Events | 2010.01.13
Marriage is no rose garden, and the Tory party knows it | Amelia Gentleman
The research doesn\'t support David Cameron\'s thesis – and most people think there are better targets for tax breaks
Britain\'s leaders like to give voters the occasional reassuring reminder that their own marriages are still rock-solid and central to their existences. David Cameron told supporters at his party conference last October: "I know what sustains me most. She is sitting there, and I\'m proud to call her my wife ." Sarah Brown had dutifully stepped up at Labour\'s, a few days earlier, to say: " My husband is my hero ."
When the focus shifts away from the personal to broader policy on marriage, things get a little more complicated. For the Conservatives this week , the institution has become more of a minefield than a rose garden.
Cameron\'s wobbly response to whether he would introduce his long-promised policy of tax breaks for married couples was interpreted as an unexpected stumble on the critical first day of preliminary electioneering.
Marriage is a peculiar issue for the Conservatives to have staked so much on. On the surface this is an apple pie issue – everyone is in favour of it. But once you drill deeper into the costings and the evidence produced to show that promoting marriage is crucial to a stronger society, the arguments deployed by the Conservatives are hard to get a grip on – and, like candy floss, swiftly disintegrate into a sticky mess.
The party uses marriage as a shorthand for stability and security, part of a pathway out of the frightening landscapes of broken Britain that Cameron is fond of painting. In his 2009 conference speech, he conjured up an image of a nation thwarted by social breakdown, poverty, crime, addiction, sink estates and broken homes. Preventing the spread of these broken homes, the logic goes, will be an important part of addressing the other problems.
The case for marriage is made most vigorously by Iain Duncan Smith\'s thinktank, the Centre for Social Justice, which argues, in essence, that marriage makes you richer and healthier, and guarantees that your children will be happier and more successful. The thinktank\'s research shows that "if you don\'t grow up in a two-parent family you are 75% more likely to fail educationally , 70% more likely to become addicted to drugs, and 50% more likely to have an alcohol problem". Executive director Philippa Stroud (herself a Tory party candidate) argues that "reversal of social breakdown and poverty comes through promoting family" and concludes that the evidence shows "that the best outcomes for children are within stable, healthy married relationships". And it was this thinktank that originally proposed tax breaks for married couples.
The argument has two questionable elements. First, does a tax break actually encourage people to get married? And second, does the evidence support the claim that marriage is the powerful solution to social breakdown?
On the first point, the government-funded Family and Parenting Institute says there is no evidence to show that the tax breaks already in operation across Europe have done anything to stem the decline of marriage. There seems to be uncertainty even among Conservatives on this point. For Cameron, the issue of whether the tax break will work may be secondary to the potent affirmation of Conservative values such a move would bring. But others see this as a profligate way to send out such a message, given the scant available resources; this internal dispute may have been behind Cameron\'s hesitancy.
There is controversy too about the idea of marriage being the root of social harmony. Analysts point out that it is almost impossible to untangle cause from effect in the data on how children of married and unmarried couples fare. People who already feel committed to each other are more likely to get married, so it is difficult to say whether it is the act of getting married that makes their relationship secure. Couples who marry are more likely to be well off, too, so the benefits of relative affluence also have to be stripped out from any analysis. Once the chicken and egg factor is removed, the evidence in support of the Tory claim no longer seems so powerful.
The promotion of marriage raises other difficult questions. Should unhappy parents be encouraged to stay together? Wouldn\'t a tax break just end up channelling money to the already rich middle classes? What about single parents? Cameron has had to bend over backwards to try to reassure them. "I get the real world," he told a group of lone parents last month. " There is not – and never will be – a war on single parents ." But single parents will inevitably be alienated by any such tax break.
If the Conservatives want to tackle relationship breakdown, they would spend our money more wisely by promoting parenting classes, and supporting couples who have just had babies or who are in financial trouble – prime moments for conflict between couples.
More important, the party should look beyond marriage as a solution to societal breakdown. If Cameron wants to make society less broken, he should spend whatever money there is on providing good schools, creating job opportunities and training, and on better housing. These are the things that help people feel positive about their lives. Marriage is a secondary issue.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]ve-marriage-tax-break-proposal
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