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Summer 2013 Newsletter now available

08-May-2013

On the anniversary of the Marriage Foundation's launch Paul Coleridge looks back over the solid achieve- ments of the first year and says that "there is everything to play for. Please continue to stand with us."

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Second marriages are less likely to end in divorce than first

29-Apr-2013

The Marriage Foundation think-tank has produced a report revealing that second marriages are more stable than first marriages, challenging the widely held belief that couples who remarry are doomed to repeat the mistakes from their first marriage.

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Startling new MF research on UK divorce rate

06-Feb-2013

New report shatters the common assumption that the divorce rate for all couples is higher than it was in the 1960s. If a married couple survive the first ten years of marriage, their risk of divorce is the same as it has been in the previous four decades.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Question: Why a UK Marriage Foundation?

Answer: We have lost confidence in marriage as an institution at the heart of families, and our ability to sustain healthy relationships seems more limited. The consequences are not just more personal pain and sorrow, but many wider social costs.  

We are not the flotsam of social trends. We make choices. The Marriage Foundation seeks to change the way we think about those choices – as individuals and as a society.

If we are going to have a happier society, a society where there is greater wellbeing,  then the statistics are quite clear: children are best brought up in committed, loving relationships – and the best of these are marriages. 

The Marriage Foundation seeks neither to preach nor to reject the evidence before us. There are many areas in life where we are happy to set a ‘gold standard’ of best practice and seek to change behaviour. So why not with marriage?
Question: Are you trying to turn back the clock?

Answer: Whatever the past, or the prospects for the future, we have to take responsibility for how we live now. The pain of broken relationships, and the wider costs to society are being borne today.

Rooted in a rigorous understanding of people’s hopes and fears, the pressures they face, and the consequences of our choices and actions, we believe we can and should shift the tide in favour of marriage.

People do still want to get married. In a 2007 IpsosMORI/Civitas survey of 1560 young people (aged 20-35) across the UK, 62 per cent of unmarried parents wanted to marry. Young people want certain things in place before tying the knot: the top three being a partner to whom they want to commit, financial stability and home ownership. The decline in marriage is a symptom of thwarted aspirations, not a rejection of the institution.
Question: Why do you think marriage is important?

Answer: Marriage is the most common form of partnership for men and women with six times as many couple families being married as cohabiting. Committed, intentionally formed, publicly recognised relationships provide the most robust and stable framework for mutual support within couple relationships, and for the care and upbringing of children. We believe that strengthening the institution of marriage is of great benefit to society through increasing wellbeing and reducing the costs and pain of broken relationships.
Question: Isn’t it better to support parenting rather than marriage?

Answer: Quality of relationship does, of course, matter. And there will be long-lasting healthy co-habitations, and unhealthy marriages that break down quickly. But in supporting marriage we need to remember two vital points:


First, marriage is a proven route to stronger relationships and this is not just a result of a ‘selection effect’. 

Secondly, quality of relationships alone doesn’t confer all protection and rights, nor give clarity as to public status. The public legal status of marriage is beneficial in and of itself, as well as a result to the quality of relationship that we believe it fosters and sustains.
Question: Is the MF engaged in the current debate around the definition of marriage?

Answer: No. It is not what we are about. The fundamental concern which underlies and so drives the establishment of the Marriage Foundation is in relation to family breakdown and its destructive effects on the lives of children. One of our primary aims is to reduce the number of children caught up in the family justice system and the misery which they experience as a result. For obvious reasons those children are almost entirely located within heterosexual partnerships. We believe that championing the case for marriage “as the gold standard” is the best way of ameliorating this problem. That is, in itself, a huge task and, as a fledgling organisation, we do not have the resources to engage in any other or different campaigns. Accordingly we have nothing we want to say in the current debate.
Copyright 2013 Marriage Foundation