Family poverty - One-parent homes need more support

Readers do not need to plough through very much of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina to find one of the writer’s most profound observations on the human condition. It opens the novel: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Yet while the causes and symptoms of misery in marriages and partnerships will vary — from infidelity, unemployment, and poverty to unrealistic expectations and ill-health — the consequences for family members left standing after a family breakdown and going through periods of separation are alarmingly similar, and those most at risk are young children.