So, society has spoken: to the average person, marriage is fairly irrelevant. It’s not that we are particularly opposed to the institution – it just doesn’t much interest us any more. Whether you have a swanky £50,000 wedding or live in sin, few of us genuinely seem to care. The vast majority believe that there is no difference between being married and cohabiting, even when raising children, and two thirds believe that divorce can be a positive step. Oh, and three quarters of us think that a mother and stepfather can bring up a child just as well as two biological parents. So much for traditional values enjoying a comeback.

These findings, from the latest survey of British Social Attitudes, will make uneasy reading for some politicians. David Cameron has made marriage a linchpin of Tory policy, declaring that tax breaks would be offered for married couples with children if his party won the next election. Halting the disintegration of the family is key to mending our broken society, he says. “We need a big cultural change in favour of fatherhood, in favour of parenting, in favour of marriage.” It is expected that the Tories would allow stay-at-home mothers who look after children to pass on their unused tax allowances to their husbands, which would be worth about £20 a week.

Soon afterwards the Government was accused of raiding Tory policies when Andy Burnham, then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said that there was a “moral case” for promoting marriage.

What might that moral case be? It is generally acknowledged that the children of married parents tend to have better chances in life than those of unmarried ones. According to the Jubilee Centre, a Christian-based social reform organisation, 8 per cent of married couples split up within five years of the birth of a child, compared with a quarter of those who marry after the birth and 52 per cent of cohabitees. Children born to married parents tend to be healthier, perform better in school, and are less likely to have behavioural problems or turn to drugs, heavy drinking or crime.

Penny Mansfield, director of the relationship research organisation One Plus One, says that while “longer relationships are likely to be married relationships”, there is a caveat: the Selection Effect. “The kind of people who get married may well be the kind who have the beliefs and attitudes that would keep them in a marriage, or the capabilities and skills to stay in a relationship,” she says. In other words, it is not neccessarily “being married” that creates the longevity, it is the attitudes and financial status of the type of person who would tend to marry in the first place.

“More disadvantaged people are going to figure more largely in the unmarried group,” says Mansfield. “It doesn’t mean that if you were to take those disadvantaged people and put them through a marriage ceremony, it would solve their problems.”

She agrees that marriage may bring certain unique benefits to a relationship. “It’s clear that getting married makes many people feel more secure. The act of marriage gives a public stamp to their commitment. But for other people, getting married can break them up because they feel bound in.” Indeed, as some cohabitees are fond of saying: “Not being married means that you get to keep choosing each other every day.”

So, if society doesn’t give two hoots about marriage, are politicians, however well intentioned, out of step with the electorate? Is it naive to think that a wedding certificate will stop juvenile deliquency? On the other hand, wouldn’t even marriage-sceptics agree that any drive to give children a more stable upbringing was sensible?

We asked six experts if they thought the State would be right to provide financial incentives to marry: a probation officer, a former head teacher, a Relate worker, a magistrate, a priest and a police officer.

Terry Hammersely is a magistrate and former teacher who lives in Norfolk. He stresses that his views are personal and not representative of the Magistrates’ Association or any judicial body, but he believes it is simplistic to think that society’s ills would be cured merely by getting more people down the aisle.

“I can’t think of anything more ineffectual than giving couples £20 and hoping that will shore up marriage,” he says. “I understand what David Cameron is trying to do: he sees the family as the root of everything, and this is a kind of moral rearmament. And, yes, sometimes the type of parents who undertake marriage vows possibly do have a different quality of commitment and values to those who don’t. They have shown their children that there is a value in loyalty and faithfulness, and to a certain extent that might rub off on them. But it isn’t necessarily the case.”

He argues that many factors are involved in family break-ups, and “you would need a broad imagination to think that people would change their attitudes to one another for a couple of tenners a week”.

“The issue with most of the young people who come in front of us [in court] is that they come from homes that are in poverty,” says Hammersley. “It’s not the fact that mum and dad are married that’s most important, it’s what they can provide for their child in terms of resources. A single mother can often access quite good resources. Social inequality is the real problem.”

Carole Whitty, a former head teacher, is now deputy general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers. She spent years teaching in Birmingham and the Midlands. In her experience, too, marriage is not a miracle solution. “A stable family is obviously the best possible start that you can give a child, but it isn’t always marriage that creates this stability,” she says. “Young people know if their parents are only staying together for their sake, and sometimes that becomes more upsetting. If parents do separate, it is the way they manage the separation that makes the crucial difference.

“It may well be preferable for one parent to be at home during the very early years of a child’s life, but it isn’t an exact science. The most important thing is for children to know that they are loved and cared for, and that there is routine and consistency in their lives.”

Whitty says that society is still coming to terms with the economic and social changes of the past 20 years, such as more women going out to work. She adds that children today are less dependent on their parents for their views and values. “The growth of TV and the internet has made a very significant change to their lives,” she says. “We didn’t have easy access to other sets of ideas or values when we were children.

“As to marriage, there are often complex reasons why people prefer not to get married. I realise that David Cameron is making a political statement with this policy, but a £20 tax break is hardly going to make the difference he seeks.

“One pregnant woman told me recently that she would love to stay at home with her baby for a while, but that it would have to be an enormous tax break to help with her mortgage.”

Whitty also believes that we should keep “juvenile deliquency” in perspective. “We hear so much about gangs and disorder on the street . . . I have been in education for 35 years and gangs are nothing new. When I taught in Birmingham in the 1970s we had street gangs and fights between schools. In those schools now, you’ll find that things are a lot more controlled and disciplined.”

The belief that the quality of a couple’s relationship, rather than its legality, is what matters seems to be a consistent one. Sue Parkes, chief executive of Relate for Greater Manchester South, says that showing mutual respect in a relationship is the example that we should be setting children first and foremost. “We need to show children good-quality long-term relationships, married or unmarried, where there is genuinely an equal partnership,” she says.

“I know children who have been raised brilliantly by single parents. I wouldn’t like to prescribe to any woman what she should do. But I do think children need something to aspire to – and that is a stable family life. Some children live in difficult family circumstances where the parent changes partners constantly. They need stability, but that doesn’t have to mean marriage.”

And the tax break? “I don’t think £20 a week is going to be a carrot to many people. There’s no longer such a tradition of saving to buy your first house together, then having kids. People get married later in life when they are financially stable.

“Yes, it’s lovely for children to go home from school and mum is there. And it’s true that when both parents work it creates extra stresses, with shift-work and people working away from home. But with fragmented families to whom £20 may seem attractive, those mothers are probably at home anyway. And it isn’t a big enough amount to appeal to those who aren’t.

“It would be more constructive for employers to make it easier for parents to spend more time with children at home.”

Father Philip Chester, of St Matthew’s Church, Westminster, believes on the other hand that marriage is “desperately important” and hugely beneficial to the community. “It is a gift that brings stability, generosity of love and selflessness,” he says – a public declaration of love in a world in which fewer people engage with their wider community, preferring to remain in their homes. However, he is not sure that promoting marriage via the tax system is helpful. “Marriage is part of the fabric of our society and it is good for the State to recognise and value that,” he says, “but it should never be about money”.

He believes that marriage should not be an easy thing to enter – or exit: “If it is done too easily, it loses its worth”.

Bernard McEldowney is a police officer in the West Midlands and deputy chairman of the Gay Police Association. In Coventry, where he works, officers are often called to deal with domestic rows and antisocial behaviour. “If a couple are having a lot of rows, that can impact on the children, who may grow up thinking that it’s normal. They may then repeat the pattern,” he says.

“Nothing in life is so simple that it can be cured by one thing. I know a woman who has raised five kids on her own and they have all turned out great. None has been in trouble. After her husand died and she became a single mother, it didn’t mean that they all went off the rails.

“Obviously families can provide a stabilising influence, but some families don’t. It is the quality of the care that counts.”

In some families, he says, criminal habits are passed down through generations. “If you have a father who goes out doing burglaries, there’s a chance that you’ll do the same. A mother might be better off bringing up kids on her own than having a husband who’s always off doing robberies. Sometimes two women can create a better environment in which to raise a child than a man and a woman. It’s common sense.

“I think kids have too much time on their hands now, and nowhere to go. Parents are spending more time at work, doing more overtime. Part of the answer is having more social centres for young people.”

Barry O’Doherty is from NAPO, the union of probation workers, and works with young people on Merseyside. He believes that the reasons for young people offending today are complex. “There is a lot of hopelessness around,” he says. “No one is against marriage – stability is a good thing – but this sounds like soundbite politics.”

O’Doherty is deeply critical of the idea of tax breaks for marriage. “A lot of people are poor. They might be desperate for £20. So are you going to put a potentially unsuitable couple together for £20?” he asks. “For the past 25 years we have been subjecting children to advertising campaigns which say that greed is good. We are obsessed by celebrity, by TV programmes such as Big Brother.You don’t unravel all this with one simple policy. The inference is that stopping kids offending is easily done. But it’s going to be a long haul.

“Personally, I would invest in youth clubs, with people trained as youth workers to work alongside kids doing energetic activities. When I was a kid there were loads of youth clubs, but you don’t see so many now because it costs money.

“David Cameron’s policy is a gimmick. If it worked, it would be wonderful: life would be easy. But I think it’s naive, unmanageable and potentially dangerous.”

So have the results of last week’s survey caused a rethink within the Conservative Party? A response from the Shadow Families Minister, Maria Miller, seems to suggest less emphasis on marriage and more on ending the system in which couples benefit from living apart. “There is strong evidence that children benefit the most from, whenever possible, having both parents involved together in their upbringing,” says Miller. “But at the moment the benefits system pays couples more to live apart than to live together. It is vital that we end the couple penalty so that families are not forced apart.” No one, presumably, would argue with that. It is the idea of prodding couples into staying together when they may no longer want to that seems to cause the most concern. As Penny Mansfield says, it was the “shotgun” marriages of the late Sixties and Seventies, when it was still considered shameful to be pregnant and unmarried, that contributed to the huge divorce rates a decade later. There is now a raft of high-achieving, middle-class, cohabitee parents who are bringing up well-educated, happy children but who don’t tend to be considered in the loaded, catch-all phrase “unmarried parents”.

In a large-scale US study into disadvantaged children and their families in 2006, it was found that in a third of cases it was recommended that the couple should not be encouraged to stay together because there was a history of violence between them, or the father had been jailed for violent crime.

In the 21st century, marriage seems to have lost its status. We can only wait and see if politicians can turn back the clock.

66%
say there is little difference socially between being married and living together

53%
say a wedding is more about a celebration than a lifelong commitment

48%
say living with a partner shows just as much commitment as getting married

28%
say married couples make better parents than unmarried ones

63%
say divorce can be a positive first step towards a new life

78%
say that it is not divorce that harms children, but conflict between their parents

Source: British Social Attitudes Survey, 2008

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