Kids from Married Parents do significantly better than those from Cohabitating parents

[drosophila]

According to Gloria Hunniford this morning on 'Heaven and Earth'. They were having a debate about marriage Vs commitment without marriage and Gloria announces that according to research (she didn't provide a source) kids do much better (not sure what she meant perhaps academically) if their parents are married than if they simply live together.

DP and I have been together for 18years and we have two kids. Are our kids worse off than say a couple who have been married for say 5 years. I'm not against marriage particularly just wonder where we would get the time to do it.

Anyone care to share their thoughts?

ta

t hink they had POSh canapes too! arf
its relaly sweet htough isnit

worst wedding I ever went to was in a castle. about 10 billion guests. flame lit torches leading up the 50 mile drive way. bride was the original bridezilla. dh was an usher and I didn't see him for the entire day. he started ushering, giving mulled wine out on the steps of the church, sorting people out for photo's. my god he worked for that tie.

don't do it like that please.

i agree bossy
do mine do do ddo dod o d
go on say youll think aboutit

No no no you must buy a big white meringue dress and insist that the world revolves around you for a day. You must fall out with at least one long-standing friend and institute a family feud that will continue for 2 generations. Anything less is not doing it properly.

Here's an article I googled. I take no responsibility for the site, it looks a bit barking on first glance (I've just skimmed it) but looks like it might have some facts.

civitas

oh good one

new threa don bad wedding pslease

DHs parents are really awful, so we opted out of a big church wedding and just got married at a register office and spent about £200 on the whole thing. To us, being married was the important thing, not trying to have a bigger wedding than the Jones'. We were going to go to Gretna Green, but just got married locally. We will have a marriage blessed when DH is baptised at Easter. It shouldnt be about money and parties and showing off... although I do wish in a way id had a big day but it was a deposit for house, or wedding really (without DHs side anyway)

we eloped to Leith Registry House. where dh's birth was registered and now, both our dd's.

his mum's birth was also registered there.

franny can't your dh get a parenting order or whatever they are called so he is recognised by the courts as legal father. he gets rights then over education, health etc. can't for the life of me remember what its called even though am lawyer. (the shame of it)

i'm been with my dp for 17 years, i suppose it's never really bothered us to be married. but the legal thing is the only reason why i'd think of doing it (aren't i romantic) it'd cost too much too

Yes I can't remember either bosscat but I do know what you mean. What a PITA and also not cheap - we also bought a house recently and had all sorts of legal bills to do with that (again because we are not married and my name is not on the mortgage) so our legal bills have been unpleasant.

Not making a moral judgement (at all), but IMO, having a child (or several!), is a much bigger commitment than getting married. Why would two people be willing to bring children into the world, but unwilling to marry? And please don't let's kick off about this one - not being inflammatory, just genuinely would like to understand.

I really don't think it makes any difference to long term couples with children. I wasn't bothered whether we were married or not but dh said it made him more committed morally; he felt if we weren't married he would be more like;ly to leave if things went wrong - his words not mine.

The Parental Responsibilty Order is easier than getting married. Do it for your children's sake.

i dont get that either
int he time thing
but yes
oh droppy get married
ah swwon

Earlybird - not everyone necessarily thinks about starting a family... sometimes it just happens which I guess is what gives rise to the stats found on Caligula's link.

we had no choice. we wanted to be together and have children, but b/c of visa restrictions, we had to be married for me to stay here.

i only married hd for shared parenting of the cat

I am currently working with some of the experts on this subject so i do know about some of the research. Overall the statistics for cohabiting couples on things like staying together, and children doing well, are worse than for married couples. But a lot of that (perhaps all) is because many cohabiting couples are either accidental or unstable couples in the first place. What the research can't really tell is whether the children of long term mutually committed cohabitees do worse than those of married couples. (that's people like me and DP, been together 12 years and pretty stable).

So almost all the research there is "shows" that cohabitation is related to instability and all sorts of bad outcomes but that's not for the people who have been together for decades and maybe have an ideological objection to marriage.

this is a site about all the legal issues about cohabiting versus marriage. it's quite useful.

frannyandzooey, if your ds was born after dec 2003 and your DP is named on the birth certificate as the father, then he has automatic parental responsibility. If ds was born before that, a parental responsibility order is very easy to get, and doesn't cost anything.

i got married when i was 5 months preg with ds1. we wanted to get married anyway and i decided it had to be before ds' arrival!
i assumed children always took their father's surname and i didnt want to be 'smith' while they were 'brown'.
it really mattered to me. my parents were married, so were dhs and it was the example i had seen.
thats probably the main 2 reasons we got hitched. to us it was the 'right thing' to do!

Earlybird, to answer your question, not everyone feels the same way about marriage being a commitment. Yes by definition it is a commitment, but that doesn't mean you need it in order to be committed. If dp and I ever got married, it would not be to prove or show our commitment to each other. It would be purely to gain legal rights which I feel we should be able to obtain without having to go through a wedding ceremony.

I don't want to get married as it is the only way of ensuring I never get divorced (again)

Does ANYONE out there understand my viewpoint ?

I do, jasper.

1Baby1Bump - I actually did the complete opposite of you! My pregnancy was a big shock, and I said outright that I did not want to marry DP while I was pregnant, as I did not want there to ever be the possibility in an argument of either of us saying we only married the other cos of the baby - however untrue that might be! DD was born in Feb, and DP and I got engaged in July - I wasn't expecting it as too busy being a new parent, and I am delighted! We will be getting married end of next year when DD is old enough to be a flower girl.