The Hope of Something Better

My friend Ann Farmer recently had this excellent letter in the Daily Telegraph:

Peter Oborne is right to highlight political continuity between New Labour and the Coalition’s approach to the family.

Those who espouse “new” family styles ignore the wealth of evidence that demonstrates the value of marriage. Implicit in the anti-marriage stance is the assumption that marriage is bad for women. On the contrary, marriage is good for women, who tend to value security over the “freedom” of the sexual libertines and social anarchists.

Mr Oborne does not mention that the “new family” also holds an appeal for capitalists, since it is good for the economy: more relationship break-ups equal more houses sold, more domestic appliances purchased and – if we wish to be really cynical – more toys purchased to placate distressed children. But creating emotionally insecure children will not be good for our economy and is already a tremendous drag on productivity.

Giving faux marital rights to cohabiting couples is a revolution that will simply return us to the less civilised times that existed before marriage, with women suffering from a lack of security for themselves and their children, accepting abusive, second-best relationships in the hope of something better that will never materialise.