Gavin Poole: It’s not just a piece of paper, marriage matters

This gut reaction has made it hard to argue that the breakdown of couples’ relationships is something that should be a concern of family policy. However, the Government – and therefore the taxpayer – have to spend a great deal of money when families go wrong, when parents fight or split up, or when kids go off the rails. Up to £24bn every year in fact; a serious amount of money in prosperous economic climates, let alone today.

Most of this cost involves benefits and tax credits for lone parents.

The latest figures show that, unsurprisingly, 60 per cent of lone parents receive housing benefit. Trying to manage a household and children with only one pair of hands is really difficult.

Trying to earn money to pay for it all can be almost impossible. Most lone parents need financial help. Since 1980, the number of lone parent families has doubled to two million. Costs have gone up accordingly.

Yet, over the same period, divorce rates have hardly changed. So the increase in lone parenthood has nothing to do with more marriages crumbling. The report we launched recently, written with Harry Benson of Bristol Community Family Trust, looked at the sources and costs of lone parenthood where there are young children involved.

He used several large government family surveys, including the Millennium Cohort Study, of mothers who gave birth in the year 2000 or 2001. When their children were aged five, the study surveyed 15,000 mothers. The data is up-to-date and reliable because there’s so much of it.

Our paper found that divorce plays a somewhat minor role in family breakdown. Whereas married parents account for 54 per cent of all births, married parents who split only account for 20 per cent of lone parenthood.

Divorce represents just 14 per cent of the costs of lone parenthood involving children under five. Out of every £7 spent on family breakdown where there are young children, just £1 is spent on divorce.The rest is spent on the breakup of unmarried parents.

Around nine per cent of today’s married mums, 26 per cent of cohabiting mums and 60 per cent of closely involved (not living with the dad) mums split from their partners before their child’s fifth birthday. The cohabiting mums were at least twice as likely to split as the married mums in every income and education group analysed.

More couples not marrying translates into many more couples splitting up. The source of rising lone parenthood is the collapse of unmarried couples. Accordingly, our efforts to see a reduction in lone parenthood should be focused on unmarried couples.

While marriage represents the decision to spend our lives together as a couple, most couples tend to slide into cohabitation rather than make a clear decision. Without a clear expression of commitment, couples are more vulnerable to splitting up when they go through tough times. The British Social Attitudes study found that only nine per cent thought that marriage is “just a piece of paper”.

Family breakdown will keep on rising until somebody realises that we need to be more enthusiastic about marriage. Marriage is never a panacea. But two-thirds of first marriages work. Some 97 per cent of all couples who’ve made it intact to their child’s 16th birthday are married.

The long-term stable relationship is a rarity unless you’re married.

What can the Government do about rising lone parenthood? It urgently needs to be far clearer about why marriage is so important and why cohabitation is a lot riskier, especially when children are involved.

The Government should recognise marriage in the tax system, make sure welfare reform tackles the current disincentives in the tax credit system to go it alone with children and reinstate the use of the term “married” on official forms.

The other way Government can make a difference is by backing relationship education. Relationship education is not counselling or therapy, but a chance to learn simple but effective principles about relationships. How to tackle the bad habits which sour relationships and learn good ones that build strength for the future. A great time to take on board this kind of information is just after having a baby, as part of a post-natal course. But good marriage preparation can also make a difference. Basically, it is about building up protective factors to reduce the risk of breakdown.

The other big finding we report is the sheer scale of the risk that children born today will experience family breakdown before their 16th birthday. Using the same official statistics we have estimated that 48 per cent of children will not grow up with both mum and dad. This is the real human tragedy.