Love, not marriage, gives children a stable home

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/28/love-not-marriage-children-stable-home

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“Up to 1.8 million children endure family breakdown as trend away from marriage intensifies.” So began an intriguing press release from the Marriage Foundation, released yesterday. “Over the last 35 years,” the report continued, “nearly two million more children have been born into families that are breaking down as a result of the trend away from marriage.”

As a person who is grateful to be living in a modern and free society, where men and women are able to engage in all manner of loving relationships without judgment or fear, I was slightly baffled as to how exactly the trend away from marriage was feeding family breakdown. Thankfully, Harry Benson, research director of the Marriage Foundation, was on hand to explain: “This research supports what we have feared for a long time. As the trend away from marriage continues, more and more children are born into families where the parents’ commitment to one another is unclear or ambiguous: By side-stepping the big decision to commit in public to each other, far too many parents lack the stability required to weather the various storms that life and child-raising in particular throws up.”

Since 1980, the report goes on to explain, the proportion of children born to married couples has fallen from 88% to 53%. Over the same period family breakdown has increased by 44% in England and Wales (Unfortunately for Benson and his team, their findings were released on the same day that a separate report announced that with around 42% of marriages ending in divorce at last count in the UK, Britain has the highest divorce rate in the EU. But let’s not dwell on the details).

It seems laughable that anyone now really believes that being married equals happier, more stable relationships

Turning our attention back to the Marriage Foundation’s grave assessment of the future generation, it transpires that “even those who go on to marry after the birth of their first child are twice as likely to split as those who tied the knot before starting a family”. As one whose own parents married when I was a baby and divorced 10 years later; and having married a year after the birth of my own child, this point is particularly amusing. It seems laughable that anyone in this day and age – one seemingly far from the days when people were routinely trapped in loveless relationships because of stigmatising cultural norms – really believes that being married automatically equals happier, more stable relationships.

It is such an insular view that it’s tempting to chuckle and think no more of it. And yet I can’t. Coming days after the Northern Ireland politician Jim Wells resigned following his declaration that children are more likely to be abused by gay couples, the suggestion that by choosing not to marry – a decision taken for endlessly varied reasons including financial constraints, ethical choice, and the simple belief that legally formalising a marriage is outdated and unnecessary – means that parents “lack the stability required to weather the various storms [of] life and child-raising,” is not just patronising, ignorant, and deeply offensive, but it is also dangerous. It is part of a poisonous wider stream of discourse that has no place in civilised society.

A happy, loving home is what makes for a stable and nurturing environment. If that involves two parental figures who want to be together, then all the better – and I do believe in working through the inevitable ups and downs of a relationship when children are involved, and fighting for its survival when it can be saved. But children thrive in all sorts of environments: loving single-parent homes; homes with adopted or foster parents; as well as – shock, horror – homes where both parents live side-by-side without a valid marriage certificate. Where children are less likely to feel stable and secure is in homes where parents are railroaded into staying together in misery out of fear of breaking a legal contract.

I have friends who have taken the pragmatic decision not to marry for the very reason that, having witnessed their own parents’ divorces, they don’t wish to inflict a frequently painful and protracted process on their own children should the worst happen. That is not to say that a relationship breakdown is easy without the legal complications of annulling a marriage, but it is to say that getting married is not a ticket to longevity.

Despite having watched from the sidelines of my parents’ own destabilising divorce process, I made the decision to marry my husband because I was pretty hopeful that we were going to stay together, yes, but more – sadly – because it would make things easier in terms of the practicalities and the paperwork involved in building a life together. The sanctity of our relationship is in the love we have for each other and for our kids, not in the piece of paper that’s tucked away in a drawer.