Marriage and how to restore it

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has recently outlined his views on marriage. He believes that “there is a limit on what the state should seek to do in organising people's private relationships". He goes on “We should not take a particular version of the family institution, such as the 1950s model of suit-wearing, breadwinning dad and aproned, homemaking mother, and try and preserve it in aspic.” He dismissed the idea of tax breaks for married couples as wrong, and claimed that it would not work.

Mr Clegg has clearly set out the views and principles held by the liberal establishment, which is that they consider the institution of marriage (at least between people of the opposite sex) to be outmoded. For nearly half a century they have carried out a systematic campaign to undermine it. It is worth examining how this came about.

One of the most disturbing features of British society since the 1960s has been the huge rise in family breakdown. This has not happened by accident, or chance, but has been the inevitable consequence of decisions taken by successive governments, both Labour and Conservative. Although both have paid lip service to the principle of supporting the family, the policies they pursued have served to comprehensively undermine family cohesion and the institution of marriage. As a result, Britain has changed from a country noted for the stability of its family life to one in which our society has become fragmented and dysfunctional. Although the 1950s are seen today as a model of family stability compared with more recent years, it is nevertheless the case that divorce during this decade was about five times higher than in the 1930s.

The Wilson government of 1964-70 is often quoted with pride by liberals for facilitating “progressive” legislation on personal “lifestyle” issues, such as abortion and homosexuality. As part of the liberalisation agenda, this period also saw the introduction of the 1969 Divorce Reform Act which was to have the most far reaching implications for family life in Britain. By the time of the Act divorce levels had climbed to over 50,000 a year, twice what they had been a decade earlier. The 1969 Act retained the existing grounds of adultery and desertion but crucially replaced “cruelty” with the much less harsh term “unreasonable behaviour”, which has been interpreted broadly by the courts, thus allowing many couples a quick divorce. In addition the Act introduced new “no-fault” grounds for divorce when the parties had lived apart for five years, or two years if both agreed to a divorce. Thus the basis for divorce became, in the wording of the Act, “the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage”. As a result of the 1969 Act the level of divorces increased to nearly 120,000 in 1972, over four times higher than in 1962..

As the self declared party of the family one might have thought that the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher would have relished the opportunity to demonstrate their firm commitment to marriage. Unsurprisingly, given the nature of modern Conservatism, they did nothing of the kind. By 1980 the number of divorces had reached 150,000 a year and it has stayed roughly at this level ever since. The Tories’ Matrimonial and Family Proceedings Act 1984 allowed couples to divorce after only twelve months of marriage. It might more accurately have been called the Abolition of Marriage Act 1984 since, in practice, that was the outcome. The Family Law Act 1996, also introduced under the Conservatives, facilitated still further the ease with which divorce could be obtained. It dispensed with the principle of “fault based divorce”, which effectively meant that no grounds needed to be shown as to why a divorce should not be granted.

A search through the party manifestos since the war reveals a near complete failure to mention marriage. There are many references to support for families, but these are invariably couched in terms of better health or education provision, or more generous benefits. But strangely, there is nothing in any Labour or Conservative manifesto which even hints that easier divorce should be allowed. Thus there has never been any electoral mandate for this far reaching change.

In our liberal controlled society, fixated on “diversity” and “inclusivity”, a family is defined not only as the traditional married couple comprising husband, wife and children, but now also includes those who cohabit. To the clear detriment of children’s needs the definition has been further expanded to embrace so-called “one-parent families”, which mostly consist of single women with children who became pregnant either through their own choice, or through the folly of entering into transitory relationships with feckless or selfish men who have abandoned them. In the liberal mindset all these categories are “families” and as such, so it is claimed, all have equal validity.

However, behind the agenda for promoting alternative lifestyles the statistics clearly show the foolhardiness of such an approach, since they demonstrate that much the best foundation for bringing up children is through the institution of marriage, in which couples give a clear public commitment to each other. Relationships between couples who merely cohabit are generally of much shorter duration and thus fail to provide the stability which children need in their upbringing. Cohabiting relationships are fragile. They are more likely to break up than marriages entered into at the same time, regardless of age or income. On average, cohabitations last less than two years, and less than four per cent of cohabitations last for ten years or more. Cohabitating couples with children are even more likely to break up than childless ones. Children born to cohabiting parents are more likely to face disruptions in their family life, with harmful consequences for their emotional and educational development.

A significant proportion of one-parent families are created through the break-up of cohabiting unions. The statistics also show that children brought up without fathers are the most likely to be disruptive, have lower educational attainment, greater probability of unemployment, are more likely to turn to crime and to perpetuate this cycle of deprivation. This is not to say that all single mothers necessarily make poor parents, indeed some succeed in very difficult circumstances, but the odds are usually stacked against them. So it is very much in the interests of society to insist that firm measures are taken to ensure that children are brought up within marriage.

Marriage, if taken seriously, demonstrates a clear responsibility and commitment by both husband and wife to the upbringing of children. The acceptance of a much broader definitions of “family” has allowed the institution of marriage to become downgraded to one of a series of supposed equally valid “lifestyles”. There is now an increasing likelihood that marriage might wither away altogether since the number of marriages continues to fall year by year. The Office of National Statistics has reported, that unmarried people in Britain may outnumber the married in the not too distant future. Family law no longer makes any attempt to buttress the stability of marriage. It has adopted principles for the “protection” of children that are equally applicable to the unmarried, leading to the piecemeal erosion of the distinction between marriage and co-habitation. As a result, the breakdown of the traditional family has lead to a society in which adults increasingly place their own personal self interest, happiness, pleasure and desire for new relationships, above the interests and needs of their children.

Perhaps the most alarming consequence of the undermining of marriage, and the promotion of casual sexual relations, has been the huge increase in single parenting. During the first half of the last century the percentage of births outside marriage remained at around 4-5%, except during the war years. Thus, in the early 1950s, the percentage of births to unmarried mothers was still only slightly higher than it had been fifty years earlier. But, by the early 1970s, the figure had increased to 8% and, by the early 1980s, there was a further increase to 13%, almost three times higher than it had been twenty years earlier. In the 1980s, during the high point of Thatcherism, children were born with ever-increasing frequency outside of marriage, accounting by 1991 to over 30% of all births. This figure had increased again to over 40% in the early years of the new century. Between 1986 and 1990 the number of never married lone mothers almost doubled. In 1961, where the mother was under the age of 20, 26% of births were outside marriage, but by 2004 the number had increased to an amazing 91%.

The difficulties of single parenting are not confined to the raising of children, since in the majority of cases there are likely also to be financial problems. Families that stay together are much more likely to be self supporting but single mothers, particularly those with young children, are disproportionately dependent on state funded income support, since they are less likely to be in work. Thus the breakdown of marriage also places burdens on those who stay together, since they have to pay for the benefits through increased taxation.

The institution of marriage, and support for the traditional family, has been consistently undermined by an unholy alliance of politicians, lawyers and children’s charities. The question must therefore be asked if anything can be done to return to the level of family stability which previous generations took for granted. Certainly the current level of family breakdown, with its attendant social disorder, is clearly unsustainable, and should be completely unacceptable in any civilised society. But such is the extent of the current problem that firm and determined measures will be unavoidable if family cohesion in our society is to be restored.

The first step to be taken to remedy matters is to recognise that the overriding purpose of marriage is to secure the raising of children in a stable and loving environment, and that all marriage and divorce legislation should reflect this principle. In so doing the emphasis will then shift from the concerns of the two adults in the marriage to the overriding interests of the children. Thus the law will need to consider two types of marriage, those with children under 18, and those without. If there are no children in a marriage, or they are now adults themselves, the state should have little or no interest in whether or not a couple choose to stay together. Any legal separation should be a civil matter between the parties concerned. However, if there are children under 18, then the sole criterion when considering whether a divorce should be granted is if it would be in the best interests of the children. There should be a strong presumption that divorce, in principle, is unlikely to be in the best interests of the children. Therefore, the grounds for divorce will need to be drawn fairly tightly, where the behaviour of one of the parents has become so unacceptable that divorce would be less damaging to the children than would be the continuation of the family unit.

To further bolster marriage, measures will need to be taken to reduce considerably the level of cohabitation for couples with children. Currently, there are few incentives for such couples to get married. The institution of marriage has almost been destroyed since divorce is now so easy and the distinction between marriage and cohabitation has become blurred. Marriage is an institution which provides benefits, not only to the couples themselves, but also to society as a whole. Marriage should be redefined as a public commitment by a couple to bring up children, the responsibility and obligations for which are recognised by wider society through the granting of certain rights and privileges, which would not be available to those who merely cohabit.

Marriage should, of course, be only between people of the opposite sex. So-called “gay marriage” is a complete nonsense since it has nothing to do with the upbringing of children. It is an odd fact that liberals, who show the least concern over marriage breakdown, are usually the most enthusiastic advocates of “gay marriage”. Same sex civil partnerships have only been introduced as a sop to a highly vocal and privileged minority group as part of the New Labour’s extremist “equality” agenda

To ensure that there are no financial penalties against entering marriage it will be essential that the tax and benefit system never makes cohabitation or single parenting, more financially advantageous than marriage. Child Benefit and Child Tax Credits should continue to be paid as now but married couples should in future receive more generous payments than those who cohabit. This differential will need to be sufficiently large to encourage cohabiting couples to marry. Such a change should only apply to new births, and not apply retrospectively to the existing children of cohabiting couples or lone parents. Also, any parent who walks out of a marriage without good reason, taking the children with them, will be deemed to have forfeited any financial claim on the other partner. Those who break up a marriage for their own personal selfish ends should never profit from their actions.

Society is now at a crossroads. If it continues along its current path leading to greater family breakdown it could be terminally destructive. Alternatively, it could come to its senses and take the difficult decisions to bolster marriage and thus provide the best protection for raising children. Patricia Morgan, a sociologist specialising in family policy, accurately observed that “all societies that have survived have been built on marriage, and children have always been raised in traditional families. A home with two married parents is unquestionably the best place in which to bring up children, who need both a father and a mother. It is also the best way to pass on traditional principles and beliefs from one generation to another”. Research shows that being married is, by far, the most effective way of making young men law-abiding and giving them a sense of purpose and self-worth. So for all these reasons we need to reinstate the primacy of marriage in the raising of children and the stability of family life.