One strong source cites 60%: in 2003, the President of the High Court Family Division, Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, gave this chilling statistic in a speech: "60% of fathers now have no meaningful relationship with their children post separation." Complete text of speech.
Other sources state between 15% - 40% Many children will lose all meaningful contact with the non-resident parent - estimates range from 15% up to 40% within two years .
The strongest sources are the 40% and 60%. Taking the mean between these as 50%, and applying it to the divorce rate gives 25% of Scottish children having no meaningful relationship with one or other parent.
Although this figure may seem a little contrived, there is so little government funded research in this area, that we are forced to make the best of what data is available.
(The absence of such research is itself an indication that governments fear what such research would reveal about the consequences of their policies).
Blackwell, A. and Dawes, F., Non-Resident Parental Contact, based on data from the National Statistics Omnibus Survey for the Department for Constitutional Affairs, October 2003
