Time for a pro-marriage political stand

`Being married rather than single, separated, widowed or even remarried has a more powerful impact on well-being than either income or employment. These benefits take the form of better health, longer life, higher income and better outcomes for children. On balance, it seems that men and women benefit about equally in marriage."

This statement obviously has major implications for public policy. It comes from an interim report a few weeks ago of a major study by Dr Kieran McKeown and others undertaken for Marriage and Relationship Counselling Services (MRCS). The study aims to evaluate whether counselling helps distressed relationships.

When the report was issued, most of the headlines were stolen by the fact that women are more likely than men to be the perpetrators of domestic violence. Although these findings merely confirm many studies from other countries, they were sufficiently controversial to distract attention from research which has far greater significance for society. Not that domestic violence is a trivial issue, and policy decisions do need to be changed in accord with these findings.

To take but one example, the "exploring masculinities" programme currently in use in some transition-year programmes must now amend unbalanced and inaccurate claims that men are the major perpetrators of domestic violence. However, the wider implications of the rest of the research deserve far greater attention than they have received.

The Department of Social, Community, and Family Affairs sponsored the MRCS research, and a similar study for Accord also being done by Dr McKeown. These studies, when complete, will provide a fascinating picture of the state of marriage in Ireland. Accord has a greater spread of socioeconomic groups in its clientele than MRCS, but the preliminary findings appear to be remarkably similar.

In recent times the government has been investing considerable resources in research on marriage and family. For example, the Department of Health recently published a major study, Family Well- Being and Family Policy, by Kieran McKeown and John Sweeney. What will be really interesting to see is how these and other Government Departments act on the findings of this kind of research.

Marriage and family are a hot potato politically. No government wants to appear to stigmatise single-parent families or the children of such families. That is entirely as it should be. Far less laudable is the lack of political courage to stand up to powerful lobby groups which for ideological reasons would like to pretend that all family forms are equally valuable in their outcomes for adults, children and society as a whole.

This lack of political guts was famously manifested in the 1998 report from the Commission on the Family. It managed to avoid defining family anywhere at all in its report. This was quite an achievement in a document the size of a telephone directory.

Equally extraordinary was the fact that in its six principles which should inform family policy it avoided mentioning marriage. The authors of the MRCS report comment on this failure rather mildly, saying: "This might seem a little strange when one considers the research evidence on the overall contribution of marriage to well-being."

A little strange indeed, given the analyses in the Family Well-being and Family Policy report of six large databases from the US, UK, Germany, Belgium and Ire land.

These "have shown that marriage is probably the largest single contributor to the well-being of adults, while correspondingly its break-up tends to have a greater negative impact on well-being than any other variable."

In the era of the Celtic Tiger, it might give us pause that the US study speculates that "the beneficial effects of affluence are being more than offset by compositional changes in the marital status of the American population".

Even more startlingly, in the British study, "no amount of improvement in a person's income position appears able to compensate a person for the effects of divorce or separation in Britain". The stresses placed on marriages and families by our newly affluent society may ultimately be more destructive than the scourge of unemployment which bedevilled Irish society for so long.

The authors of the family form and family policy report point out that most family policy in Ireland has been concerned with economics, yet the well-being of relationships is probably more important as a factor in overall well-being. So the old cliche that money cannot buy happiness now has a corollary. A society concerned with the well-being of its citizens should be supporting marriage. That may not be trendy or politically correct, but it is reality.

The MRCS research has some obvious implications. Current school programmes in social, personal and health education have almost no emphasis on preparation for marriage and still less on gender differences in communication and relationships. Women tend to be more demanding of and seek more from marriage, while men tend to withdraw in the face of such demands.

Thus, women are much more likely to "mend or end" relationships, whereas in general men tend to be more committed to continuing their relationships but are more unwilling or unable to deal with conflict and criticism. Any realistic attempt to educate for marriage should take this and other important differences into account.

The implications for children are also enormous. Currently in family policy, health, education and economic factors are accorded much more status as indicators for children's well-being, yet it is now clear from research that a child's experience of a loving relationship between his or her parents has huge implications for a child's happiness.

One obvious and uncontroversial way to support marriage is to fund marriage preparation.

The funding currently provided for marriage support is focused on relationships in distress, but prevention is even more important. Other measures may be more contentious, such as a sustained educational emphasis on benefits of marriage, or on parenting responsibilities regardless of whether parents live together.

Nor should funding for family and marriage support be dependent on political whim. A change of government or a new minister could see current funding scaled back dramatically. This is unacceptable.

The fact that the Government is willing to commit resources to research is commendable. It will be even more commendable if it demonstrates the courage to act on the findings.

bobrien@irish-times.ie