‘Don’t undermine marriage – put child’s interests first’
Damir Gavorcin
The Catholic Weekly
13th September 2009
Marriage is a total, exclusive and permanent commitment between one man and one woman and is a union oriented towards having children, says Chris Meney, director of the Life, Marriage and Family Centre for the Sydney archdiocese.
He said society should encourage this understanding and privilege marriage.
“It should not merely accord it equivalent status with other forms of adult relationships,” he said. “It is time to be serious about placing the interests of children at the forefront of social policy by preferentially supporting marriage and to cease allowing the wants and desires of individuals to corrode a social institution that is so vital for child wellbeing.”
Mr Meney said recent Australian Bureau of Statistics figures indicating that the number of marriages has reached a 20-year high has been a source for some optimism.
“However, a closer inspection reveals that the crude marriage rate is continuing to bump along at around 5.3 marriages per thousand population compared to 7.1 in 1988,” he said. “As a population Australians are marrying at an older age, a majority of couples are now cohabiting beforehand and there is a steady rise in serial multiple partnerships. This is affecting both adult and child wellbeing.”
A 2006 UK study has reported that “nearly one in two cohabiting parents split up before their child’s fifth birthday compared to one in 12 married parents”.
In Australia, Family Matters journal has reported that 40 per cent of cohabiting relationships will break up in the first five years compared with one in 11 marriages.
“If there is more relationship breakdown then more children are at risk of being adversely affected,” Mr Meney said. “The greater risk of breakdown from cohabitation compared to marriage also has a flow-on effect where parents go on to form later partnerships.
“One longitudinal study of more than 1000 New Zealand children revealed that the more changes in parental living arrangements that girls experience by age 13 the more likely they were to become pregnant by age 20.
“The evidence increasingly indicates that the more parental transitions that children have to cope with, the worse their outcomes in terms of behaviour and early childbearing.”
Mr Meney said at a government and community level we need to stop paying mere lip service to the term “the best interests of the child”.
“If a child’s best interests are served within a marriage between their biological parents then we ought to cease undermining the meaning of marriage.”
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