More about marriage and kids

Don't mention the M-word - The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Jeremy Sammut suspects that academics in Australia are too devoted to supporting "family diversity" to come out and admit that marriage has the best outcome for kids, and single parenthood the worst.

I suspect that he may be right.

I have complained about this before:  if governments want to promote good outcomes for kids, they should really be promoting marriage.  Not de facto relationships.  Unfortunately, as the government saves money by treating welfare recipients living together as if they were a married couple, it seems hard to find a way for the government to encourage people into marriage via how benefits work.

And of course, if they did find a way to do this, we would go through the same boring "but why are you discriminating against us just because we don't have a piece of paper:  are you doubting we love each other?" arguments that we got in the 1970's when recognition of de facto relationships really got a kick along.  

I wonder if anyone really has come up with plausible ways government can encourage marriage.

The Prime Minister getting married to her long term partner would, of course, be a good first step!

Update:  someone in the Atlantic warns against promoting marriage by painting too rosy a picture about it.  Fair enough too.