“I do“ - but not for very long, thanks
Giuseppe la Pera and Willy Pasini, psychologists from Rome, claim to have identified that men are “biologically disposed” to fall in love at 50. This explains so much (and so many, starting with Bill Clinton and Warren Beatty, and drawing a discreet veil over prominent 50-year-olds closer to home).
But, given that they usually (but not always, according to the researchers) fall in love with someone other than their wives, we should note that it will be adding to the European-wide collapse of the institution of marriage.
In England and Wales, fewer people are marrying than ever before. In one generation, the number of couples marrying has halved. In 1998, just 267,303 made it up the aisle, compared with 348,492 in 1988. Marriage is decreasingly popular and, when it does take place, divorce is a regular outcome – according to the Office of National Statistics, four out of every ten marriages are likely to end in divorce.
Even one of the main reasons given by couples for marrying – to raise a family – is becoming less of a motivating force. In Britain, about one-third of children are born outside marriage.
Britain has taken the rapid decline of marriage on the chin. A few tabloid “debates” on the divorce question apart, the increasingly anti-marriage culture has not generated moral panic or calls for government action. On the contrary, only one in five of the population considers marriage an important factor in bringing up children, according to an opinion poll commissioned earlier this year by the government-funded National Family and Parenting Institute.
Patricia Morgan, the guru of family values, is one of those worried, not just about the decline of marriage, but also its substitution with other arrangements such as single parenthood and, in particular, cohabiting.
Cohabiting has become, for increasing numbers of us, the relationship of choice, sometimes preceding marriage, but sometimes not. Living together has become acceptable in all classes, and more than 70 per cent of couples cohabit before marriage. Tony Blair may set off to church with his wife and four children, but, in today’s Britain, this is eccentric behaviour. Even at the heart of government, there are long-term cohabitees alongside married couples.
Morgan’s report Marriage-Lite, published this month by the Institute for the Study of Civil Society, aims to warn these cohabiting couples that they are running serious risks that do not affect married people – or, at least, that affect them less.
These risks include unemployment, infidelity and depression. Children who are “illegitimate” (a word that no longer has any legal meaning, but which Morgan uses intemperately) are more likely to be abused and unsupported. Women are more likely to be victims of domestic violence. Men, in particular, are more likely to suffer ill-health outside marriage.
It is hard to say whether or not Morgan can substantiate these confidently asserted opinions, given that she fails to put them in the vitally important context of age and economic status. She assures us – with many footnotes – that a great number of books that she has read (and, indeed, written herself) support her thesis.
Her methodology is all too often suspect. Influential feminists, she writes, think wife-beating is the result of “patriarchal norms” or male attitudes to marriage. But, “subsequent investigations have revealed that physical assaults may [our itals] be more common and more severe among cohabiting couples and, given that cohabitation as an alternative living arrangement has steadily increased since 1970, ‘more individuals may [our itals] be at risk not only of minor violence, but severe violence’.” A footnote invites the reader to check out two US studies, one dated 1981. Hmm.
Morgan’s central thesis, however, that cohabitation (the “marriage-lite” of the title) is no substitute for marriage full-strength, is clear enough, and so are the culprits: the Sixties, feminists, contraception, liberal thinkers and the government (for failing to teach children the values of marriage and make it harder for couples to live in sin). All have led to a situation where feckless youth might conclude: “With divorce on demand, illegitimate children equal to legitimate children, and unmarried mothers equated with married mothers . . . ‘why buy a cow if you can get the milk for nothing?’.”
How does Morgan propose to turn back the clock? As Anthony Giddens has pointed out, once the economic imperative to marry has gone, people look for positive reasons to form relationships, based on mutual trust, free from arbitrary power. By contrast, Morgan talks with approval of marriages once being “communally policed”, as if we could revert to societies that forced adulterers from the community with Rebekah Wade type “outings”. Morgan seeks stiffer divorce laws, as if we could force couples to live in harmony. Above all, she wants cohabiting to be “contained”. By chastity belts, perhaps?
It is too late. The genie is out of the bottle. We can and should devise policies and incentives for ways of living that offer the best outcomes for children, whatever their home situation, but we could never force couples to marry and stay married against their will. It is as laughable as trying to persuade a 50-year-old man that he is not really in love with that 25-year-old.