The Divorce rate has hovered around the thirty-plus per cent mark for many years. It’s a fairly well known figure, and something of a catastrophe in its own right. What the media don’t often reveal is that the family breakdown rate for non-married couples with children is about four times higher. In this situation, of course, you can’t have four times thirty percent, as that would exceed 100%. But the statistics point to the truth; the big majority of cohabiting couples with children break up.
Cohabiting couples now account for over one half of family breakdown despite making up only a fifth of parents. In addition to the pain the parents themselves suffer, the crucial impacts on children are both massive and well documented. We consider ourselves a society that protects children, but here is a failure to do so. Government abolished the term “marital status” in 2003, so recent government-sponsored family research refers only to “couple parent families“. This combined category conceals the huge difference in outcomes between unmarried and married couples. The media mostly plays along. There are those, such as the tiny Marriage Foundation, who try to argue for a fresh enhancement of the status of marriage on purely practical grounds; but this goes against the relentless promotion of Political Correctness and Feminism. Marriage sounds too much like Christianity. This is not what today’s Politicians, Press and People want.
There is plenty more on the web if you know where to find it, for example the Telegraph here (Christian Rethink directing people to the Telegraph? Even we are surprised!) and loads of statistics and analysis on Researchgate here. Also, this quote and article from the Marriage Foundation: “birth control broke the age-old prerequisite that men had to prove their long term intentions before getting what they wanted” here. How different things would be if girls said “I’d love to sleep with you after we’re married” rather than missing those last few words. How different things would be if we all had respect for the plans God has for us.