the situation at age 26 of the 1970 cohort in the areas of relationships and living arrangements. The transformations which took place in the domains of education, training and the labour market during the years in which the 1970 birth cohort progressed to adulthood, were matched by equally dramatic changes in the world of personal relationships and family life. The authors survey findings showed that one in three of the 26-year-old women, and less than a quarter of the men, were married and living with their spouse. The steady rise in the age of mothers at first birth over year’s means that, at the time of the 1996 survey, the 1970 cohort were, at 26, below the average age. The 26-year-olds who were living on their own at the time of the 1996 survey -especially the young women - were rather more likely than the cohort as a whole to have come from advantaged home backgrounds.
