Clegg & Marriage

[Marmora Man]

Today Nick Clegg and assorted Lib Dems attacked Conservative proposals to recognise marriage by giving married couples certain tax breaks.

Research certainly seems to support the proposition that, at a macro level, marriage is a better way to bring up children - providing greater stability, improved educational outcomes, reduced demand on social services, less likelihood of children developing depression, becoming dependent on drugs or alcohol and a reduced likelihood of teenage pregnancy.

Of course we all know happy and stable couples, with succesful and happy, well adjusted children that are not married.

Clegg has said:

1. "There is a limit on what the state should seek to do in organising people's private lives"

2. "I do not think that offering people 20 quid back would make much difference to people's decisions"

Only a Lib Dem could utter two such contradictory statements in one discussion.

On point 1 - the state interferes in people's lives every day and at many levels, generally for the greater good - sometimes to placate accepted opinions. Areas such as:

* Speed limits

* Carbon taxes

* Laws making burglary, violence, rape & murder illegal

* Smoking bans

* Licensing requirements for music

* Planning laws

* Seat belt laws

* Motor cycle helmet laws

and we could all add to this list.

QUESTION: Is using the tax system to encourage and applaud mariage a reasonable political decision?

I would answer yes - despite my libertarian instincts. The proposal does not make marriage compulsory, so freedom of choice remains, yet it adopts the "nudge" theory to gently persuade people to adopt a way of life that reduces, at a macro level, the cost of broken homes to society.

[Huguenot]

Clegg is absolutely right when he says that this is harking back to 1950s ideology.

It's also a measure of the Victorian thinking and complete cultural and modern disconnect behind this that considers any non-nuclear family to be a 'broken home'.

Whilst I agree that we need constructive and inclusive social structures, I see no reason why marriage should be the foundation of this. Marriage also gave us the subordination and exploitation of women, battered wives and desperate loveless contracts grinding us down to early deaths.

I see no data that proves that more kids are suffering through reduction in marriages than adults are benefitting through the freedom to exit destructive relationships.

This is the age of information and equality, of education and opportunity, of mobility and flexibility. These have the largest influence on the longevity of marriages - not a twenty quid incentive.

The largest instigators of divorce are women, and the most influential decision makers in being single parents are women.

It's rather insulting to women to ask them to give up all their hard earned freedoms and right to self-determination for the sake of a paltry cash bonus. This is what Cameron is really doing - telling women to put their apron back on for the sake of the kids.

I suspect it would only be authoritarian right wing 50+ males that would see this as a desirable and reasonable objective.

[El Pibe]

With divorce rates up reversing a long term decline, and this time taking a greater toll among those who have been married for five years or longer, it suggests that you are asking the wrong question.

Tinkering taxes and nudging is irrelevant, what the coalition need to do is get the economy moving again.

[Huguenot]

Agreed - in that sense marriage tax breaks don't achieve anything at all.

They're only really useful as cynical vote winning strategies amongst the over 50s just when it looks like the coalition is under pressure.

Oh, hang on...

[Jeremy]

I think the proposal is totally nuts. You can't force a relationship to work by encouraging marriage. And you can't assume that unmarried parents are somehow not as well equipped to raise children. The only thing that matters is whether it is a loving, caring family.

There is no point trying to apply a statistical argument - this is confusing correlation with causation.

The government have no place trying to influence our private lives. I simply don't understand the analogy with laws concerning road safety and violent crime - things which can have a severe impact on other peoples lives. What would come next... bribes for going to church?

But much as I disagree with Marmora Man, I also take issue with Huguenot's claim that "marriage gave us subordination and exploitation of women". Violent, nasty, misogynist men would exist regardless of marital status.

[womanofdulwich]

But for your children its nice if their parents are married- they are not bastards and they feel secure. The only problem is that some people insist on ridiculous expensive weddings. A small celebration wedding is lovely for everyone. But the pressure to have the perfect ?5k-?10k plus wedding puts everyone off.

[Huguenot]

"But much as I disagree with Marmora Man, I also take issue with Huguenot's claim that "marriage gave us subordination and exploitation of women". Violent, nasty, misogynist men would exist regardless of marital status."

Fair point, but you missed a key work - 'also' - I wasn't suggesting that marriage created this in isolation.

What it certainly created was a legal contract that enshrined the opportunity to exploit women and bound them to men by making unmarried mothers financially disadvantaged and social pariahs.

PLEASE REMEMBER - a financial benefit for a 'married' woman is exactly the same as a financial penalty for an 'unmarried' woman.

I cannot seriously believe that our society is so backward to ignore this self-evident reality.

[Otta]

But for your children its nice if their parents are married- they are not bastards and they feel secure.

Firstly, I can't believe that anyone would still use the term "bastard" in this day and age. Secondly, I suspect children of unmarried couples feel just as secure, assuming their parents seem to get on well, I'd imagine they feel secure. A child in a home with two constantly arguing adults will not feel so secure, whether there is a marriage certificate or not.

[El Pibe]

"they are not bastards" Wow, is this the 21st or 11th century?

Jerejmy makes some good points, I guess ata pinch huguenot could be referring to marraige historically, where marriage was essentially formal contract of ownership of the woman by the man. Luckily society has moved on since then and I doubt anybody uses 'honour and obey' any more.

I'm not convinced that the statistics are coincidence rather than correlation.

These are however factors that need to be taken into account. Long lasting marriages pull the numbers up as they started in an era that relationships outside of marriage were still frowned upon by society. Also marriage can still exert an influence in keeping bad relationships together though less so than children despite every study showing that staying together 'for the sake of the kids' is actualy the worst case scenario.

The fact that massive amounts of data lean towards marriage lasting longer than unmarried relationships should never ever be used to denigrate the quality of those unmarried relationships that millions of people enjoy.

I think it's that outmoded and judgmental nature of the precepts that this debate is based upon that is guaranteed to raise hackles.

As I said it's asking the wrong question.

It's not should we encourage marriage as a solution to strengthening relationships, its how do we encourage stronger relationships? I think alot of the problems have to do with the atomisation of society with it's erosion of support networks, the disposable nature of everything and the unrealistic expectations that the media bombard everyone with.

Other than some sort of educational efforts I'm not sure there's an awful lot that government can do.

edited to remove superfluous asterisk and to agree with Jeremy that this really isn't the government's business.

I'm not surprised at marmora man making an exception to his libertartian instincts. Libertarians/small gov't types aways do when it comes to law and order, the military and reinforcing conservative (with a small c) ideas of how people in this country should live their lives.

[Jeremy]

Can we please have no more talk of "bastards" or illegitimacy - it is offensive, outdated, and incredibly insensitive.

As Otta says, marriage is no guarantee of stability, happiness, or feeling "nice".

You can't force good parenting with bribes. There are other things the government can do to help... but this isn't one of them.

[Marmora Man]

So the EDF has spoken. Marriage is old fashioned, misogynistic and does nothing for society or children. Furthermore any attempt by government to persuade people to marry, and remain married, is an inappropriate intervention into personal lives.

EXCEPT - it's worth reading some of the research and a background paper that preceded the floating of the policy idea. Have a look at the Centre for Social Justice website. A brief summary is below:

The "brokeness" in society and the riots of the summer were / are not simply about lack of money. These problems are driven by a number of factors:

? family breakdown,

? educational failure,

? intergenerational worklessness

? welfare dependency, drug and alcohol addiction

? severe personal debt.

These are interconnected - children who experience family breakdown are more likely to fail at school. Those failing at school, surrounded by a culture of worklessness, are more likely to end up unemployed and on benefits. Debt as well as drug and alcohol abuse also tend to emerge when an individual?s life appears to have no purpose. Destructive and demoralising patterns of life tend to be passed from one generation to another.

Breaking the link between parenthood and marriage has, arguably, introduced instability into society in general, and into the poorest communities in particular, because informal partnering greatly increases the risk of single parenthood.

Fewer than one in ten married parents have split by the time a child is five, whereas more than one in three, who were not married, will have split. Where parents were not living together when a child is born the break-up rate is ghreater than one in two.

MM says: The fact is that marriage is good for children and good for society - it is therfore both rational and appropriate that government(s) promotes what is good for children and good for society. The policy does not demand or require marriage - it is not enforcing change, but merely signalling, with a relatively small sum of money, that government approves of marriage. Nor is not a black and white equation where approval of something must mean disapproval of something else.

The taxation policy is but one, small, part of a wider strategy to tackle similar and related issues.

[Huguenot]

It's just that correlation/causation thing MM.

You've argued that unmarried parents cause all the other problems and can be solved by giving people a financial incentive to marry.

Others are arguing that all the other problems exist anyway, and creating financial penalties for people who don't get married is just going to add one more tragedy into the mix.

[*Bob*]

It's not the 'getting married' that gives you a better chance of not splitting-up.. it's just that people who are less likely to split-up anyway are more likely to get married.

How you square being a 'libertarian' whilst at the same time giving the thumbs-up to nanny-state 'encouragement' regarding the single most personal life decision that most people will ever make (or not).. well.. I don't think you can!

[womanofdulwich]

I think you will find the B word used as a bullying tactic in the playground-just warning you. Its not nice but children are not nice sometimes.

[*Bob*]

I assume it would be a term they'd picked-up from their unenlightened, outdated parents.

[Jeremy]

As others have said... people get married because (generally) they are already committed to each other and their future families. They don't become dedicated parents because they are married.

I am honestly surprised that this even needs explaining. The stats are meaningless, the argument is pointless, and the proposed policy is absurd.

edited to say - and this is coming from somebody who is happily married.

[womanofdulwich]

i think that a lot of people are put off now by the whole wedding thing; but actually in terms of what happens when you die it is much better to be married. Several of my friends have slooped off with no fuss to have a small wedding to formalise a loving relationship.

Caitin Moran covers this beautifully in her book How to be a Woman.

[david_carnell]

MamoraMan - I often disagree with you but in the past I have seen a logic of thought and a purity of ideology which I have respected.

In this though, you offer a hypocritical standpoint in order to align it with your socially conservative viewpoints.

As others highlight, this is as bizarre as it is misguided.

[binary_star]

Oh dear... are failing relationships rescued by marriage?

Using correlations as conclusive evidence of causation = massive fail, as this Wikipedia example (yeh yeh) illustrates...

In a widely-studied example, numerous epidemiological studies showed that women who were taking combined hormone replacement therapy (HRT) also had a lower-than-average incidence of coronary heart disease (CHD), leading doctors to propose that HRT was protective against CHD. But randomized controlled trials showed that HRT caused a small but statistically significant increase in risk of CHD. Re-analysis of the data from the epidemiological studies showed that women undertaking HRT were more likely to be from higher socio-economic groups (ABC1), with better than average diet and exercise regimens. The use of HRT and decreased incidence of coronary heart disease were coincident effects of a common cause (i.e. the benefits associated with a higher socioeconomic status), rather than cause and effect as had been supposed.

[Marmora Man]

MamoraMan - I often disagree with you but in the past I have seen a logic of thought and a purity of ideology which I have respected.

?

In this though, you offer a hypocritical standpoint in order to align it with your socially conservative viewpoints.

?

?

A belief in the benefits of marriage is not incompatible with my libertarian instincts. I do not mandate it, I do not ask the government to legislate to make it compulsory.

?

As for the causation / correlation arguments - yep I understand statistics too. However, I am not suggesting, and nor is that government, that marriage of itself will reduce the incidence of broken families, strssed teenagers, early pregnancies. What is being suggested is that being married is a signal of stability, confidence in the future, long term thinking and planning. The by product of these necessary attributes that lead to marriage are the positive outcomes for children and society in general. So sending a small signal that government approves, makes sense to me.

Those that disagree remain free to ignore the small applauding signal ( or bribe - depending upon stance) and do their own thing.

If the government were to make it compulsory to marry before allowing children to be born I would be in the vanguard with fellow protesters - but this is not the case.

[El Pibe]

I'm not sure. A bit weaseley if you ask me.

Libertarians go bonkers over benefits for the unemployed and single mums.

Neither of which mandate those situations but apparently encourage it.

I'm fine with you encouraging one situation over another, but don't pretend it has anything to do with political instincts and admit they're moralistic ones.

[*Bob*]

Marmora Man Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Those that disagree remain free to ignore the

> small applauding signal ( or bribe - depending

> upon stance) and do their own thing.

It's not the small applauding bribe that grates, really.. it's more the fact that the government will kick the remaining bereaved partner fiscally senseless should their other half/life partner snuff it - unless they've 'made things right'. Hello 40% IHT, goodbye house.

So essentially a shotgun wedding - with HMRC holding the sawn-off. Romantic.

[Magpie]

What the evidence shows is that stable marriage tends, on average, to result in better outcomes for children. Now you may argue that there is an element of self selection involved - ie the most responsible people are likely to marry. However, intuitively it makes sense that a two parent relationship provides a more stable and importantly, financially secure homelife than a single parent relationship, and that couples who marry, tend to stay together longer than those that don't. In particular, it also makes intuitive sense that the absence of a strong male role model has an impact on the behaviour of boys in particular. Hence, you can't dismiss the case for marriage on a causal/correlation argument.

[Jeremy]

Magpie, I think you are confusing the issue by talking about single-parent vs two parent families. That isn't what the debate is about.

The issue is about whether marriage results in a demonstrably more stable family environment (it doesn't), and whether the government should interfere in people's lifestyles and punish those who disagree (they shouldn't).

[Ridgley]

I agree with H and Jeremy on this myself and him indoors have been together 19years coming from two totally different back grounds as well with one daughter works well for us. MM you mentioned the riots who to say that some of those young people didn?t come from parents who are married. I don?t believe that just because you are married that everything is ok and you will have the perfect children.

I am not against marriage but those of us who choose not to should not be penalized for it.