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Evidence shows that family breakdown is a significant cause of many social problems, and that marriage is the best means of avoiding family breakdown.
The state has an interest in supporting marriage, because it has to deal with the costs and consequences of family breakdown.
Other important policy considerations include the promotion of fatherhood, extended family links and reduced working hours.
Experience in America and Australia shows that policies designed to promote marriage, individual responsibility and relationship skills are achieving real success.
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Conducting the debate
Marriage and the family are becoming increasingly important areas of policy debate. They touch all of us; our personal backgrounds and life-choices. It is then no surprise that strong feelings and deeply held beliefs are aroused.
Language and tone are important. Those participating in this debate twist and turn to avoid being labeled as 'intolerant', 'judgemental' or 'lecturing'. Nobody wants to risk being accused of a failure to be 'inclusive.'
Understandable though that is, the danger arises that, in trying to avoid offending anyone, we will allow the debate to stagnate beneath a surface of bland platitudes.
As Christians we should try at all times to express ourselves in a loving and generous way, which demonstrates that we value all individuals as precious to God, no matter how far from Him they may have strayed (because we are acutely aware that we have all strayed). However, we have often fallen short of that ideal.
Remembering that, we should at the same time keep at the front of our minds our calling to be salt and light in the world. We must not shy away from the truth, but we need to express the truth in a way that Jesus would have approved.
Imposition of moral truth and indifference to moral truth are not the only two options available to us. There is room to debate how government, for example, might work with civil society institutions of schools and faith communities to promote sustainable ways of living.
Does 'family' mean 'marriage'?
A recent example of the need for clarity came when Tony Blair said at a party conference that he wanted all of his government's policies to take into account their impact on families. However, he did not define what he meant by 'families', either then, or subsequently when pressed by Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman.
The key issue was whether his definition of 'families' was limited to marriage-based families. We can assume from his failure to say otherwise, that he was not confining himself to married families.
Indeed, it is probably fair to say that, when politicians refer to 'families' they now mean something broader than 'marriage'. Certainly that is very often the case.
The importance of marriage
As Christians we understand that marriage is a relationship instituted and ordained by God. The Book of Common Prayer tells us that it was ordained for the procreation of children, as a remedy against sin, and for mutual society, help and comfort. It is of immense spiritual importance. For those reasons alone we must support and defend it.
The following quotation is taken from the March 1999 response by the Church of England's Board for Social Responsibility to the Home Office's 'Supporting Families' Green Paper. The Board stresses the role of marriage in securing best care for children and also, the often overlooked comfort and support it gives to husband and wife:
The church teaches that marriage is part of God's Creation. It is therefore a form of relationship which is deeply rooted in our social instincts. It is the means by which a man and a woman may, over the course of their lifetime, learn love together. We marry not only because we are 'in love', but to be helped to love. That it is why it is so important to understand the meaning of commitment. Without the practice and discipline of marriage, our love will be exhausted and fail us - often doing great harm and causing deep pain to ourselves and to many others. The three blessings that belong to marriage are traditionally described as the procreation and nurture of children, the hallowing and right direction of natural instincts and affections, and the mutual society, help, and comfort which each affords in prosperity and adversity. By marriage a unit of society is created - a couple stronger than the sum of the two partners - held together by the bond of domestic friendship. Together the couple can extend love to other people: to their own children, in the first instance, who belong naturally within their domestic circle; but not only to them but to many others who interact with them in a variety of ways. Their love enables them to make a strong contribution to society. Any weakening of marriage thus has serious implications for the mutual belonging and care that is exercised in the community at large.
However, in a secular world, we can and must look for other reasons to speak up for marriage. There is an ever-increasing body of evidence which demonstrates that marriage is the key building block for stable, productive and contented communities. Parents in marriage are more likely to stay together than parents outside it - parents that are cohabiting, for example. Charles Colson recently explained why cohabiting before marriage leads to less - rather than more - stable relationships: "Dating couples who abstain from sex are more likely to build spiritual, emotional, and intellectual companionship. What's more, they're building the self-restraint crucial to being a successful husband or wife later on. After all, sexual temptation doesn't disappear once you're married."
Family breakdown is increasingly seen as a significant causative factor in many social problems: truancy and educational failure; crime; vandalism; homelessness; teenage pregnancy; child abuse and neglect; domestic violence; poverty; ill health; and housing shortages to mention but some. 'Marriage Lite' by Patricia Morgan (see below) contains a devastating series of statistics.
Not only is marriage right, but it works. This is the key to expressing ourselves in a loving way, without shrinking from the truth.
Is this the government's business?
There are those who say that the state has no business interfering in the way that people choose to arrange their personal relationships. What could be more inappropriate than the state dictating how we should make the most intimate decisions of our lives?
Perhaps the most compelling response is that the state is already involved. For sure, there are many instances of prosperous families, with parents in work, living in decent neighbourhoods, with good schools and support networks, and access to childcare, who have the ability to pass on aspiration and example to their children. It is however amongst the poor, who lack many of those advantages, that the consequences of family breakdown are most deeply felt.
The state is already involved, because of the immense resources it is forced to devote to the consequences of family breakdown. And when, over recent decades, changes to divorce laws and the tax and benefits system have actually been biased against marriage, the state has some work to undo.
Jerry Regier, director of the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative, which has played a key role in pioneering the message that supporting marriage is the key to combating deep-rooted social problems, comments: "Government is already involved. For years we told girls on welfare, if you have a child we will pay for it and set you up in your own apartment. We need instead to incentivise the same girl not to have a child out of wedlock but to have it in marriage for her own and society's well-being. We aren't moralizing or telling people how to live their lives but changing the incentives. The key is to encourage marriage for the good of society, whilst not denigrating other lifestyles. If people make certain choices because of bad government policy and then government has to pick up the pieces and pay for those choices, then it's very much government's business."
The current debate
In America the debate is more advanced than in Britain. This is in part due to President Bush's emphasis on compassionate conservatism and the value of faith-inspred social action. However, it goes wider than the White House and pre-dated his election.
Individual states, such as Oklahoma and Wisconsin, are actively promoting marriage, and have made the emphasis on marriage and family stability a central part of welfare reform. There are many success stories: teenage pregnancy, divorce, and unemployment rates, to take three examples, have tumbled. Founded in 1996, the US-based Marriage Savers(www.marriagesavers.org) equips local communities, principally through local congregations, to fight family breakdown. Marriage Savers' have two primary strategies. (1) To establish a Community Marriage Policy in cities and towns in which pastors, priests and rabbis join together to strengthen marriages with the conscious goal of pushing down the community's divorce rate. So far, they have been established in about 150 cities and towns in 38 states. (2) To establish Marriage Saver Congregations in churches and synagogues in which mentoring couples are trained to help other couples prepare for a life-long marriage, strengthen all existing ones, and restore troubled marriages. Marriage Savers say that "this strategy can virtually eliminate divorces in the local congregation". The website for an organisation doing related work in Britain - the Totnes Community Family Trust - www.tcft.freeserve.co.uk - is well worth a visit.
In Britain we lag behind. Marriage is under attack on many fronts. Labour abolished the last remnants of the Married Couple's Alliance. There are moves to give co-habitees the same legal rights as married couples, and to establish a register for same-sex relationships - surely a precursor to recognizing gay marriage. (The Relationships (Civil Registration) Bill has been put before Parliament as a private member's bill.)
Would these steps strengthen or weaken marriage? If, as many (including some of their advocates) believe, they would undermine marriage, it is in everyone's interest that they be resisted.
Supporting marriage
There are a number of steps that can be taken to support marriage and family values. The tax and benefits system should, at the very least, be neutral, so that couples that decide to marry are not financially worse off as a result. Ideally, it should be reformed so that some financial advantage arises with marriage. Whilst nobody marries because it will bring them a tax advantage, the system should not be an actual disincentive.
Welfare and educational programmes which emphasise the importance of marriage, and, at the least, long-term stability in relationships, can be brought forward. Character education in schools can be piloted. In America, all this is already happening.
FACTFILE
· "The number of divorces in the United Kingdom is one of the highest in the European Union with over 150,000 divorces taking place each year. Seven in ten divorcing couples have children and 80 per cent of these children are under 16. These events are all private matters but they plainly have public consequences." Supporting Families: a consultation document - Home Office Green Paper, 1998
· It has been predicted that 70% of children born within marriage in 1997 will spend their entire childhood with both natural parents, compared to only 36% of children born to co-habitees. Source: Berthoud, R. and Gershuny, J., editors, Seven Years in the Lives of British Families, London: The Policy Press, 2000, p. 40.
Research on a control group in Australia revealed that 28% of children from broken committed offences, as against 8% from stable homes (Patricia Morgan: 'Marriage Lite')
· Children living with cohabiting parents are 50% more likely to suffer from mental health problems than children of marriages (Dept. of Health)
· 68% of adults believe that to be married with children is the most desireable way of life. 74% believed that marriage represented the most desireable life-choice. (MORI research for the Nestle Family Monitor, 1999)
CONSERVATIVE PARTY POLICY
The 2001 general election manifesto contained a commitment to recognise the importance of marriage to rearing children by reintroducing a transferable married couple's allowance for families with children under the age of 5.
QUOTES
"Although in all societies marriage is a recognised and regulated human institution, it is not a human invention. Christian teaching on this topic begins with the joyful affirmation that marriage is God's idea, not ours." Rev John Stott
"Many lone parents and unmarried couples raise their children every bit as successfully as married parents. But marriage is still the surest foundation for raising children and remains the choice of the majority of people in Britain." Supporting Families: a consultation document Home Office Green Paper 1998
"Unlike Britain where talk of marriage and family values is condemned as extreme, America has counted the cost of family collapse and decided that it is simply too high a price to pay." Melanie Phillips (America's Social Revolution, CIVITAS, 2001)
"I think that sometimes we forget that without the family there would be almost nothing out there. It is the glue that binds us all together. It is not just brothers and sisters and parents. It is the wider family which matters. It is because you have a sense of what works for each of you, getting on, compromising, that you are able to extend that to others beyond you. It starts maybe with cousins and then goes on to people in the community who you want to help. So I think the family is at the heart of that whole network of bringing order and justice into society and without it I would worry that we would ever be able to proceed, both politically and morally." Iain Duncan Smith, in interview with Steve Chalke, November 2001
FURTHER READING
John Stott's chapter on marriage in Issues facing Christians today, Marshall Pickering 1990
America's Social Revolution by Melanie Phillips (Civitas 2001)
Marriage Lite - the rise of co-habitation and its consequences by Patricia Morgan (Institute for the Study of Civil Society, 2000).
Related links
Civitas - the Institute for the Study of Civil Society
CARE (Christian Action Research and Education)
Recommended UK-based relationship counselling service
The Marriage Course at Holy Trinity Brompton
Jill Kirby's factsheet on the family
Peter Lilley MP on how Conservatives should support marriage
Margaret Andrews on the lifelong covenant of marriage
Australia's Department for Family and Community Services
Jill Kirby's landmark 'Broken Hearts' report
Other ccfwebsite.com briefings
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