From the editor’s desk

Incentives for marriage

Should the Government regard stable marriage as better than all other forms of family structure, particularly single parenthood and unmarried partnerships? This is the first question brought up by the publication of an interim report of the Conservative Party's Social Justice Policy Group, and the answer is undoubtedly "yes". It is not only Christian teaching that says that a permanent commitment between two people of the opposite sex provides the most favourable circumstances for raising children. The statistical evidence is so overwhelming that even opponents of marriage have conceded the point. But the second question the report raises is more complicated. Can government do anything to influence behaviour in the desired direction, thereby reducing the damage to children and society from lone parenthood and family breakdown? The report seems to think so, but the honest answer is that there is no quick fix, and probably no slow one either. 

It is very doubtful, for instance, whether restoring tax incentives for marriage, the Conservative Party's preferred solution, will increase the overall stability of family life. The act of marrying for material gain will bring nothing to the relationship that was not already there. When such incentives were last in place they were one of a range of social and political supports for marriage that have been eroded over the years almost to vanishing point. The decline in the influence of religion, once a mainstay of marriage, has had a profound effect. So has the revolution - welcome as it is - in the role and status of women in society. Alcohol and drug abuse have become easily available palliatives for people living unhappy lives without thought for the future. The media on a daily basis pumps out the message that casual sex is mere harmless fun.

So this Christmas, the report's portrait of Britain as a society not at ease with itself is a true one. But there are many deep-rooted factors at work. Family breakdown, which certainly leads to much misfortune and misery, is one symptom. But to extract it from the mix and regard it as the cause of all the others is simplistic. And it is a myth that discrimination in favour of marriage can be done painlessly. It would be matched by discrimination against other family types, single parenthood in particular. Those who would pay the price are an already disadvantaged group of children, for tax breaks for the married would be matched by a reduction in support elsewhere.

The Tory social justice group, headed by Iain Duncan Smith who is well known to be a committed Catholic, has little to say about economic inequality and its effect on the family, focusing instead on promoting marriage through fiscal policy. Britain's Churches must be wary of falling into the same trap by regarding tax breaks as a short cut back to an idealised Christmas-card view of traditional marriage. Indeed, changes likely to make the lot of single-parent families even more difficult must be rejected as the work of Scrooge.

The best that government can do in this area is to send unambiguous signals through all the channels it controls, to the effect that the bearing and raising of children should not be undertaken except as a wholly serious commitment by the two people concerned. The Government's recent promise to hold absent fathers financially responsible for the support of their offspring could - if fulfilled - do more than any tax breaks to bring this message home.