On marriage

Madeleine Bunting has an interesting column in The Guardian about the political response in England to high rates of family break up.

I don't agree with her conclusion (politicians should just give up on trying to promote marriage, and just make sure that there are plenty of services to ease the effect of separation on children.) Still, there is interesting information in the article, such as:

Relationship breakdown is not caused simply by poverty and inequality - they may contribute as a stress factor, but something else is going on too. Some of the world's highest separation rates are in Scandinavia, yet countries such as Sweden and Denmark are among the most equal and have the lowest rates of poverty. Other commentators attribute relationship breakdown to increasing working hours and the pressures of employment, but most Scandinavian working cultures are genuinely family friendly.

Just remember that when the ACTU and Labor party go on about Workchoices being bad for families!

She does allow that some deeper cultural issues are probably at play:

What's also involved is that a set of cultural assumptions about how to conduct long-term relationships, and what can be expected of them, have gone seriously askew - as one thirtysomething father said ruefully after the break-up of his relationship, "our generation just can't do it". The right likes to call this moral breakdown, but it's more tragic than that - often it's a kind of lack of emotional capability.

To which I quite liked this response from commenter simonx:

Why on earth are Guardian writers so loathe to praise and support the institution of marriage?

.....today, we have Ms Bunting blaming the break-up of relationships on a ' lack of emotional capability.' Yet loyalty itself should not be dependent, surely, on the whims of emotion. Instead, it is founded on the solemn promises and commitments couples make to each other when children become part of their relationship. There's nothing which underlines these vows better, surely, than the symbolism of marriage.