AIBU to be very shocked only 3% of unmarried parents stay together until child is 16!

[littlemoominmamma]

3% is nothing!!! It is soooo sad. 1 out of every 3 couples have seperated before the child is 5yrs old

I am now glad that the tories are going to give married couples help.

ps, my children are having a much more stable and happy upbringing than my x had. his miserable parents stayed together til they were in their 20s.

hiding behind a marriage as though it were some sort of excellent template for being a great parent is a smoke screen. people need to stop patting themselves on the back for being married, as though that somehow counteracted the bad atmosphere and the tension and the rows and so on.

maggie, I am far more concerned that people should stress test their relationships with a year or two of cohabitation, before entering into marriage or bringing children into it, than with marriage itself.

My parent's generation where cohabitation before marriage was frowned upon is far from ideal because people did not discover they could not live together before they got married.

If people took it slower and was discerning with their choice of life partner before children, there would be less risk (not saying 'no risk') of splitting and single parenthood.

I don't think having married parents in itself is enough to ensure a happy well balance child.
Likewise a child who lives alone with one parent is not definately going to turn out "wrong".
However I do think that children who have to live in an environment of having seemingly endless "parental figures" coming in and out of their lives cannot be a positve influence.

Oh FFS stop talking as though all pregnancies are planned! NOt all are by a long way - but nor are those who have an unexpected BFP bad, careless, immoral idiots. There are a variety of reasons for an unplanned PG to occur - let's not forget that one of them is that pregnancy is a weapon used by some abusive controlling men, in order to ensure the woman is dependent on them. There is also deception leading to a PG that one partner didn't plan, and contraceptive failure is not uncommon. Plus the fact that for a lot of people, the risk of an unplanned PG from each session of sex varies depending on factors such as age, where you are in your menstrual cycle, etc. Would a society that stresses heteromonogamous marriage also like to go back to the good old days of forced adoption for unmarried women's babies? Or how about forced abortion if the state decides a relationship isn't 'stable' enough.

SGB, you speak as if it is so easy to fall pregnant accidentally. If people were really serious about postponing pregnancy until the circumstances were right, responsible use of contraception would mean protection in the order of 98%.

blueshoes, i did that and it turns out that children are the litmus test for an awful lot of relationships. I did test my relationship before having children in but I couldn't test it by having children.....

Anyway, i didn't have a crystal ball.... my children are happier than their father and uncles who were brought up in a miserable marriage.

anyway, I think a lot of people get married for the wrong reasons. they feel pressured into it because of 'the cultural mindset'.

I agree that the old days were certainly not all they were cracked up to be. Misery behind closed doors, but the statistics and the spreadsheets must have been gorgeous.

blueshoes I actually think it is a bad idea for people live together as a "road test" for marriage (I must stress that this is most definitely not because of moral or religious reasons) it is for psychological reasons I believe this.

For those who use cohabitation as a "road test" for marriage, the implication is that they view cohabitation as being fundamentally different in nature to marriage, right?

When you live with someone as a "test", all too often your lives become intertwined without you realising it.
You may realise in your heart that your fellow cohabitee is wrong for you to marry, but by this point:
a, You've too much pride to admit you've made an error.
b, It's too much effort to remove yourself from your shared home where your lives have become entwined.

A lot of people then marry out of a "may as well" attitude than a "I am completely devoted" attitude.

So, yeah, I think that there is validity in the old, "If you value marriage- don't live with someone outside it" attitude.

For psychological reasons.

And to be honest, because this is me speaking from the heart and of experience.

If you see NO difference between cohabitation and marriage, then obviously the above won't apply to those who view them as being essentially the same. So no flaming, please.

bit of a tangent here, but

I was listening to somebody on the radio this morning and she'd been divorced and was now living with somebody but they'd had a child (no child from first marriage). she was saying that they didn't want to get married because their divorces had been too stressful. I couldn't believe that they thought that they could set up home together, have a child and then if they split up that it wouldn't be stressful because they weren't actually married! But that is what they seemed to believe.

MaggieNilonSneachta Marriage is a legal thing when all is said and done- and a lot of people get freaked out by divorce and all the dealings with lawyers. Maybe this is what they meant?

But, then again, there is a lot of stuff to be sorted out from the splitting of a home and childcare, too.

Perhaps having been through a divorce, they prefer a "play it day by day" attitude.
As long as they WORK at playing it day by day, I see no problem.

SolidGoldBrass, I bet if we did see a return to forced adoption and abortion for those in unstable personal circumstances then we would indeed see a dramatic reduction in the amount of accidental pregnancies, and birth control would again revert to being 98% reliable. There are two types of birth control 'failure'. The first type is the actual failure of the chosen contraceptive to do its job properly. Quite rare. Then there is failure of the human being to remember/bother to take/use said birth control regularly or at the appropriate moment. Far more common methinks.

I got pg once when I was using the cap. The cap didn't fail me - I failed to bother to put it in! It wasn't an accident - it was slapdash irresponsibility and an arrogant belief that I was invincible. Like driving whilst drunk.

TiggyR, I would not put your pregnancy as accidental. People need to take responsibility for forgetting to use or poor use of contraception, as you have recognised from your actions (inactions).

It still remains that if people want to prevent pregnancy, they can do so to a very high degree of certainty.

but where does it follow that somebody who has an accidental pregnancy or an accidently on purpose pregnance won't provide a better environment for a child than a mother than somebody who planned it?

Planning to be a mother and being a good one in reality aren't the same.

I know that nobody has an absolute right to be a mother, but I also think that a married woman has no absolute right to believe that she has more right to be a mother than a single woman iyswim.

marantha, I took cohabitation (with my now dh) as a very big step in itself. He was not just a flatmate. He was pretty much The One in my eyes. I was even concerned I was rushing it by moving in with him, as my tenancy had come to an end and I was moving in to avoid entering into another tenancy.

If it did not work out, I would have moved out in a flash though!

And I would Never buy a property with someone I was not married (or related) to. So agree about not intertwining our lives before marriage.

MegSophandEmma - The govenment does not say that military couples can only live together if they are married! The Army/AirForce says that you can only live on site in married quarters if you are married. I lives on an RAF site (well right by it) and we didn't get MQ because we were not married. We just had to rent/buy privately.

However, they are able to use their discretion on this and will give MQ to couples in long term relationships and who have children.

There is an element of luck that it all worked out for you blueshoes. It's not just your excellent judgement. There is an element of luck about ending up in a good marriage that works. But, that said, who knows, anybody who is happily married could be on the relationships board in a 6 months saying their husband cheated on them... They're not going to push their children back up!

blueshoes You are an exception, but please accept that there is a recognised phenomenon known as "sliding, not deciding" whereby people who live together for a while take a "may as well marry now" attitude.

I'm not saying that this happens to EVERY "road tester" but it seems to me to be a very, very plausible thing to happen.

One minute you're in Ikea deciding on throws, the next you're in the register office without seemingly a heartbeat in-between.

sliding not deciding. absolutely. that happens to so many people. especially the men i think.

No, blueshoes, I don't consider it as accidental either, but the point is that many people do seem to view their own irresponsibility as an accident. You only have to look (anecdotally) at the proportion of people who say that they didn't intend to get pregnant, but it 'just happened' as though they have no control over it, and no choice as to how to proceed! It's an easy get-out if someone puts them on the spot and says why did you choose to have a child that you cannot afford to support, when you have no job, no housing and an unstable relationship? 'Well m'lud, I didn't mean to, but it just happened.' Like it was the original immaculate conception or something!

marantha, which is why there is a need for a shift in cultural mindset in which a long term stable relationship, often involving marriage, is the goal, and relationships short of that such as cohabitation just a staging post, rather than the start of that intertwining that currently occurs without too much thought.

Maggie, there is an element of luck I suppose. I always count my lucky stars.

But then, I had lots of relationships prior to marrying at 34 which I ended after 2 years (max) because I decided this bloke is fun enough but not a good enough person to withstand the trials of marriage and who would treat me well for the rest of my life.

In this process, I had to question many of my values and really refine and hone it down to the few things that were truly important in making a relationship work that I (luckily) managed eventually to find in my dh.

My parents had an unhappy marriage (incompatible) and I have no rose-tinted ideas about things working out by chance.

BTW, the kiss of death from my point of view was if the man was not prepared to marry me, for ideological reasons or otherwise, and any hint of an abusive personality or violence.

you were lucky that you were strong enough and aware enough to do that. and lucky that the right man came along at the right time. luck and judgment obviously.

oh, and in 1900 1/3 of children were not the children of the man named on their birth certificate (retrospective DNA testing...)- 1 in 10 houses in london was a brothel and 90% of scottish brides were pg on their wedding day!. please don't look back on the past with rose tinted glasses.

Edgar, the past is far from perfect.

I am adding my own modern twist to marriage which is cohabitation before marriage and children. There is also no need for a huge dose of morality and hypocrisy in the past around family structures that don't fit into the traditional married couple one.

However, it is still my belief that a stable relationship preferably involving marriage which is established before children are brought into it is the ideal template.