The Marriage Gap in Europe
by Harry Benson, Family Studies:
It’s common knowledge that fewer people are getting married these days.
This has become an increasingly serious problem for the simple reason that most couples who don’t marry don’t stay together, whereas most couples who do marry do stay together.
Among parents, roughly eight out of 10 who are married when their child is born will still be together when their child completes secondary education. If the parents don’t marry, the odds of staying together while bringing up a child plummet to three out of 10. That’s a pretty big gap.
Although there are some differences between married and unmarried parents who live as a couple—a fact that was highlighted in the Marriage Foundation’s latest study on teen self-esteem—children generally do equally well if their parents stay together, married or not. The big difference is whether couples stay together or not.
And marriage clarifies commitment like nothing else. By agreeing to marry, couples establish clarity about their plan to stay together for life, which removes any lingering ambiguity and puts them on the same page. Couples can do this without getting married. But few manage to do it successfully.
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
