Home and family

When you hear the words "home and family", what do you picture in your mind?

If you think about your group of friends and classmates you'll know how many of them have parents who are separated or divorced. With one third of all marriages in the UK now ending in divorce, it's very common for young people to live with just one parent. Others stay with their separated parents at different times – say every other week, or on alternate weekends.

Yet many old fashioned ideas about traditional families still exist. Politicians, for example, often talk about "family values", but what does this actually mean? What is a family and what "values" does it have?

50 years ago it would have been much easier to answer that question because divorce was much less common and the traditional view was of women as full-time house keepers while men went out to work.

Another thing about families these days is that people are generally living longer. So more of us grow up knowing our grandparents and even great grandparents.

What are your views on the different sorts of family groups you know about? Do they work well? What do you think children need if their parents split up?