- Researchers say couples who live together just don't love each other as much as couples who marry
- By Amanda Platell
- Daily Mail (UK)
- 11/09/2008 Make a Comment
- Contributed by: MrNatural ( 6 articles in 2008 )
...And Amanda Platell fears they may be right
Not tying the knot: The number of marriages in the UK is at an all-time low, but research suggests that married couples have more successful lives
Back in the Fifties, the archetypal housewife Doris Day sang in a duet with Frank Sinatra 'love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage'. Not any more they don't.
The latest figures show the number of marriages in the UK is at an all-time low, half of all of them end in divorce and one child in three is being brought up by a single parent.
More than half of all births in the UK are now outside wedlock.
More and more couples live together yet never marry, often in partnerships that dissolve with depressing speed and regularity.
Rainbow families, consisting of a mother and an array of children fathered by different men are increasingly common.
Even the words husband and wife are dropping out of our vocabulary. On the relentlessly politically correct BBC, the word 'partner' is now de rigueur, used to describe all couples, even if they are husband and wife.
It's not only the BBC who have banned marriage from the public lexicon. As Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, revealed in a report from his Centre for Social Justice think-tank, the words ' husband', 'wife' and 'spouse' have even been dropped from official Government forms.
All we need now is for the Queen to start referring to 'my partner and I' in her Christmas address and we will know the game is up for marriage.
Does it matter - this steady erosion of a time-honoured institution? After all, if people live together, have children together but never get around to tying the knot, isn't that much the same thing as marriage anyway?
Well, an increasing body of research from Britain, the U.S. and around the world suggests it matters very much.
And next week, a group of academics and policy makers will gather in the House of Commons for an important two-day conference, called Marriage Matters, that will discuss these findings and debate ways that it can be used to help build a happier, more stable society.
At the heart of the discussion will be a few simple home truths that ought to be etched on to every politician's heart, but which the liberal elite have conspired to obscure or ignore for decades.
The most important of these is that children raised in two-parent homes are far more likely to do well at school, stay out of trouble with the law and graduate to happy well-adjusted lives.
Partners: Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, like ever-increasing numbers of British couples, are not married
Millions of single mothers do a brilliant job against all odds, but, nonetheless, it remains a fact that two parents are always going to be preferable to one.
More controversially, however, increasing evidence also suggests that it makes a huge difference whether those two parents are married or simply cohabiting.
Not least because research published by the Centre for Social Justice shows that one in two cohabiting couples break up before their child is aged five - compared with one in 12 where the parents are married.
Yet this is not just about children. It's about the parents' lives, too - married couples have longer, more successful lives and are less prone to mental illness and the temporary solace of drink and drugs.
So yes, marriage matters. But realistically, can anything be done to promote it?
Here, there are grounds for hope. The tide has slowly begun to turn. After years in the wilderness, marriage has suddenly become a hot political topic.
Given their terror at being branded 'the nasty party', it would have been unthinkable five years ago that a Tory leader would campaign for the traditional family and promise tax breaks for married couples - and surge further ahead in the polls as a result.
But that's what's happened to David Cameron.
The Tory leader has been courageous in his bid to boost marriage, with initiatives such as reinstating the married couple's tax allowance, or offering stay-at-home mothers direct financial support, suddenly back on the agenda.
Bidding to boost marriage: Tory leader David Cameron, pictured with his wife Samantha, is in favour of the traditional family
But what has surprised everyone is how these suggestions have not led to the usual howls of derision from political opponents.
There is now a growing public appetite to do something about divorce and family breakdown - and politicians of all hues are at last debating practical measures to make that happen.
As with most social trends, this one began across the Atlantic, where academics and politicians have been working together to fund programmes researching and supporting marriage for the greater good of the nation.
Because make no mistake, this is not simply a moral revolution but a sound economic initiative.
When 40 per cent or more of new marriages among the young will end in divorce and marriage breakdown is estimated to have cost American taxpayers more than $1trillion in a decade, there is a real imperative to promote successful marriages.
That's where schemes such as the Healthy Marriage Initiative come into play.
This U.S. government programme is backed by Congress and serves to fund an array of marriage education services, helping, for example, to promote more widespread use of counselling services when marriages start to fall apart ( astonishingly, only 20 per cent of Americans whose marriages are collapsing seek any kind of help).
In Britain, the problem is every bit as acute. It has been estimated that social problems linked to family breakdown cost the Exchequer £20billion a year - yet scandalously, the marriage guidance service Relate, which does so much to help keep families together, receives just £23m funding a year.
According to Professor Scot M. Stanley, cohabitation prior to marriage is linked to higher levels of domestic violence (posed by models)
The trouble is, we still haven't woken up to the root of the problem, namely that the greatest social change of our times - the huge increase in cohabiting couples, at the expense of marriage - has led to a vastly more unstable society.
This is a trend which Professor Scott M. Stanley from the University of Denver, one of the keynote speakers at next week's conference, describes as nothing less than 'a crisis' for both Britain and America.
'The increase in cohabitation is one of the most significant shifts in family demographics of the past century - 50 to 60 per cent of couples cohabit before marriage in America,' explains Prof Stanley.
Yet his research shows that cohabitees have 'more negative interactions, lower levels of interpersonal commitment to their partners, lower relationship quality and lower levels of confidence in their relationships'.
And sadly those issues are carried into any subsequent marriage.
'Cohabitation prior to marriage is consistently associated with poorer marital communication quality, lower marital satisfaction, higher levels of domestic violence and greater probability of divorce of that couple,' says Prof Stanley.
Which is incredible when you think most of us were brought up believing that living together was good for marriage, that it was the best way to 'test' a relationship, to see whether you could live together happily every after.
So why the conspiracy of silence? Because in the laissez-faire, anything goes, 'all families are equal' doctrine that has underpinned Labour thinking throughout the past decade, it was simply unsayable that marriage was the gold standard of contented long-term relationships.
In the post-feminist world, no one's life choices could be assessed or criticised.
If anything, marriage was seen as tantamount to domestic slavery rather than the surest route to lifelong happiness.
Of course, it's an imperfect formula. By no means all marriages are destined to last the course - my own among them.
Some married couples will find through bitter experience that they are happier apart than together, and it's entirely right that divorce is not the badge of shame it was for my mother's generation.
But if we are ever to have a hope of addressing the social breakdown that has so blighted modern Britain, isn't it high time that marriage was reinstated and supported as the bedrock upon which stable and contented societies are built?
Quite simply, we cannot afford not to.
Not tying the knot: The number of marriages in the UK is at an all-time low, but research suggests that married couples have more successful livesBack in the Fifties, the archetypal housewife Doris Day sang in a duet with Frank Sinatra 'love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage'. Not any more they don't.
The latest figures show the number of marriages in the UK is at an all-time low, half of all of them end in divorce and one child in three is being brought up by a single parent.
More than half of all births in the UK are now outside wedlock.
More and more couples live together yet never marry, often in partnerships that dissolve with depressing speed and regularity.
Rainbow families, consisting of a mother and an array of children fathered by different men are increasingly common.
Even the words husband and wife are dropping out of our vocabulary. On the relentlessly politically correct BBC, the word 'partner' is now de rigueur, used to describe all couples, even if they are husband and wife.
It's not only the BBC who have banned marriage from the public lexicon. As Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, revealed in a report from his Centre for Social Justice think-tank, the words ' husband', 'wife' and 'spouse' have even been dropped from official Government forms.
All we need now is for the Queen to start referring to 'my partner and I' in her Christmas address and we will know the game is up for marriage.
Does it matter - this steady erosion of a time-honoured institution? After all, if people live together, have children together but never get around to tying the knot, isn't that much the same thing as marriage anyway?
Well, an increasing body of research from Britain, the U.S. and around the world suggests it matters very much.
And next week, a group of academics and policy makers will gather in the House of Commons for an important two-day conference, called Marriage Matters, that will discuss these findings and debate ways that it can be used to help build a happier, more stable society.
At the heart of the discussion will be a few simple home truths that ought to be etched on to every politician's heart, but which the liberal elite have conspired to obscure or ignore for decades.
The most important of these is that children raised in two-parent homes are far more likely to do well at school, stay out of trouble with the law and graduate to happy well-adjusted lives.
Partners: Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, like ever-increasing numbers of British couples, are not marriedMillions of single mothers do a brilliant job against all odds, but, nonetheless, it remains a fact that two parents are always going to be preferable to one.
More controversially, however, increasing evidence also suggests that it makes a huge difference whether those two parents are married or simply cohabiting.
Not least because research published by the Centre for Social Justice shows that one in two cohabiting couples break up before their child is aged five - compared with one in 12 where the parents are married.
Yet this is not just about children. It's about the parents' lives, too - married couples have longer, more successful lives and are less prone to mental illness and the temporary solace of drink and drugs.
So yes, marriage matters. But realistically, can anything be done to promote it?
Here, there are grounds for hope. The tide has slowly begun to turn. After years in the wilderness, marriage has suddenly become a hot political topic.
Given their terror at being branded 'the nasty party', it would have been unthinkable five years ago that a Tory leader would campaign for the traditional family and promise tax breaks for married couples - and surge further ahead in the polls as a result.
But that's what's happened to David Cameron.
The Tory leader has been courageous in his bid to boost marriage, with initiatives such as reinstating the married couple's tax allowance, or offering stay-at-home mothers direct financial support, suddenly back on the agenda.
Bidding to boost marriage: Tory leader David Cameron, pictured with his wife Samantha, is in favour of the traditional familyBut what has surprised everyone is how these suggestions have not led to the usual howls of derision from political opponents.
There is now a growing public appetite to do something about divorce and family breakdown - and politicians of all hues are at last debating practical measures to make that happen.
As with most social trends, this one began across the Atlantic, where academics and politicians have been working together to fund programmes researching and supporting marriage for the greater good of the nation.
Because make no mistake, this is not simply a moral revolution but a sound economic initiative.
When 40 per cent or more of new marriages among the young will end in divorce and marriage breakdown is estimated to have cost American taxpayers more than $1trillion in a decade, there is a real imperative to promote successful marriages.
That's where schemes such as the Healthy Marriage Initiative come into play.
This U.S. government programme is backed by Congress and serves to fund an array of marriage education services, helping, for example, to promote more widespread use of counselling services when marriages start to fall apart ( astonishingly, only 20 per cent of Americans whose marriages are collapsing seek any kind of help).
In Britain, the problem is every bit as acute. It has been estimated that social problems linked to family breakdown cost the Exchequer £20billion a year - yet scandalously, the marriage guidance service Relate, which does so much to help keep families together, receives just £23m funding a year.
According to Professor Scot M. Stanley, cohabitation prior to marriage is linked to higher levels of domestic violence (posed by models)The trouble is, we still haven't woken up to the root of the problem, namely that the greatest social change of our times - the huge increase in cohabiting couples, at the expense of marriage - has led to a vastly more unstable society.
This is a trend which Professor Scott M. Stanley from the University of Denver, one of the keynote speakers at next week's conference, describes as nothing less than 'a crisis' for both Britain and America.
'The increase in cohabitation is one of the most significant shifts in family demographics of the past century - 50 to 60 per cent of couples cohabit before marriage in America,' explains Prof Stanley.
Yet his research shows that cohabitees have 'more negative interactions, lower levels of interpersonal commitment to their partners, lower relationship quality and lower levels of confidence in their relationships'.
And sadly those issues are carried into any subsequent marriage.
'Cohabitation prior to marriage is consistently associated with poorer marital communication quality, lower marital satisfaction, higher levels of domestic violence and greater probability of divorce of that couple,' says Prof Stanley.
Which is incredible when you think most of us were brought up believing that living together was good for marriage, that it was the best way to 'test' a relationship, to see whether you could live together happily every after.
So why the conspiracy of silence? Because in the laissez-faire, anything goes, 'all families are equal' doctrine that has underpinned Labour thinking throughout the past decade, it was simply unsayable that marriage was the gold standard of contented long-term relationships.
In the post-feminist world, no one's life choices could be assessed or criticised.
If anything, marriage was seen as tantamount to domestic slavery rather than the surest route to lifelong happiness.
Of course, it's an imperfect formula. By no means all marriages are destined to last the course - my own among them.
Some married couples will find through bitter experience that they are happier apart than together, and it's entirely right that divorce is not the badge of shame it was for my mother's generation.
But if we are ever to have a hope of addressing the social breakdown that has so blighted modern Britain, isn't it high time that marriage was reinstated and supported as the bedrock upon which stable and contented societies are built?
Quite simply, we cannot afford not to.
Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1054460/Researchers-say-couples-live-just-dont-love-couples-marry--And-Amanda-Platell-fears-right.html
1Will not be visible to public.
2Receive notification of other comments posted for this article. To cease notification after having posted click here.
3To make a link clickable in the comments box enclose in link tags - ie.<link>Link</link>.
4To show an image enclose the image URL in tags - ie.<image>https://fredspage.com/box.jpg</image>. Note: image may be resized if too large
To further have your say, head to our forum Click Here
To contribute a news article Click Here
To view or contribute a Quote Click Here