Independent UK: Is it so terrible that marriage is in decline?

[marmar]

Terence Blacker: Is it so terrible that marriage is in decline?
Friday, 28 March 2008


Like a tired old couple nagging wearily away at one another, politicians and the media have been bickering over the great marriage crisis exposed by the Office of National Statistics. In 2005, the number getting married fell by nine per cent from the previous year; 2006 saw another significant fall, this time of four per cent. The national marriage rate, according to the OFT, is now at its lowest level since 1862.

For members of the think-tanks which exist to fret about such things, it is a terrible state of affairs for which the Government is entirely responsible. Labour is "effectively overseeing the death of marriage by killing it off", Jill Kirby of the Centre for Policy Studies has announced.

At first glance, the verdict seems a little harsh. Few governments of recent years have promoted family values more ardently by example. Unlike the previous two Conservative prime ministers – one a divorcée, the other an adulterer – Blair and Brown have been proactively uxorious while in power. Both have produced children. Blair's potency as a husband was publicly put on record by his wife. Brown's progression from bachelor to contented family man has been the perfect advertisement for marriage.

But, according to the think-tankers and the Tories, the smug marrieds in power have also been doing terrible things to the institution. They have failed to give financial incentives to married couples. In official documents, phrases like "spouse" and "marriage" are being replaced by more neutral terms. Politicians are said to be afraid to speak up for married life out of fear of offending that fearsome group of voters, the singles. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/terence-blacker/terence-blacker-is-it-so-terrible-that-marriage-is-in-decline-801708.html

[Demeter]

1. It's a Sign of Economic Instability and Frustration

Very few men have the ability, in the face of declining work satisfaction, to find alternate routes to happiness within their family.

Instead the hapless man goes for addictive pursuits: intoxication, gambling, running around with the guys to the neglect of family, illicit sex, theft and fraud, blowing the budget on boy toys, and the marriage falls apart.

Women and children need males who are not self-destructing before their eyes, who can roll with the punches, seek alternatives in the cracks of life, and learn to rejoice in their families.

They don't need the egotists who decide that murder-suicide or abandonment is the permanent solution to their temporary problems.

[Igel]

2. "Is it so terrible that marriage is in decline?"

Dunno. Depends, IMO, upon whether the correlations observed in the US between marriage, family income, educational achievement of kids, etc., etc., are universal, and if marriage is a significant causal factor.

"Committed relationships" are better than nothing, but still have weaker outcomes (in terms of the things I mentioned) than marriage itself.

Since you can't run controlled experiments, and most couples self-select for marriage, I haven't seen anybody make a decent stab at teasing apart the factors. I have seen papers that skirt the issue, that obfuscate the issue, and that assume that marriage is unrelated--but they usually still include married couples, mixing the committed/unmarried and committed/married cohorts.


If correlation turns out to be something like causality, I guess you could also say it's a question of whether kids matter. I've run into some people who really don't care: Society is all about them and should be set up for their convenience, while producing the next generation is somebody else's problem (except to the extent they have be exposed to other people's kids).