Making much of marriage

Lyndon Bowring, Executive Chairman of CARE, comments on the causes close to the heart of the Christian community

Earlier this year, Celia and I attended the launch of Marriage Week in the Houses of Parliament. CARE, with other Christian ministries, has been actively involved in this initiative for over 25 exciting years.

There’s plenty of research that demonstrates how marriage not only benefits the couples and children concerned but also spills out into society: married couples are more likely to stay together, providing stability and good outcomes for their children.

But sadly, unlike other European countries, couples in the UK aren’t particularly encouraged to marry. In fact, financially they can lose out through the tax system!

For 15 years CARE has asked successive governments to increase the marriage allowance, currently very small, and help single-earner families by allowing one parent to transfer their personal tax allowance to the other. Many women combine employment with motherhood for good financial or professional reasons but those choosing to stay at home whilst their children are young are penalised.

CARE produces an annual report on t he UK’s taxation of married couples compared with other OECD countries but there has been little positive response from politicians. Between 1996 and 2021, 78 per cent of couples were married, but the numbers choosing to co-habit rose from 1.5 million to 3.6 million and these accounted for more than half of all break- ups. The divorce rate is going down apparently, even when married couples are unhappy in their relationship, the vast majority of those who stick it out report they are happy ten years later.

‘Why Britain needs more marriage’ is a Spectator Magazine article by Cara Usher- Smith, a Christian working for the Centre for Social Justice, which CARE knows well. She writes that Germany awards married couples generous tax refunds, as does marriage-friendly Finland where 85 per cent of children still live with both parents at age 18. And Hungary has become a ‘marriage superpower’ with rates soaring by 92 per cent in the last decade as the government has financially rewarded couples to marry. Britain’s ranking in Europe for the number of weddings has slumped to 25th.

Cara writes, “If you ask someone how they ended up in a desperate poverty- stricken situation, be it addicted to drugs, long-term unemployment, sleeping rough or involved in crime… scratch the surface, and what you invariably find is family breakdown.”

Of course, many unmarried couples do a great job and being married is not a guarantee of happiness and success. Sometimes tension, separation and divorce are unavoidable. And we all know of fantastic lone parents raising their children on their own. But how good it would be if our government and society in general woke up and recognised the huge value of marriage for everyone.

This article first appeared in the July 2023 edition of Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.