Lord Norton has mentioned the Bills before the House yesterday. I have been wrestling in my mind with Lord Lester’s private member’s Cohabitation Bill introduced yesterday but was unfortunately unable to speak. Normally I count myself as a ‘liberal’. I’m also an enduring fan of Lord Lester of Herne Hill and have found myself supporting most of his causes.
I don’t really care much whether people get married or not, EXCEPT when children arrive. The overwhelming evidence is that marriage is good for kids (even unhappy marriage), helps couples to stay together longer, benefits a children’s emotional and intellectual development and after the age of 40 is significantly better for men’s health, emotional wellbeing and survival. We now have a society where a minority of couples get married; we’re retreating to the position of the early nineteenth century where the propertied got married, others didn’t much bother.
But what are the pros and cons of changing the law to better protect women and children of cohabitation relationships without marriage? Lord Lester’s Bill would give legal rights to couples in a committed relationship who have lived together for at least two years or have a child together. Unless they chose to “opt out”, they would be able to apply for financial orders if they separated. It all sounds so fair doesn’t it? And indeed it would be fairer for the individuals concerned.
My difficulty with it is that people make a definite choice not to marry. Often men don’t want to because they lack the will to commit, women because they can’t persuade their man or because one or both of them don’t fancy the idea of a legal tie (so unromantic) or think they can’t afford the wedding. It’s not an accident that people don’t get married. The answer to the problem that people erroneously believe there is such a thing as a common law marriage is to make sure all girls know the score, and don’t have false expectations and are educated to understand the risks they are taking with their children. If society decides that on the whole it is better for children to grow up in two person long-term households then we should ensure that there are very significant financial incentives to encourage it. The Cohabitation Bill is good for the individuals, bad for society. Or is it?
Baroness Murphy
As a man talking to a woman, I almost feel embarrassed to raise this. Perhaps it’s a generational thing, but when you say
I wonder why you felt the need to differentiate by gender. I know plenty of women who “don’t want to commit” and several men who get more achingly doe-eyed about the concept of marriage than any woman over the age of 22 I’ve ever met. The idea that marriage is something men must endure and that women must cajole men into is pernicious, and the fact that people in our society keep insisting that’s “just the way things are” does no favours to any people trying to break out of those flawed boundaries. The more we refer to men as behaving in a stereotypically “grown up manchild” manner and women “catching and keeping” them, the more we normalise those behaviours. They’re normal behaviours only inasmuch as that’s what people think they should do, not that they’re accurate judgements of people’s real motivations. The subsets “men” and “women” may have nebulous trends attached to them, but are far too large and intersect far too often for us to be able to say “men are from mars, women are from venus”.
And while we’re on the subject of gender, I note that same sex couples aren’t mentioned at all.
My other issue with your post is probably one of an ideological break on the capacity and role of government rather than matters of gender. Cohabitation is on the rise, as you say, because people can afford it. This indicates, to me, that regardless of what the statistics say about society that “marriage” is not the individual good many people claim it to be. When you take away the financial necessity for marriage, people choose modes of relationship much more conducive to their personal happiness. So far, we’re on board.
Where we diverge is that you appear to believe that government should take a role of incentivising people to discard their personal happiness in relationships for the sake of a fairly abstract social good. Unfortunately we don’t have statistics which tell us how hard it is for children whose parents “stayed together for the kids” because such things are almost impossible to measure, but while accumulation of anecdote is no substitute for data it can provide us with insights into things beyond the reach of statistical analysis. In my own family, I can tell you without hesitation that while my nephew may find the fact that his dad lives in another house hard to deal with, that it may have in some way impacted his development, that the alternative of my sister staying with his father would certainly not have made the matter any better, and would almost certainly have resulted in far more emotional issues later on. These are the stories that statistics cannot tell us about, and the reasons that government should be wary, in my opinion, of anything that purports to show that children would be worse off if their parents don’t stay in failed, loveless relationships.
Further, the attention paid to the mother-father side of the family unit is something that works for statisticians and government ministers because it’s something you can categorise and draw on a graph, but who the hell has a family you can draw on a graph? Families come in all shapes and sizes. Parents might have been killed marching off to war, grandmothers might be raising their grandkids, uncles and aunts might be numerous or scarce, people doing “family” jobs might not even be related to the child. It takes a village to raise a child – two people simply don’t have the resources to do it, especially in a society where both of them will invariably have to work and very well might want to work without freaking out.
If government wants to help out families, rather than trying to make them all fit into a box which makes them “statistically more likely to succeed,” it should rather be trying to be flexible in ensuring that all families, no matter their architecture, have the resources and support networks in place to raise children as effectively as possible. Sometimes the 2 parent “ideal” isn’t ideal, but sometimes it’s frankly impossible to achieve. I don’t think government should be in the business of telling children with one parent, or three uncles doing “dad shifts”, that they’re abnormal or on the road to failure.
The family is a subset of the community. But the two parent married-forever family is a sub-class of the family and always has been. Now that we are wealthy enough to realise marriage in and of itself is not always desirable, why don’t we try and work out how to make it even less necessary, so that those who cannot have access to it are not excluded from services and community-norms tailored only to this specific sub-class of people. Perhaps that way, we will see the statistics start to show that children don’t do as badly out of marriages after all.
McDuff: “I don’t think government should be in the business of telling children with one parent, or three uncles doing “dad shifts”, that they’re abnormal or on the road to failure”
It is unreasonable to invoke that line argument as a free pass to avoid dealing with the hard numbers. Statistics are not moral agents but correctly obtained, analysed and understood they are true. If they tell us, as they can do, the basis for the best outcomes then we can’t simply ignore this because we don’t want to be accused of being judgemental. That just fails children twice; for not intervening to promote good outcomes in the first place and for intellectual cowardice in not basing decisions on an evidence base but an emotive response.
@MacDuff – great response (if long!), thanks.
Unsure about the second paragraph of the article, especially:
“The overwhelming evidence is that marriage is good for kids (even unhappy marriage), helps couples to stay together longer”
Isn’t it a bit self-selecting? Surely the people who make the effort/ commitment to get married are more likely to make the effort to stay together? Correlation doesn’t show that marriage itself is the cause. As for unhappy marriage being good for some children in some circumstances, I’d like to know how bad it is for the rest of them too.
“My difficulty with it is that people make a definite choice not to marry.”
I would have thought that it is a rather more definite choice to actually get married. If, like me, you don’t see the need to get married, or get the point of it, then it is not a ‘definite choice’ per se, more not having to make a choice.
Baroness: You say “I don’t really care much whether people get married or not, EXCEPT when children arrive.” Upon reading this I found myself entirely agreeing with you but having spoken to another about it I came to the conclusion that my view was prejudiced in favour of marriage. I am not unhappy about this!
Private bills in the Commons often fail regardless of merit because some notable wreckers do not support them. They give considerable scrutiny to what is being proposed if it all holds up then the bill will get through. I suppose the same applies in the Lords so the spirit of the bill will be of lesser importance than chamber politics.
I got married; I never gave it a second thought and have been in a single marriage for many more years than ever I was single. Commitment has been the hallmark of the marriage backed up by the legal protection of a marriage contract.
Commitment alone offers no protection and it’s a winner takes all situation when the relationship enters irrevocable failure. The loser has to fall back on family charity or the welfare state to regain their lives. If either of these is unavailable then destitution and extreme poverty is likely.
What is important here is the civil liberty of entering a consenting relationship on a commitment only basis. The bill removes this liberty by removing the risk associated with a relationship outside of a legal union. The bill also adds to the burden of the state because the alternative is anathema to society.
The bill is not out of place with a Parliament that writes statutes predicated on the ability to pay, the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many contrary to the pursuit of a greater happiness and the removal of all risks.
Hey Everyone,
I’m really enjoying this site.
Keep Up the good work.
Love Always
Sky
Thanks everyone for such thoughtful comments. I want to respond fairly fully so forgive me if I’m more longwinded than usual. Macduff: I used stereotypes I agree, and obviously I also know women who can’t commit and men dying to marry but the statistics tell us that the stereotypes are largely correct. We modernists may not like it this and gradually with women’s increased earning power attitudes are changing but most women’s maternal instincts can’t be denied and this will influence their desire to find and keep a partner. I didn’t mention same sex couples but my desire to encourage longevity in a relationship of a same sex couple who are bringing up children is the same as for a heterosexual couple. The fact that same sex couples can now form a civil partnership, ie have the same rights as a married couple, has given us some interesting insights into why people do or don’t marry, for very diverse reasons as you say.
The reason I think governments have an interest in encouraging marriage is because of the economic impact on the rest of us of a vast number of single unemployed women bringing up children alone or with a series of changing partners. The tax payer foots the bill in so many ways; income and housing support, loss of tax earnings and in reduced life time earning power of the children. Since the mid-19th century governments have taken on the role of developing social policy and trying to influence cultural change through fiscal policy. Too late to go back on that and most people believe it is right for them to do so. You are concerned that a pro-marriage policy would disavantage people seeking personal happiness where they consider that marriage would stifle them. First I am not proposing that those who want to remain single or live with a partner shouldn’t be free to do so but the state has a huge interest in their children and does have a role in encouraging or discouraging behaviours through financial incentives. Choice is still left to the individual.
I would very much like to know what evidence there is that society can find ways of supporting children so they aren’t affected by a series of changing parent figures. Please tell me if you know how it can be done.
Croft, here, here.
A Jackson. Circular argument I think about the commitment and marriage and what came first. The point is marriage is a legal and public agreement which bestows rights and responsibilities in respect of property, children, inheritance and so on. You say you don’t see the need to marry, nor do I necessarily want to encourage you. There’s only a ‘need’ when property and children are involved. Of course people can make their own legal arrangements but these turn out to be more expensive than marriage.
Senex. Very interesting points. I decare myself wholly prejudiced in favour of marriage, my first lasted 30 years and my second 8 so far and I’m optimistic! I recognise that marriage breaks down, for a host of reasons but I still think that we should do everything we can to encourage child rearing parents to stay together and marriage offers the best chance of parents doing just that. Love is not enough to see people through.
@baronessmurphy: I’m glad you mentioned same sex couples. I’d been torn myself in my first post as despite a quick hunt I couldn’t find a report I’d seen on the outcomes of same-sex couples with children. However as far as I remember it said that in preliminary results they are, when in a civil partnership/’marriage’, much the same in terms of ‘good outcomes’ for children as heterosexual married couples. I think sometimes the ‘pro-marriage’ argument is deflected or dismissed as being either religiously driven or faintly anti-gay when I don’t see it should be either. For the argument to succeed it needs to be, and publically seen and proclaimed to be, all about outcomes and not a (suspected) cloak for prejudices against any minority group.
As a mother of none, popular opinion dictates that I should not make comments on matters that involve those under 18. I say that to make a very pointed comment. Moving on.
Within this Bill, can you confirm that a cohabitant would have the same rights over the remains of a spouse? The main reason I remarried was down to a fierce disagreement with my (now) mother-in-law over organ donorship. When trying to make a ‘living will’ I was advised that the finder of my (then) partner had more rights than I. This was many years ago and such laws may have changed.
Other reasons were purely pecuniary and of no moral consequence. My first marriage was supposed to be for life. With the safeguards proposed, I would never have remarried. It’s meaningless.
Lady Tizzy,
I don’t have any children by choice but I don’t think that disbars me from having a view on the care of children any more than not having been to prison disbars me from having a view on our penal system. So please let’s have your views on the under 18s whenever you feel like it.
The legal position about next of kin and the body of a loved one is that it does not belong to anyone in English Law. Through the Mental Capacity Act of 2007 we have established that you can have your wishes respected during life, even if you become mentally incapcitated later and it is customary for people to respect what you have expressed with regards to your remains. However a next of kin has no rights over remains at common law, people do not own their own bodies although from changes in the Human Tissue Act 2004 they can now control over the furure use of their tissue and organs for transplant and appoint a person to act on their behalf to make a decision after their death. People can authorise the removal of their bodily material and its use, either during life or after their death, for medical or scientific purposes. Researchers who acquire human bodies, body parts or tissue pursuant to such an authority have a right to possess and use them according to the authorisation they have been given, but their rights fall short of full ownership because they are limited in the way that they can use the material. The legal rights of researchers who develop intellectual property and biological products from excised human tissue are now protected by the Human Tissue Act.
Under the current arrangements a former partner would not have any rights to say what happens to your remains.
But if you feel strongly about what happens to you after death, write it down, get someone independent to sign it as a witness then lodge the piece of paper with someone you trust. Better still, make sure everyone knows now. For me I hope it’s a bit of peace and quiet in Brockdish Churchyard.
Thank you, Baroness Murphy, I very much appreciate your support that I can have an opinion on matters with which I have no direct experience, such as child rearing. That we were all children once and can draw on our memories seems to count for nought.
I freely admit my lack of experiences, such as not being locked up, or raped, which are then pounced upon and misinterpreted as lack of understanding. But then my experiences don’t seem to matter when it suits!
This Bill doesn’t attempt to address the problems of cohabiting siblings, unless I missed that bit. I can understand that this is more tricky but would like some attempt to address the unfairness that can occur, in terms of IHT.
You mention the 2007 Mental Capacity Act, yet I have no idea what my rights are regarding the body of my mentally handicapped sister. My parents are both dead and I have an older sibling. Her ‘welfare’ has been mismanaged by the state by proxy of her local social services for decades. I strongly suspect, from other experiences, that I will not even be informed of her demise.
I have been lied to, deceived, ignored by everyone, eventually, because there is money to be made out of her, and job status is on the line. It hurts so much.
When considering the offspring of cohabiting couples, somehow there appears to be the consideration of children under 18 only. It goes much further.
Thank you to anyone reading this.
Having just had chance to catch some of the Tv coverage of the bill including Lord Lester’s speech. It can be no suprise, based on my previous comments, that I found Lady Deech’s speech summed up my concerns and doubts about the bill well. I missed the very begginning of the speech so I hope I didn’t miss something to which I would object but I’ll have to add her to peers I watch out for in the future. I must admit to never consicously having heard of her before.
I thought Lord Henley made a fair point contrasting the claimed injustice of people believing they are in a common law marriage -v- the cast iron rule that ignorance of the law is no defence in criminal law.
Having seen over the last decade or so the stretch on the legal aid budget and the flight of lawyers to civil cases due to the better fee structures my mind positively boggles at the possible number of cases under this bill and where exactly the funding would come from?
Dear Baroness Murphy,
Thank you for placing this most pressing debate into the world of blogs. I am the case Lord Lester referred to in his presentation when discussing the support from Resolution. My case is a classic example of why the law needs to change:
I was in a long term (18 years) relationship with my now ex partner although not living together. I fell pregnant by accident (although we had finally decided to have children). We decided to marry given the fact that we were about to be parents and I moved in with him. However, my partner had second thoughts. He ended the relationship when our child was 10 months old. He then begged for me to come back a year later. Again I left my home and moved to live with him as I desperately wanted our relationship and new family to work. I gave up a successful career and ultimately sold my house. I believed that I had protection under the notion of ‘common law wife’. He desperately wanted more children. I insisted that we marry before we had anymore children (all very difficult and very unromantic conversations to have). Eventually he made a verbal promise that I could have the home in which we lived should we separate (he owns land and a number of other properties). I believed him and we went onto have another child. I continued to press for marriage as that is what I wanted, even though I continued to believe that I had some sort of protection. Eventually, our relationship became so damaged by his lack of matrimonial commitment (along with other issues) and we split up. I have spent thousands on legal advice and am currently reliant on my family and the state as my ex partner has not honored his commitment. I gave up a successful career and raised our children. I was also very involved in establishing and building up my ex partners businesses. I have no legal claim for the 9 years of unearned income and living as his “wife”. Looking back, I was a mug to have trusted him and should have insisted on contracts in lieu of marriage. However, I did trust that he would do the right thing; I loved him. Now I face the reality of 9 years lost income and rebuilding my career as a single parent. He meanwhile holds onto all his assets that I have contributed to in terms of my time and foregoing a more comfortable lifestyle in order to plough back any earned income in into building up the properties and businesses. I will remain heavily reliant on the state for a number of years and my children are definitely suffering as I struggle to get my life back on track. Relationships are complicated; people do not marry for a number of different reasons. And because some of those reasons are due to unscrupulous individuals the law must be put in place to protect the vulnerable. I feel that the period of living together should be longer, perhaps after three years and I also believe that the period after separation to make a claim should be increased to 3 years. I hope that you can take something from my experience.
Baroness Murphy,
My view on this issue is simple- no-one should be married by default and I believe that if this bill makes it through then that would be the practical effect of it.
The decision to marry should be freely made and with the full conscious decision of both parties; it is not something that should be foisted upon them just because a certain time has passed (where does this magical 2 years figure come from?).
When people marry they are explicitly telling the outside world via a statement that they will support each other; you cannot blame the outside world for then assuming that this is the case.
People who do NOT make this declaration should not be treated as if they have as it is unfair and wrong to do so.
I realise that there are tragic consequences of long-term failed cohabitation and I feel sympathy for those who have suffered but the alternative is far, far worse. For the alternative is foisting the trappings of marriage on people who-for whatever reason do not wish it or have yet to make up their mind as to whether or not it is for them (with respect to those that have suffered, calling for a legal framework for cohabitation is comparable to calling for a ban on all motor vehicles because there has been a fatal road accident).
This will not improve relationship stability; more people will choose to live apart if they are bound merely by living together.
This is the fact of the matter- for the truth is that the entire point of cohabitation is to AVOID the legal trappings of marriage OR to have a “trial run”.
I only hope that the good people who have the power in their hands to oppose this bill do so.
Cohabitationmum. I am so pleased you took the trouble to tell your story as it is indeed a very common and very sad one. I can imagine how much heartbreak there must have been along the way. I wonder if looking back you would have made different decisions if you had been aware of the legal facts right at the outset? And I wonder too if your partner was more aware than you of how easy it is to avoid his responsibilities? Of course for one individual it is easy to see the justification for the Cohabitation Bill but when we look at the totality of family law it makes less sense for society as a whole. We often face the problem in public policy making that an apparently good change has major unintended consequence and I would therefore like to see longitudinal research over a 20-30 year period to assess the real impact of such a change on the stability of couple relationships.
@sam: I believe I read in the discussion of the bill that the average length of cohabitation is close to the two year figure. Of course that tends toward catching the majority into the system.
Without reopening this too much I think most people make an entirely logical distinction between the breakdown of relationships with/without children. There are wide extant powers to deal with fathers (mostly) who fail to pay maintainance. The CSA may have been/be a shambles but that sort of an organisation ought run properly to be there to step in for single parents.
Baroness Murphy,
Yes indeed mine was a painful experience and I am sure that my ex partner was well aware of his position from the start. However, I have absolutely no doubt that my situation is being replicated as we communicate, not by hundreds or thousands, but millions of residents in England and Wales. That is an awful lot of adults and children who are suffering from a lack of legal protection. And its not going to go away; quite the opposite. More and more people are choosing to cohabit and by 2031 one in three of us will. It is time that the law in England and Wales caught up with the trend and indeed with many developed nations who have changed their laws accordingly.
@Baroness Murphy and cohabitationmum:
While you’re at it, can you comment on why women should pay the same tax as men?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/16/equal-pay-commission-business
To all:
I should say that an inequality in the law for cohabitants is bad for the individual in a relationship that has been “economically disadvantaged”. This fact could apply to both males or females. However, it predominantly remains women who tend to give up their job to either look after the home or children and hence are more likely to suffer an “economic disadvantage”. As for Lady Tizzy’s point…..as a single parent struggling to work out how to get my life back on track I can only deal with one issue at a time…!
cohabitationmum, I realise that you have been badly hurt but what is being suggested here is just plain wrong.
Let us take the cliched example of a marriage between a beautiful young gold-digger and a rich elderly millionaire. He dies after a few years and she inherits his fortune. They have no children together.
Let us then look at the example of a woman who cohabited with her partner for 20 years and had two now grown-up children by him but they never officially married. The cohabitation ended when the man announced that he wished her to leave the house that was in his name and he paid for throughout the entire relationship. She leaves with nothing.
Some would say this is unfair, I disagree; it might be immoral but it is not unfair at all. Far from it; it is ENTIRELY fair.
In the first example, the man and woman made it EXPLICITLY clear ( by way of marriage) to the outside world that they wished to be seen as unit- it is only right that the outside world treat them as such.
In the second example, no such declaration was made. The woman may complain that she lost out (morally she may be right) but IF the outside world made assumptions about the state of their relationship they’d be- rightly- accused of imposing THEIR views of what a marriage (for what is being suggested here is marriage-by-default) should be on the cohabiting couple.
It is allright for people to say, “They had children” but then what of married couples who don’t/can’t have children-are they to be treated as if they are UNmarried?
“Ah but they lived together for 20 years.” So two bachelors who lived as friends for 20 years are to be treated as married?!
I’m afraid the only thing that should indicate a long-term lasting binding commitment between two people should be the presence of a marriage certificate- it is the ONLY genuinely fair way of dealing with the issue.
Any couple who do not wish to marry but wish some of the rights of marriage (next of kin and so on) should make it known by EXPLICITLY expressing their wishes via a formal document because-just like a marriage certificate- it makes things clear. I’m no lawyer but aren’t there such things as cohabitation contracts these days?
I suggest that the other “developed” countries need to catch up with Britain and not the other way around.
@Croft
My argument is not that I want to avoid being correct because it’s judgemental. My argument is that reliance on statistics to tell us about human behaviour is half the story at best, and that correct analysis and understanding relies on putting these numbers in context. When people say that “statistics show” that children are better off when they come from families it in fact oversimplifies a complex situation. Phrases like “more likely” can be used to overstate the case. To take an example, look at [url=http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1868]this graph[/url]. The only statistically significant jump is between “married couple non-stepfamily” and everything else. Marriage seems to be irrelevant if one parent is a step-parent. And apparently it’s statistically slightly better for children if their parents choose to cohabit if one of them isn’t a biological parent than if they are. When we also see that even 20% of girls and 30% of boys in the “best” kind of family structure fail to achieve education up to KS2, the picture painted by the statistics is even less clear.
Further, this correlation doesn’t, as statisticians will tell you if you ask them, imply causation. It doesn’t say – can’t say – what the relationships are like in the first place, and whether the couples who choose to cohabit now would raise better children if they married, or if they would just drag the statistics down and do exactly the same job. It doesn’t say whether the cohabiting couples had a joint mortgage, which is the same kind of commitment as a marriage in this day and age but nobody buys you a fancy cake. It doesn’t say in the case of the lone parents whether the children would do better if the parents had stayed together. And because statistics are incapable of informing us about these things, we need to be very careful when it comes to going from “in general, it tends to be the case that…” to “therefore, it should be government policy that…”
An example of misuse of statistics occurs here:
That’s absolutely not what statistics tell us about gender. What they tell us is that “male” and “female” are incredibly broad groups covering a vast spectrum and with a huge amount of overlap in the middle, and that while some behaviour types can manifest with a higher probability on one side of the gender spectrum than the other this is not even remotely close to saying “the stereotypes are largely correct.” More accurate would be to say that the stereotypes are based in crude observations of the truth but are far too broad to be predictively useful on an individual level. We need to be careful of “confirmation bias”, where we internally and subconsciously amplify the numbers that support our pre-existing conceptions and discard contradictory evidence which might weaken our case. We also need to, again, be careful of confusing correlation and causation. It’s hard to say how much gender behaviour has a biological root and how much has a social one, and because of this it’s not especially advisable to say things like “women have a biological drive to find a stable home” as if it’s set in stone. Remember, anything from 50% up can be a majority, but 45% is not an insignificant section of a population. Unless you’re standing for election.
Over-reliance of statistics to make stronger judgements than the numbers bear out, or selectively citing them in support of pre-existing biases, is just as much a problem as ignoring them entirely. “Encouraging marriage” could just encourage failing relationships to keep failing longer, which is hardly child-friendly, as anyone who’s seen a protracted breakup can tell you.
@Baroness Murphy
I don’t think it can be, but then again I don’t think it’s possible to protect people entirely from anything. What society can do is minimise harm.
It seems fair to start with an assumption that because individuals have agency over their own lives and because relationships don’t always work, that some proportion of children will be born to couples who, for one reason or another, later fall out. Rather than using statistics to bludgeon some fraction of these couples into “staying together for the kids” I’d suggest that there are a number of harm reduction strategies which would work over a broader section of the population.
Firstly, and to our credit we do this fairly well in the UK, is education – especially of women – and the free availability of contraception to minimise the number of accidental pregnancies, and then the safe and stigma-free access to abortion so that unwanted pregnancies do not have to result in unwanted children.
Secondly we take Senex’s rather jumbled formulation here
as an example of how not to run a society and try and put into place structural and financial safeguards so that relationships can dissolve easily and that the mechanisms of the state or the risk of penury do not add undue stress to an already stressful situation.
Thirdly, we look at what I think is not necessarily directly indicated in the available statistics but which is neither contradicted by them nor impossible to infer, that children’s development has a direct correlation with the number of sensible, stable adult relationships they have. While I am generally wary of arguments from “common sense” (see confirmation bias) I think there’s a case to be made not just that divorce will be harder on children who end up living with a single parent than on one with a large family network who can take on some of the child-rearing duties and provide variance of stimulation, but that such a network has a non-negligible benefit to children whose parents are married too. Rather than researching “married vs. unmarried couples,” why doesn’t government study “families, in all their forms” and then perhaps try and formulate policy from studies that aren’t loaded with bias from their outset?
Fourthly, government could try. To the best of my knowledge, no government in the world has ever got past the assumption that living in sin is a bad thing and so has never tried to formulate a policy that assumes a “family” is more than a set of parents and children living in a single house in a statistically and morally easy to label category. The idea that life might be complex and, indeed, that there is a possibility that policies designed to encourage marriage and make divorce and cohabitation difficult might be in part responsible for the problems faced by the children of divorced or cohabiting couples seems to have never occurred to anybody.
And a final point, if government is concerned that much about the breakup of marriages it should probably declare a moratorium on wars, since deployment in the armed forces is a known cause not just of widowed mothers (and potentially also fathers) but also of placing divorce-causing stress on couples.
Of course, this won’t happen, because of course government is happy to see families break up if there is a higher cause, but not if the individuals involved would be better served and happier by not having to live together out of fear and coercion. At least, that’s how it appears.
@McDuff: I carefully chose my words – “correctly obtained, analysed and understood ” – exactly so as to pre-empt a long argument over blindly using figure(s) without context.
We could easily get into a comparison of different sets of data here – I don’t think the ONS figures are sufficiently fine grain, they define family type at the time the census was taken, so are not that useful. Using those figures to draw sectional conclusions seems flawed from the start. I’ve certainly seen other figures showing a wider spread of the various sub sets of family groups which seemed to have used proper controls to factor out the issues of distortion you mention.
My solution to this dilemma is to have rights gently accrue to cohabiting couples over time. In other words, have some rights apply after 2 years but to have them gradually increase until, when the couple have spent about say 25-30 years together, be broadly equivalent to those of marriage. This gives people have, in essence, stuck to each other through time recognition. This also has the advantage of making marriage an attractive proposition for most people whilst making sure that those people, both men and women, who take advantage of their partner would face some justice.
Whilst McDuff’s suggestion of joint mortgages may have some merit, I don’t think that would work in the British context. The reason being is that during the boom years a significant number of people bought property to sell on at a higher price. Even if you have someone who is getting a mortgage to buy their home, it was (and probably will be) common for people to buy somewhere and, a few years later, trade up to another home. In both of those scenarios the “commitment” would have ended when the property was sold and there was no guarantee that both partners would be listed on the new mortgage (if there was one).
hifranc, The argument that someone is being, “taken advantage of” when they are freely consenting mentally sound adults who choose to live with another person is something that I do not agree with. In fact, I strongly disagree with this, especially when I look at the news and I hear the story of how a young woman was forced to live in a dungeon for 24 years- now there’s a genuine example of someone being taken advantage of. Some would say- what’s this got to do with the argument? A lot I think because no man lives in isolation from the rest of the world.
A woman having to give up her career to look after the home and children? What about her fellow cohabitee who has to give up the OPPORTUNITY to stay at home with his children and instead has to go out to work to support them- does HE get compensation for those lost years with his children?
I agree with your statement about mortgages not being the same as marriage; my friend and her sister are about to take on the mortgage of their mother’s house. It would be ludicrous to suggest that these two women are married. Well it would be illegal for a start.
MacDuff, I did not argue from the statistical generalities to the individual and never would. Of course one needs to look behind generalities and understand the societal patterns which are emerging. But
patterns of family life are a consequence of economic policy not the whims of fashion and we can choose. Our disagreement might be over what provides the greatest good for the largest number of people.
@croft
You have seen statistics which can tell us the level of education that children of divorced or cohabiting couples would have achieved had their parents married? Really? Would you like to review your answer? Are you perhaps confusing statistics with theoretical quantum physics?
@hifranc
It wasn’t a suggestion, it was an observation. A joint mortgage is a statement of commitment on a real, tangible level that many people make without bothering to go through the poncy, expensive faff of a wedding. Yes, they are not permanent and can be dissolved, but then again so can marriages. The point was not that government policy should seek to replace marriage with joint mortgages, but that it should recognise that for many couples such a commitment is of equal merit to the traditional concept of standing in front of someone and making an easily broken promise.
@Baroness Murphy
What exactly is it that you’re arguing here? If they are the consequences of economic policy then changing the policy changes the pattern, which means we can choose them to a greater or lesser degree. Personally, I don’t think economic policy is such a large factor, but to the extent that it is I don’t think that’s at all an argument against recognising cohabitation on a legal basis.
Again, if government policy can affect how people behave within family units, then is it not at least possible that policies designed to make it more difficult to cohabit or divorce than to marry and stay married might in fact have an adverse affect on children within those families whose lives we are deliberately making more difficult as part of public policy? It seems at least a plausible avenue of exploration, but one which no government to my knowledge has travelled, with many of them preferring to beg the question so hard it got embarrassed and asked them to get off the floor.
I think our biggest area of disagreement might well be that I am not so quick to disregard individual rights when formulating public policy. Rather than seeking to force people into an allegedly beneficial single mode of existence, I’d rather set social policy so that the broadest range of people as possible can benefit from it. I’d say that was actually a difference in ends rather than means.
McDuff, I do not think the government should recognise that mortgage equates to marriage.
Firstly, I do not think that it does- it’s just a financial agreement at the end of the day. If the relationship breaks down, so what? They can always sell the property and move on (well maybe not in today’s climate)- it’s no big deal. People still-even in these times- feel dreadful at the break down of a marriage.
Secondly, I believe the day the government starts making SUBJECTIVE assessments about what is/ is not marriage will be the day we are in serious trouble as a nation. Far, far better for them to treat a marriage certificate as a sign of permanent commitment and disregard everything else. This is the ONLY fair way as people are diverse in the way they conduct their marriages; let’s not pigeonhole them. I had not listened to Baroness Deech before I heard of this proposed bill, this lady has spoken so much sense on this issue, she is worthy of much respect.
It is anti-British anyway, this business of poking noses into the affairs of other mentally sound consenting adults.
Using the tax code to provide incentive to marriage is downright wrong!
Why is it the state’s responsibility to promote any given lifestyle? Why should those who choose to remain single be penalized (relative to the married)?
If the argument is that when children are born, married families are cheaper for the state, then the unmarried should get a massive tax incentive- they produce no burden to the state.
Let’s be consistent and stop trying to bribe people using tax policy.
Rational Human
Thee is no value-free legislation. All public fiscal policy relating to families will impact one way or the other. For me the ends which McDuff rightly identifies as important are the raising of children to attain their maximum potential for happiness. health and wealth (in that order). It is quite frequently the case that what is good for children is not always the ‘best’ for adult men and women’s own goals. That’s the advantage of the choice to be a parent or not, I doubt we can get to the happy state that McDuff wants of everyone doing their own thing and it harming noone.
@Sam
Are you genuinely and seriously arguing that couples who buy a house together break up freely and easily?
The palpable nonsense surrounding marriage, particularly people who think that a joint mortgage and bank account etc, fails to recognise that for a considerable period of human history marriage was a financial agreement. That’s one of the major reason’s it’s declined – dowries are no longer in fashion and women can achieve financial security without hitching themselves to a man. Claiming that some easily dissolved traditional sanctification of a contract is more important to everybody than the various flavours of financial and personal contract they enter into is, simply, nonsense. For some it may well be the case, but for many it quite clearly is not.
Which leads me onto:
@BaronessMurphy
I find this to be a bit of a tiresome misrepresentation of my arguments. Strawmanning should be beneath someone in parliament, in my opinion.
Let’s assume for a second that only unhappy marriages end up in divorces. While I cannot say for certain that it has never happened, I sincerely doubt that many people have gone to court and said “we love each other very much and are here to file for divorce.”
It seems reasonable to me that unhappy marriages tend to be part and parcel of unhappy families. As always, there can be exceptions, but it seems unlikely to me that the mere legal act of the dissolution of marriage is, in fact, the sole predictor of whether or not any fruits of the union will go on to achieve an MBA at LBS. Rather more likely is that the circumstances up to and surrounding the break up and the following struggle by one or both parents to come to terms with their new life where they must remain connected despite not really liking each other very much which contribute to the insecurity and lower-achievement of the children.
Here’s my take on what government can do about this: nothing whatsoever. The options available are to allow unhappy couples to divorce freely, to “allow” them to divorce but make the threat of penury so great that some fraction will “stay together for the kids”, or to not allow them at all. But government cannot make unhappy marriages into happy ones.
So given that government cannot do this, much as it may try, it seems reasonable to assume that if harm is going to occur that it should seek to minimise the harm as much as possible rather than, as legislation which either legally or financially penalises unhappy couples for daring to consider being less unhappy divorcees, deliberately increasing the harm visited on unhappy marriages in an effort to force them to remain unhappy marriages.
It’s not that everyone can do anything they like and nobody will get hurt, but that if people are already getting hurt that government should not go out of its way to hurt them more, even if it’s doing so out of a misguided belief in its own omnipotence. I apologise if this seems a touch over-radical to anybody.
Baroness Murphy, I have thought about this matter some more and I now realise that in all fairness to Lord Lester of Herne Hill the bill he has presented is not about making people married with all the legal ties attached to it after a certain time has passed, but providing certain provisions when a cohabiting couple separate. In other words, giving certain marriage-LIKE protections is not the same as making someone married. I made a mistake here.
I appreciate that when an unmarried couple who have children separate they perhaps cannot be expected anymore to be treated as wholly single and accept that as regards financial provisions to those cohabitees with children there is need at least for debate on the subject IF the law at the moment is not satisfactory.
I realise that there is a third party (children) who overrides the right for mum and dad to be completely single.
Fair enough.
Please tell me- because I really do not understand- how can there possibly be an appetite by government and the individual cohabitees themselves (after all, they ARE presumably aware they can marry) for a cohabitation bill to apply to those WITHOUT children?
I realise the rights of the child are paramount but surely in a sane society we say to childless cohabitees who are adults that they behave as such and take their chances if they do not marry and things go wrong?
You see if this bill had just been about cohabitees with children, I don’t think too many people would have a problem with it. I certainly wouldn’t. They would perhaps think “OK, maybe there’s need for discussion”. But to include childless cohabitees is just a step too far for even for the most bleeding heart liberal and perhaps the gut reactions of “this is ridiculous” is caused by this.
Some may say this is discriminating against childless cohabitees. Perhaps so. But surely it is an entirely justifiable discrimination.
It would also do away with the need for all that “stable relationship” stuff; who cares what went on in these people’s private life? They’ve got children; that’s the only thing that matters.