‘Unjust’ policies on marriage hit poorer couples
IT IS nearly 10 years to the day since my colleague and I launched the Marriage Foundation, an organisation that is unashamedly pro-marriage, that understands the benefits of tying the knot and wants our political masters to support it with targeted measures.
Over this time, we have shown how marriage remains the best way to find “reliable love”.
We have busted the divorce boom myth and confirmed that the poorest married couples with children are more stable and likely to stick together than the richest unmarried couples with children.
Indeed, as our latest report shows, cohabiting parents were nearly three and a half times more likely to split up in any given year compared to married parents (6.5 per cent versus 1.9 per cent) and that this stability gap is present regardless of income.
Even when we controlled for a whole range of other factors, the mother’s age, education, ethnicity, household, relationship happiness and so forth, the odds of cohabiting parents splitting up were still twice as high as those of married parents.
And the evidence can be measured not just in cold statistics, but in the lives of millions of young people. A decade ago, around nine in 10 intact couples with children aged 13 to 15 were married.
This figure has remained virtually unchanged.
Some people claim that having both parents together doesn’t matter. But the reality is that children from broken homes – on average – have poorer educational and health outcomes, and are more likely to be involved with the criminal justice system.
The price tag for picking up the pieces was estimated to be an eyewatering £51billion per annum in 2019, more than the UK government spent on schools or defence.
It is true that marriage rates have been falling across the developed world since the 1970s.
During this time divorce rates rose sharply, but have now fallen back to pre-1970s levels.
Marriage is never a guarantee of success as we all know. But it stacks the odds massively in your
favour. It does it because the act of marriage necessarily involves a decision, a clear plan and public affirmation of you as a couple.
Of course you can do that without marrying, and a minority of unmarried couples do perfectly well. But the majority of marriages last a lifetime because the psychology of marriage goes with the grain of how commitment works.
But here’s the thing. Young people love marriage, aspire to marry and recognise it as the gold standard of relationships. When we surveyed more than 2,000 adults under 30 and asked if they wanted to marry, 87 per cent said yes.
But there’s a massive gap between aspiration and achievement, especially among lower income couples.whereas a third of those classed as semi-skilled workers and fewer than four in 10 casual labourers actually get married, more than three quarters of those in higher managerial jobs – such as doctors, lawyers, headteachers and Members of Parliament – do so.
So, the truth is that marriage rates have decreased, but mainly among those on the lowest incomes.
The rich and powerful who know the benefits of marrying are still doing it – almost universally.
Yet sadly, many of the Cabinet and MPS seem highly reluctant to favour marriage in their public policy, even though they enjoy the benefits in their own private lives.
Government will claim it supports
marriage in the tax system, but it does it with a meaningless and poorly targeted £250 tax allowance for some couples.
Contrast that with the “couple penalty”, the utterly perverse system where low-income couples can lose thousands if they live together.
No wonder they think twice about getting married.
The act of marriage necessarily involves a decision, a clear plan and public affirmation of you as a couple
THIS has got to change. If the Government is serious about levelling-up and helping families, it should start talking unashamedly about marriage and bringing in polices that will support and encourage couples setting out on a life together who want to cement their commitment by getting married.
So, a decade on and our work continues.
We are waving the flag for an institution that has endured for centuries, highlighting why marriage remains the best way to find reliable love, for raising children, and making the case for unashamedly pro-marriage policies.
Ministers think marriage is important in their own private lives yet their public policies actively hammer low income couples who dare to enrich their own lives in the same way.
We will keep on challenging this deep social injustice.