by Tony Rucinski, Coalition for Marriage
The Office for National Statistics has published its latest Families and Households bulletin. Married couples now make up 65.3% of UK families, down from 66.6% a decade ago. Family law firms have pounced: the law, they say, must catch up with the cohabiting families displacing marriage. The Ministry of Justice is about to open a spring 2026 consultation on new statutory financial rights for cohabiting couples on relationship breakdown.
Go back to the data and the case falls apart.
When couples actually raise dependent children, what do they choose? The 2025 ONS UK workbook is unambiguous. Of 6.57 million UK couples raising dependent children, 5.29 million are married or civil-partnered. That is 80.5%. Only 1.28 million are cohabiting, or 19.5%. Four out of every five couples raising a dependent child have made a legal commitment, married or civil-partnered, not merely cohabiting.
The “decline of marriage” the reformers invoke has been slowing for thirty years. Between 1996 and 2005, the married share fell by 5.87 percentage points. Between 2005 and 2015, by 3.85. Between 2015 and 2025, by just 1.28. Each decade the rate of decline has slowed sharply. Anyone can check every number: download the ONS 2025 UK workbook and open Table 1, where row 13 is the married-couple family total and row 36 is all families, by year back to 1996.