Long Term Benefits of Marriage

Feb 3, 2018 by Jill

by Harry Benson, Marriage Foundation:

One of the most common critiques of the supposed advantages of marriage is that married adults and their children only do better because of their education and money.

The argument goes something like this: “It’s not marriage that conveys the advantages of life. It’s just that those who are better educated are more likely to get married. They then go on to make a success of their family and avoid many of the pitfalls. It’s a ‘mistake’ to attribute this to marriage, when really it’s all about education and money.”

But the story to date is such that even when you account for education and money, and all sorts of other things that tend to characterize married rather than unmarried families, it’s rarely enough to explain why married families tend to do better. Compare rich families or poor families and the outcome tends to be the same. Married families still tend—on average, remember—to do better. We’ve shown this to be the case in a whole range of studies.

And, of course, there’s an excellent explanation for why married couples tend to stay together and unmarried couples don’t through the ‘sliding/deciding/inertia’ theory of commitment. (Read this pdf paper that explains the idea really neatly.)

Read here

Also: Why Britain needs to engage with Marriage Week, by Harry Benson, The Conservative Woman

Do we now have a third definition of marriage? by Gavin Ashenden on his website

Christian marriage group responds to civil partnerships for heterosexual couples proposal, by Cara Bentley, Premier

We need incentives to beef up marriage, not water it down, by Ann Farmer, The Conservative Woman