from The Tablet

Feature Article, 3 March 2007

The best chance to grow

Terry Prendergast

As politicians clash over the beneficial nature of marriage for child-rearing, they ignore the nurture provided by the public consent, commitment and covenant that makes it one of the most advantageous places for the development of adult well-being

According to the Education Secretary Alan Johnson, "strong relationships provide the key to successful parenting and marriage represents the pinnacle of a strong relationship, requiring a public commitment between two people". Mr Johnson, a candidate for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party, was speaking on Tuesday at a lecture hosted by Relate, the marriage guidance charity, and just days after David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader, also voiced support for marriage.

But from there on the two parties differ. Mr Cameron wants to support marriage with tax breaks; Mr Johnson in his lecture went on to say that children can be brought up just as effectively by single mothers as by a married couple. And that couple, according to Johnson, are no more effective than a cohabiting one.

The return of marriage to the political agenda comes at a time when fewer people than ever before are taking the marital plunge. The latest report from the Office for National Statistics suggests that marriage is in sharp decline yet again. There does appear to be a continuing slide, interrupted possibly for a three-year period between 2003 and 2005. Certainly within the last 10 years the number of marriages within the Catholic Church has declined, in line with religious services across all the Churches (10,953 in 2005, down from 11,519 in 2004). There is a continuing trend for men and women to marry at a later age and this has undoubtedly had an impact on these figures.

But take a closer look at the politicians' chief concerns about marriage or the lack of it. When National Marriage Week was launched last month at the House of Commons, the former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith spoke about his recent report, Breakdown Britain, which highlighted that the cost of family breakdown appears to have risen by about £7 billion in a 10-year period. However, what was most striking about his comments was that he stressed the importance of marriage for the stability of society, never once mentioning the importance for the couple themselves, their health or their well-being.

This is a typical approach for a politician, as government, and would-be governing parties, tend to be concerned more with social stability than with personal and emotional health. And that reflects a clear failure to understand that the former depend on the latter. A similarly narrow perspective can be observed in the government department that part-funds my organisation, Marriage Care, and the other relationship support organisations.

Following the Victoria Climbie tragedy, the Government embarked upon its initiative Every Child Matters - not an initiative that anyone could really disagree with. However, one impact of the development has been a greater emphasis on parenting, and a diminishing focus on, and thus concern for, the adult couple and their relationship. There is no doubt that the light has been dimmed around the couple, while "reactive" might be an epithet applied to the Government's parenting initiative.

This week's comments from cabinet members on what purports to be family policy differences, actually part of the leadership scramble in the Labour Party, neatly sum up the problem. Alan Johnson indicated that the "prejudices of yesterday's generation" (marriage, presumably) cannot dictate policy or direction, before going on to describe marriage as a pinnacle of relationships. While in Marriage Care we don't debate which kind of family is best - because we are prepared to work with and support all who come to our doors recognising that, for those in distress, such arguments are irrelevant - research does suggest that children in strong adult relationships do best and that those within marriages do better. The process shouldn't therefore denigrate marriage, and denude it of resource, which seems to be the preferred solution; rather, it ought to be about learning from these strengths and applying them to other forms of family.

The problem with the politicians' insistence that we emphasise parenting and their drive to get the relationship organisations to focus on this aspect of family life fails to take account of the fact that the work and life of the adults in a family tends to be more than parenting.

But those of us who are keen to support marriage should also beware the pitfalls. Marriage itself has a chequered history. The so-called golden age of marriage, in the post-war period up until the late 1960s, hid the fact that marriage was often patriarchal and unequal in the main. Certainly, regardless of how the couple felt about each other, advertising and attitudes supported such a view of marriage. It is possible that the current rise in cohabitation, for example, is a continuing reaction to that period.

However, marriage is undoubtedly an important and dynamic element in our society. By this, I do not mean as an institution or a means of achieving social stability but as a developmental, exciting and troubling relationship between two people. The current fashion for spending huge amounts of money on the wedding, the day, and seeming not to put too many resources into building and sustaining the marriage, the life, is all too obvious.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, also at the launch of National Marriage Week, noted that marriage is for life, in the sense that it is permanent and also that a couple get a life for themselves from the relationship. The importance of the public commitment between the couple in marriage has to be understood, both for the couple themselves and for the wider community. The public commitment encapsulates the notion of sacrament, made up of the elements of consent, commitment and covenant. The public nature of the sacrament not only breathes life into the couple but also into all of those who witness the event and feel its impact as the years go by, most notably any children born to the marriage.

Given this, it is hard to believe that we in the Catholic Church, or the other Churches for that matter, take seriously the nature of marriage as a sacrament because we put so little emphasis on the need to prepare for probably the most important decision that an adult will make in his or her life. This fact sits at odds with the way that the Church, quite rightly, emphasises the importance of preparation, training and the renewal of vows for several years for those in Religious life or priestly formation. It is a further irony that it is possible to have release from these vows after they have been made finally, whereas there is no release from marriage vows, other than through death or annulment.

One of the key issues with marriage preparation is what the focus should be, and also how efficacious such a process is. Sadly, most of the serious research has taken place in the United States. The battle rages between the importance of skills work or attitudes. Of course, it is neither one nor the other, but both. Marriage Care has offered both types of marriage preparation for some time but we have been relatively unsuccessful in getting couples to follow both programmes. Although it is clear from our evaluations that couples do enjoy the work with us, many arrive at the start of the course in a resistant mood.

Despite the recent figures of a substantial decrease in marriage, it does remain the world's most sought-after adult partnership. As chairman of the International Commission for Couples and Family Relationships, I have regular contact with colleagues across the globe and, while there is concern about its state and status, marriage is still aspired to.

In marriage, and any subsequent family that develops from the relationship, it is the adults who set the climate. They have the responsibility to make it all work. The couple are the ones who are the focus of everyone's attention when things don't go well. And yet, we ask so much of them and offer so little to start them on their way.
Any long-term relationship, as I have said, is going to be dynamic, troubling and troublesome. Difficulties are inherent, along with the joys. However, when things don't go well, relationship difficulties are seized on and couples feel stigmatised. In supporting the couple, there is a need to normalise these difficulties so that couples can continue to seek support when they need.

We need to remember the words of the American writer M. Scott Peck: "Love is not an emotion, it is a verb: it has to be worked at." Surely there is work also for all of us there in keeping the focus on the couple and helping them prepare and then sustain their lives together in love?