Births registered outside marriage or civil partnerships in England and Wales have outnumbered those registered within them for the first time. The percentage of births registered to cohabiting parents has also increased compared with a decade earlier, while mothers aged 30 years or over were almost twice as likely to be in a marriage or civil partnership compared with those in their 20s or younger.
The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), for 2021, show 624,828 live births in the two nations. Of these, 320,713 (51.3%) were registered to women not wed or in a civil partnership.
The average age of mothers giving birth rose to 30.9 years in 2021, up from 30.7 the previous year, the ONS said. The average age of fathers stayed at 33.7 years.
