- Couples should be encouraged to marry rather than just live together
- State spending should concentrate on keeping families with young children togther, Marriage Foundation report adds
- Made in response to minister's call for ideas to keep families together
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The state should encourage marriage and try harder to get couples to stay together while their children are young, ministers have been told.
A drive to persuade couples to marry rather than simply live together would help combat high break-up rates among cohabitees, a report said.
It also called for state spending to concentrate on families with young children, because this is the time when family relationships are under the greatest pressure and have the highest chance of breaking up.
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A push to persuade couples to marry rather than simply live together would help combat high break-up rates, a report will suggest today (library image)
The recommendations were prepared by the Marriage Foundation think-tank in response to a call from Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith for ideas on how to keep families together.
Mr Duncan Smith’s Family Stability Review is aimed at gathering information on how families are changing, which are most at risk of failing, and how the state can do more to keep them together.
The Marriage Foundation, which was launched by High Court family judge Sir Paul Coleridge, said in the first published evidence to the review that the families most at risk are those of unmarried new parents.
It said that cohabiting couples make up fewer than one in five parents, but half of all family breakdown.
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State spending should concentrate on families with young children who are under pressure, the Marriage Foundation added (library image)
The foundation’s report added that half of all family breakdown happens before a couple’s child reaches its second birthday.
It said that once couples reach the ten-year mark, outside factors seem to have very little influence on whether or not they stay together.
Foundation spokesman Harry Benson said: ‘There is little point in the Government attempting to improve the stability of established marriages. Approximately as many married couples who stuck it out between 1960 and 1970 are still together as those who married in 2000 and made it to 2010, despite the many social and cultural changes in that period.
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Mr Duncan Smith¿s Family Stability Review is aimed at gathering information on how families are changing
‘What we need to do instead is to encourage couples considering having a family to marry and then support them through the trouble-filled early stages.
‘If they can make their marriage work for ten years, their children will have an 80 per cent chance of their family staying together for good.’
Mr Benson said many object to state attempts to influence personal decisions, such as whether to marry. But at the least, he said, the Government should not discourage commitment.
‘Currently, there is a couple penalty on all partners who share a home,’ he said. ‘It can cost parents with one child up to £7,100 a year in lost tax credits the moment they move into together.
‘So the Government is incentivising couples not to commit. Meanwhile it is spending more than the entire defence budget on the costs of family breakdown, £46billion including court fees, child truancy, juvenile delinquency and related incidents of crime.
‘No less important is the unseen personal impact on the lives of our young people. The effects of family instability in early years continue to be felt decades later.’
He added: ‘It may be difficult politically to be seen to favour married couples, but the focus should be on children and giving parents incentives to create the most stable possible environment for bringing up their families.’
David Cameron has spoken regularly about encouraging marriage. But so far ministers have offered only a minor tax break, worth up to £200 a year, to lower income married couples.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2543023/Encourage-marriage-sake-children-Top-judges-advice-Duncan-Smith-combat-high-break-rates-cohabitees.html#ixzz2rPZqSkbk
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