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Requiem for the marriage?

London: The institution of marriage took another knock on Wednesday when British government statisticians reported that the number of weddings in England and Wales in 2006 was the lowest for 110 years.

Marriages made a significant comeback between 2002 and 2004, but fell by 9 per cent in 2005 in England and Wales, when the long-term trend towards cohabitation out of wedlock resumed.

Provisional figures released for 2006 showed there were 236,980 marriages, a further 4 per cent decline, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.

The Opposition Conservatives promptly blamed the decline on the government’s policies. The party’s home affairs spokesman, David Davis, said: “This is a sad indictment of policies which have penalised families and fuelled family breakdown. Stable families are the best formula for bringing up children and preventing delinquency, antisocial behaviour and crime, so a failed family policy is itself a major cause of crime.”

The Church of England attributed the fall in marriages to a “continued trend of couples delaying marriage or avoiding it altogether, not least in the mistaken idea that cohabitation is a form of marriage.”

A spokesman for the Church said marriage remained the best option. “Marriage affirms the goodness and rightness of love between a man and woman, affirms this in the public sphere, beyond private arrangements, and is the best option for couples to grow together in mutual support.”

The ONS suggested that the decrease in marriages was partly due to a change in the law in February 2005, designed to crack down on “sham” marriages for purposes such as securing a visa.

For every 1,000 unmarried men, only 22.8 got married in 2006, compared with 24.5 in 2005. The 2006 figure was the lowest since records began in 1862. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2008

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