In praise of marriage

Jan 5, 2022 by

by Belinda Brown, TCW:

AT the Scottish Family Party’s annual conference I was asked to talk about marriage. I focused on the benefits. For an institution which forms the bedrock of society, but lacks social recognition and is often very demanding, these are worth pointing out.

Research from the US suggests that marriage is the best predictor of happiness. It is more influential than a range of other factors including friendships or work. In the UK the Office for National Statistics looked at how various circumstances influenced individual well-being and found marriage was at the top of the list, trumped in importance only by health.

Marriage has implications for our mental health. Being married significantly reduces the incidence of depression and the likelihood of alcohol abuse. The size of the marriage effect upon mental wellbeing has been estimated as equivalent to an extra £75,000 a year. This might be worth keeping in mind next time you are feeling frustrated with your spouse.

Marriage has significant benefits for our health by influencing the social, psychological, and physical environments in which individuals live. On one hand marriage promotes positive lifestyle choices such as physical activity, breakfast, wearing seatbelts and not smoking. On the other, it  provides us with someone who monitors our health and health-related behaviours through a process dubbed ‘the guardian effect’. As women attach more importance to health and take greater responsibility for monitoring their husbands it is argued that the guardian effect is of greater benefit to men. 

Marriage has a protective effect which keeps people alive. The longer the duration of marriage the greater the benefits while divorce will increase mortality each time it occurs.

Read here

 

See also:
Hungary’s birth rate highest in nearly three decades thanks to Viktor Orbán’s pro-family policies, by Pierre Boralevi, LifeSite

Still together because we married, from The Marriage Foundation: ONE IN THREE couples say they wouldn’t still be together if they hadn’t got married.

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