HOW ELITES GET THAT WAY:

[T]he real problem with how relaxed we are about the decline of marriage is that the outcome isn't good for the most important players: the children. As the Centre for Social Justice points out in an excellent report by Sophia Worringer called 'Family Structure Still Matters', even controlling for income and education, there are very different outcomes for children born to married and cohabiting couples; let alone single mothers. It finds that family structure has a greater impact on physical and mental health, school attainment, social and emotional development, than education or income. It's the reality that we don't talk about: commitment counts, though we've yet to see the results of this government's introduction of the exciting concept of no-fault divorce.

The CSJ report points out that: 

'Family breakdown rates vary considerably between cohabiting and married parents: a child of cohabiting parents is more than twice as likely to experience parental separation. After income controls were applied, 88 per cent of married couples were still together when their child was aged five, compared to 67 per cent for cohabitees.' 

We're talking here about what you might call psychological stability or that valuable thing for a child, a sense of security.

As The Spectator established some years ago, marriage is increasingly the preserve of the middle classes. The CSJ report observes that among the top 20 per cent of couples by income, 84 per cent marry; among the bottom 20 per cent, only 45 per cent do so. That wasn't always the case; only a generation or so ago, the working classes married as much as anyone else.

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