Marriage – it’s not for everyone

Civitas, 9 February 2007

This week marks ten years of National Marriage Week. And ten years of marriage-less Government policy.
Marriage has been kept off the Left’s agenda in order to give people greater choice. Yet for all its democratic ambitions, the Left’s stance on marriage is jeopardising its very own principles.

Married-couple families are becoming more common higher up the socio-economic scale. The reason for this seems to be not that the middle and upper classes are more ‘conventional’ or religious. This correlation between class and marriage seems rather to show is that more affluent people, and people with better opportunities in life are more likely to marry, because they are more likely to be in the position to do so. And by that, I don’t mean that they can afford a lavish wedding. People with better employment and financial prospects are often more able to make real choices rather than ones circumscribed by circumstance about when and with whom they parent.
In the past marrying might have signified less choice – the only option when it came to parenting – but today the opposite could be said to be true. Although marriage rates are at a low in this country and cohabitating rates very high, polls show us that marriage is still a widely held ideal – amongst the cohabiting and non-cohabiting alike. Why? If you would prefer to parent with the mother or father of your child – and attitude surveys show that this is still the majority aspiration – the premise of at least planning to stay together is a preferable one.
The pattern between family form and socio-economic class suggests that rather than being outdated marriage has become a luxury. Whilst it is easier to perceive dissolved parent-partnerships and a concentration of lone-parenthood in poorer areas as expressions of diversity, the government must recognise when they are expressions of deprivation. The Government needs to face up to the fact that circumstance may be thwarting commitment – that lone-parenthood might relate to failed opportunities in the education system. That dissolved parenting partnerships might stem from the pressures within the employment and housing markets.
If committed partnership – and why not call it marriage? – ceases to be regarded as an aspiration, these vital policy issues pass unnoticed and people’s aspirations go unfulfilled. If marriage is not on the agenda, it follows that it is not a policy objective and therefore it is not supported by strategy or rhetoric. This removes it as an option for many people. The Left’s protective stance may be good at making the best of the situation – too good conservatives say. What it’s not good at is making the situation better.
The popularity of marriage amongst those holding left-wing views does seem to confirm that it is not that supporting marriage is incompatible with liberalism, but that marriage is not attainable to all. When liberals discuss the merits of their own marriages – and many left-wing politicians and feminists are happily married and remarried – they are often quick to follow it up with the caveat ‘but it’s not for everyone’. Indeed it’s not, and that is the problem with marriage today.