"We get on each other's nerves": unemployment and the family.

Less than 5% of Britons live in the storybook family with two dependent children, a father who is working, and a wife who stays at home,12 but most of us continue to live with other people, and the unemployment of one family member can affect all the others and the functioning of the whole. Hypotheses and anecdotes abound on how unemployment may damage, or rarely enhance, family life, but good research and hard evidence are less common. The whole subject of unemployment and health is under-researched, but the particular topic of the effect of unemployment on family life and health may be the most poorly researched of all?despite unemploy? ment and family life both being at the centre of the political stage. Or, maybe it is because they are so politicised that we know so little about them. But we do know something, and it is also important to define what we do not know.