Kevin and Margaret Andrews

What does it mean to rebuild a culture of marriage?  We approach this question from an Australian perspective, both in a policy and practical sense.  But we recognize that despite the many commonalities in the economic, social and cultural life of the industrialized nations, there are also differences. We do not pretend that our experiences in Australia are universally applicable. Rather, we offer an overview by which you may make a comparison, which may be useful, even if not precisely applicable. The industrialized nations are all confronting many similar social, cultural and political trends[1] To learn from one another, we must tell each other something of our national and cultural experiences. To foster such learning, let us reflect on some global societal changes in recent decades.

I.  SOCIETAL CHANGES AND FAMILIES

For the past two decades, discussion about family has been defined in a negative, backward looking manner by reference to divorce. From the early 1970’s, Western society has undergone a divorce revolution--by which we mean a steady displacement of marriage by a culture of divorce and single parenthood.[2]

While it is not possible to detail the myriad of changes in family structure, it is possible to describe a series of trends effecting families throughout the industrialized world.  Although the majority of dependent children in most industrialized nations still live with biological parents married to each other, an overview of the past 50 years indicates a continuing retreat from marriage.  As the following summary illustrates, there have been a series of changes in family patterns throughout the industrialized world, all indicative of a decline in marriage and a weakening of family life.

People are marrying less.

In Australia in 1947, 44 out of every 1,000 women married in a given year, compared with just 29 in 1991. The crude marriage rate (the annual number of marriages per 1,000 people) fell to 6.2 in 1994, almost as low as during the Great Depression, and half the rate during World War II. The number of people aged over 15 who are married fell from 65.4 percent in 1976 to 57.4 percent in 1994.

These figures reflect trends elsewhere. In Britain, for example, there were 311,000 marriages in 1992, down from 415,000 in 1970. In 1960, for every 1,000 women over 16 years of age, 82 married for the first time. By 1992, this figure had fallen to 47, the lowest rate since statistics have been collected for a century and a half.[3]

Those couples who marry do so at an older age.

In Australia in 1947, the median age at marriage was 25.3 years for grooms and 22.5 for brides. These ages dropped to 23 and 21 in the early 1970s. But by 1994, the median age had risen markedly to 29 years for grooms and 26.6 years for brides.

In 1972, one-third of women had married by the time they turned 20, and eight in ten reaching 25 had married before. By 1991, just one in twenty had married by age 20, and less than half by age 25.

These statistics reflect major changes in the pathways that couples take into marriage. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 1993, about 57 percent of marriages were preceded by a period of cohabitation. The figure more than doubled in two decades.

In the United States, the proportion of couples living together before marriage increased from 11 percent in the years 1965-74 to 44 percent in the 1980-84 and has continued to increase since. The number of unmarried couples has increased more than six-fold since 1970.[4] The pattern is repeated elsewhere. In Norway, for example, 62 percent of childless couples are cohabiting. Among couples with two children, 15 percent are cohabiting.[5]

According to the 1991 Australian Family Formation Project, a fifth of those in existing de facto relationships had been involved in their relationship for three months or less before moving in together; a further 25 percent had known each other for four to six months; and 28 percent for seven to twelve months before they started living together. The study also found that pre-marital experiences contributing most to the risk of marital breakdown are pre-marital cohabitation, having a child out of wedlock, and leaving home at an early age.[6]

There has been a dramatic increase in divorce

In Australia in 1950, there were 5 divorces per 1,000 married women, a figure that fell through the 1950s to just 2.8 in 1961. Following the introduction of welfare benefits for single parents in 1972 and no-fault divorce laws in 1975, this figure leapt to 18.8 in 1976 before falling to 10.6 in 1986. The rate has since crept up to 12 in 1994, quadruple what it was three decades before. The trend is similar elsewhere.

The number of children involved in divorce has continued to grow since the early 1970’s.

“Parental divorce disrupts the lives of nearly one in five young Australians under the age of 20, a disruption related to long-term social and economic disadvantages,” according to Australian Institute of Family Studies researchers Kate Funder and Simon Kinsella.[7]  In the 25 years between 1975 and 2000, a million Australian children will have experienced their parents’ divorce. The pattern is repeated throughout the world. Each year some 300,000 divorces involving children occur in the U.S., more than 80,000 in the U.K., and 60,000 in Germany, to give but three examples.

The rates of remarriage have fallen over the past 20 years.

According, to the sociologist Peter McDonald, the Australian remarriage rate has more than halved in two decades, falling for males from 246 per 1,000 divorced persons in 1971 to 120 by 1991; and for females from 215 per 1,000 to just 101 by 1991. The remarriage rate for men in England and Wales fell from 70.4 per 1,000 widowed or divorced in 1971 to 44 in 1991.[8] Where remarriages do occur, the divorce rate is even higher than for first marriages.[9]

Families are having fewer children.

Throughout the Western world, the familiar population pyramid is being turned upsidedown. Australian demographics illustrate the trend. In 1947, when the nation’s population was 7.5 million, there were 182,000 births. By 1993 the population topped 18 million, but there were only 260,000 births.

The proportion of children born out of wedlock has increased dramatically.

In Australia in 1947, only one in 25 children was born out of wedlock; today it is one in four. This trend is evident in other western nations. In New Zealand, 38 percent of children are born out of wedlock.[10]  In the United States, unwed parenthood has now reached virtual parity with divorce as a generator of fatherless homes.[11]

The proportion of single parent families has increased markedly.

Of the 620,000 single parent families in Australia in 1993, 84 percent were mother-headed. An Australian Institute of Family Studies survey which interviewed parents 18 months after the birth of their child found that 19 percent of de facto couples had separated, compared to 2 percent of married couples. In the United States, 56 percent of all black children live with one parent. The share of all U.S. children who live with both parents declined from 88 percent in 1960.2 to 69 percent in 1995.[12]

Between 1971 and 1991, the number of single-parent households in Great Britain more than doubled (from 570,000 to 1,300,000), as did the number of children living in these households (from one million to 2.2 million). As a percentage of the population, those living in these households increased four-fold.[13]

Families increasingly have both parents in the paid workforce

Perhaps the most profound changes affecting families have been in the relationship between families and work over the past three decades. These changes reflect the participation of women in the paid workforce and the changing face of work.

The proportion of married women in the paid workforce has increased throughout the industrialized world. In Australia, for example, the percentage of married women in paid employment jumped from 29 percent in 1966 to 53 percent today. Just under half of Australian mothers with children aged four years or younger are now in the paid labor force. In the United Kingdom only 57 percent of employees are in traditional employment working full-time for an employer. Twenty-five percent work part-time, 13 percent are self-employed, and 5 percent are contract and casual workers. Sixty percent of couples with children have both partners in the workforce. Labor force participation by married women with children under six years of age increased in the United States from 18.6 percent in 1960 to 59.6 percent in 1993.[14]

Not only has the participation rate of women in the workforce grown while that of men has declined relatively, the areas of work in which women have been employed are in the fields upon which modern economies are increasingly reliant.[15] While much still needs to be done to ensure equal opportunities for women in the workplace and to provide the flexibility required by women pursuing careers, there is a growing body of male blue-collar workers for whom employment is becoming increasingly uncertain.

The changes have also created new tensions for family life. Many women have had to work a double shift, juggling their paid work with family duties. An increasing number of families, cannot choose to keep one parent at home. Many women join the paid workforce for career reasons.  But Australian social researcher Jeanne Strachan identifies three other groups of working mothers. First, there are the former full-time mothers, usually 40, who were home for most of their children’s school years and have gone back into the workforce “for financial reasons to provide the family with extras, but not for the family’s survival.” Second, there are the home-by-4:00 p.m. workers.  Finally, there is the third group, which Strachan calls “the victim workers—the women who, for whatever reason, have no choice as to whether to work or not, and yet have pre-school age children.”[16]

These categories are not mutually exclusive. Women who have turned to outside work through financial necessity often also value the sense of identity and purpose and the break from unpaid work it brings. Paid work outside the home became the symbol for women of changing cultural attitudes. But part of the price is fatigue, concern about insufficient time for children, and anger that men have not recognized or appreciated the costs involved. The consequence is a new tension between the essential family tacks of loving and working.

Yet a series of studies suggest that as many as 60 percent of both men and women would prefer to have the mother stay at home while the children are small. Those who do stay at home, often at the expense of career and family finances, resent the fact that their work is no longer valued by society.[17]  A survey by the Australian Institute of Family Studies finding that more than a quarter of working mothers of pre-school children would prefer to be at home—or at least reduce their outside working hours—brought a flood of positive responses to a newspaper editorial which asserted:

The debate should be about logical policy principles and economic good sense. It is not…the case that married women should move over to make room in the workforce for unemployed men…But it is a tragedy that so many people are reluctantly in jobs with their children being brought up by others, while so many who want work cannot get it.[18]

These changes illustrate the issues facing many people. In the quest for global competitiveness and the maintenance of real standards of living, individuals have increasingly been pulled in two directions, either under the pressure of market forces to obtain additional income, or into increasing dependency upon the welfare state—or both.  These pressures are unlikely to abate. Many families maintained their real standard of living through the 1980’s by finding a second income. Significantly, tens of thousands of women—mothers, wives and sisters—entered the workforce during the 1980’s, sacrificing their first choice in family commitments and often accepting a reduced quality of life in order to provide the additional wages essential to keeping their families afloat.[19]  In Australia, for example, wages as a proportion of the national product were 64.1 percent in 1983.  By 1991, they had fallen to 56 percent.

The problem today is that fewer and fewer families have a non-working spouse to bolster purchasing power for another decade.  Yet the current trend in the declining real value of wages, and the increase in part-time and casual work is likely to continue as the globalization of trade and commerce inevitably reduces the value of Western labor.

The effect of the fall in real wages has been masked throughout the 1980’s by claims of productivity growth.  But much of this growth has been horizontal, arising from the influx of new workers or increases in hour of paid work—rather than vertical, resulting from rises in real hour output and wages.

Throughout the past decade, the gap between the rich and the poor has widened in many nations.  To take the example of prosperous Australia:  Whereas in 1982-83 the top one percent of income-earners equaled the total earnings of the bottom 11 percent, by 1988-89, the top one percent earned an amount equal to the total incomes of the bottom 21 percent.  As the Australian Catholic Bishops noted in their document Common Wealth for the Common Good, this was a “massive redistribution between the social classes.”[20]

Conversely, dependency on the state has risen markedly over the past three decades throughout the Western world.  In April 1993, the Commission of the European Communities called for debate at the community level on the future of social welfare systems, stating that these “systems are now causing budgetary problems for all member states, casting doubt on the future level of social protection governments will be able to afford.”  Elsewhere, governments have progressively targeted benefits and reduced access to welfare.

Many of the current changes in the nature of work are driven by the imperative to sustain a globally competitive economy, to ensure a vital market.  Many also require an efficient and caring state.  Yet a consequence of these developments is that neither employment in the market nor reliance on the welfare state provide a sense of economic security.  In his opening speech for the 1993 Brussels seminar conducted by the Commission of the European Communities, Padraig Flynn highlighted the fact that working life, like family life, is now “marked by abrupt change and discontinuity.”

These changes have a direct impact on young couples contemplating marriage and family life.  Speaking in 1995, the Australian social researcher Jeanne Strachan commented:

Young couples today are the first generation since the war to face the reality that they often can’t obtain, even with two full-time workers in the house, what their own parents saw as fair and reasonable reward for their hard work.[21]

These trends also place increasing pressures on community life and our communal institutions, such as voluntary agencies and community groups.  Families are suffering greater stress today than ever before; participation in a range of community groups is declining at the very time that their services are increasingly called upon; and the most fundamental of community activities—work—is denied to a vast number of people.

In many nations, the population is aging

Aging populations have a major impact on nations.  By the year 2020, many nations will face a major crisis in providing for their aged population.  According to the OECD, the ratio of older people to those in the workforce in 1990 was 19 percent.  But by 2030, this dependency ratio will double to 38 percent across the OECD.  In Germany, it is expected to soar to 49.2 percent, in Italy 48.3 percent, France 39.1 percent, Austria 44 percent, Belgium 41.1 percent, USA 36.8 percent, and Australia 33 percent.[22]

In countries like Australia and the United States, there has been a continual shift of government resources from couples with children to older people.[23] This shift in the allocation of resources continues apace.  Extrapolating from current trends for both nations, we may anticipate that some 40 percent of the population will require long-term care at some stage of their lives.[24]  In Germany, the proportion of the population in the working age group of 26 - 59 is only 36.5 percent, while the proportion aged 60 and over is 35.8 percent.  Demographers predict that the aged will increase to 43.9 percent of the population by 2010, and 67.2 percent by 2050.[25]

A clear trend

All of these changes are having a profound impact on families.  David Popenoe has highlighted five measurable shifts affecting family life:

• First, rising rates of divorce and unwed childbearing, which mean the steady disintegration of the married, mother-father childraising unit. 

• Second, the growing inability of families to carry out their primary social functions: maintaining the population level, regulating sexual behavior, socialising children, and caring for family members. 

• Third, the transfer of influence and authority from families to other institutions, such as schools, peer groups, the media, and the state. 

• Fourth, smaller and more unstable family units. 

• And fifth, the weakening of familism as a cultural value in relationship to other values, such as personal autonomy and egalitarianism.[26]

Taken together, the statistics appear to reveal the steady displacement of a marriage culture with a culture of divorce and single parenthood.  The sanguine view of these developments that society is merely returning to the circumstances of a century ago is countered by the trends which reveal a continuation of these changes.  We believe that these statistics reveal a condition which requires an appropriate societal response to avoid further fragmentation of families and communities, and the alienation of individuals.  A significant number of people are now trapped in poverty.  When day to day stability and predictability are lost in family life, chaos is also likely to develop in our communities.

II.  PROSPECTS FOR CHILDREN

If these developments were associated with an improving lifestyle for our children, they might be applauded.  Over the past three decades Gross Domestic Product has increased to record levels.  The health of many nations has improved, as measured by infant mortality and longevity; and money spent on education has grown.  Children’s rights have been the focus of renewed attention and the ratio of children to parents has decreased.  But few people would dispute that life for our nations’ children is more uncertain today:

• Youth suicide has increased;

• Millions of youth are estimated to be homeless;

• Reports of child abuse rise each year;

• Alcohol and drug abuse amongst teenagers has increased markedly;

• Welfare beneficiaries have increased significantly; and

• Single parent families, even after government benefits, continue to be among the poorest groups in the community.

The latter fact moved Daniel Patrick Moynihan to observe that historically poverty derived from unemployment and low wages; today it derives from family structure.[27]

Liberal and conservative scholars alike are beginning to remark on the consequences of a devaluing of marriage on the well-being of children.  The renowned international family scholar, Urie Bronfenbrenner has said that “amongst post-industrial societies, families, children, adolescents and youth are at the greatest risk in English-speaking countries.”[28] President Clinton’s former Domestic Policy Adviser Professor William Ralston has remarked that “the family disintegration that we are currently experiencing…is harming our children…deeply…[and] dreadfully.”[29]

The popular rationale for divorce for the past two decades has been the proposition that divorce is better for the whole family than a ‘bad’ marriage and that children are reasonably resilient.[30]  However recent research has challenged the belief that it is parental conflict rather than actual separation that is associated with poor outcomes for children following divorce.  The 1994 Exeter Family Study concluded that:

…although most children do not exhibit acute difficulties beyond the initial stage of family breakdown, a significant minority of children encountered long term problems.  Compared with their matched pairs in intact families, children who had experienced their parents’ divorce were more likely to report problems in key areas of their lives, including psychosomatic disorders, difficulties with school work and a low sense of self-esteem.  They were more likely to feel confused and uninvolved in arrangements about their future and to have lasting feelings of concern about both their resident and non-resident parents.  Parental conflict and financial difficulties are clearly important features of family reorganisation that are associated with adverse outcomes for children.  However, in this study it appeared that a more important adverse factor was the loss of a parent and the consequences, which included the risk that history would repeat itself with the breakdown of subsequent parental relationships.[31]

Similar conclusions were reached by Judith Wallerstein in her American study Second Chances.[32]  More recently, Paul Amato found that children of divorced parents are more likely to divorce, have fewer financial assets and earn less money than other people.[33] There is an emerging view amongst social scientists that whereas children are better off when marriages involving physical abuse and extreme emotional cruelty end, the children from the majority of marriages involving low intensity conflict are worse off if their parents divorce.[34]

Some argue that the maternal-child relationship is all important, but as the renowned anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski observed:

In all human societies the father is regarded by tradition as indispensable…no child should be brought into the world without a man—and one man at that—assuming the role of sociological father, that is, guardian and protector, the male link between the child and the rest of the community.[35]

Recent studies support Malinowski’s observation.  In their ten-year study Growing Up with a Single Parent, Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur reject the claim that children raised by only one parent do just as well as children raised by both parents:

Children who grow up in a household with only one biological parent are worse off, on average, than children who grow up in a household with both their biological parents, regardless of the parents’ race or educational background, regardless of whether the parents are married when the child is born, and regardless of whether the resident partner remarries.[36]

The Council on Families in America concluded last year that the mounting evidence “points to one striking conclusion:  the weakening of marriage has had devastating consequences for the well-being of children.”[37] The Council did not claim that the weakening of marriage was the only factor contributing to the decline of child well-being, but said it was by far the most important causal factor.  Obviously unemployment and other economic factors also contribute to the general uncertainty facing our young people.

If, as the Report asked, an increasing number of children grow-up each year with little or no direct experience of married life, how do we teach them about the meaning, purposes and responsibilities of marriage? We might also ask what attitudes and impressions do unhappy marriages create for children? And what can we do to lessen the occurrence? Before making some suggestions, we would like to examine briefly some of the reasons advanced for the changing culture.

III.  THE CHANGING CULTURE OF AGE

In 1988, the then director of the Australian Institute for Family Studies, Dr. Don Edgar, identified several major factors shaping what he described as the “new marriage.”[38]  He summarised these factors as fourfold:

Fırst is the certainty of contraception, the careful planning of births and the changing place of children in marriage,

Second is the new preparation pathway to marriage via multiple relationships, prolonged autonomy as an individual earner, de facto living and the resultant confusion about intimacy and commitment.

Third is a growing realization on the part of women that they cannot and ought not rely upon or be dependants of men.  Thus we see improved education, retention of women’s career and labour force participation, with consequent changes in the way marriage and family life function.

Fourth is a legal framework progressively enacting equal opportunity, human rights, joint responsibility for men and women fulfilling the obligations of marriage and parenthood.  It is a de facto “backward” redefinition of marriage, starting from the end point of divorce, and from combined changes in family law and social security provisions.

A number of reasons can be advanced for this changing culture about marriage.  First the culture of rights, combined with materialism, has dominated Western thought since the end of World War II.  Rights became the dominant language of Western culture.  Particularly in public discussion, obligations were ignored.  But as Tocqueville observed, excessive individualism ultimately results in egoism which destroys society.[39]

It is in family that obligations and values are learnt.  Martin Luther King said:

The institution of family is decisive in determining not only if a person has the capacity to love another individual but in the larger sense whether he is capable of loving…The whole of society rests on this foundation for stability, understanding and social peace.[40]

This is not new.  Aristotle posited the necessary relationship between the individual and the community:  if children did not love their parents and family members, they would love no-one but themselves.  The sense of stability and love provided in families is central to the socialization of individuals.  Increasingly it is recognized, to be effective, interaction between parents and children must occur on a fairly regular basis over extended periods of time.

The culture of individual rights was reflected in subsequent changes to laws.  Hence the right to divorce was eased; the right to financial assistance from the state for sole parents enhanced; while the taxation system in many nations was gradually skewed against married couples with children.[41]

Personal fulfillment, and in the absence of it, divorce, is perceived as a right with few corresponding duties.  “Till death us do part” has been replaced with “as long as I am happy.”  Writing in the American context, Daniel Yankelovich observed:

The quest for greater individual choice clashed directly with the obligations and social norms that held families and communities together in earlier years.  People came to feel that questions of how to live and with whom to live were a matter of individual choice not to be governed by restrictive norms.  As a nation, we came to experience the bonds to marriage, family, children, job, community, and country as constraints that were no longer necessary.  Commitments were loosened.[42]

This is not to say that the pursuit of happiness is wrong, or that partners should not have the ability to end a marriage in some circumstances.  Our query is whether we value marriage sufficiently.

In recent times, a number of commentators have begun to point to serious social ramifications of these developments.  The view that fathers are superfluous should be, as the Council on Families in America claimed last year, a major social concern for our society:

First, fathers are vitally important to the task of childrearing.  Certainly, we have never met the child who did not say that she or he wanted to be raised by both a father and a mother.  And children know whereof they speak.  The importance of fathers to childrearing is strongly supported by social science research.

Second, it is extremely important to the larger society that men remain involved in family life.  For men, married fatherhood is a civilizing force of no mean proportions.  Conversely, having a large number of men disconnected from the patterns and satisfactions of family life—and thus much more prone to unhappiness, deviance and crime—has always, and properly, been one of society’s worst fears.  In too many of our nation’s communities today, this fear is becoming a reality.[43]

This is not to belittle the efforts of many single parents who, against difficult odds, are successfully raising their children and who deserve our support; nor is it to ignore the fact that some married couples are failing in their parental task.  Nor is it to suggest a return to the marriage forms of earlier years.  To the contrary, marriage and family life requires a balance of values.  The enhancement of family life for the welfare of children involves the balancing of rights and obligations: between men and women, parents and children, individuals and the community, and present and future generations.  In the past the balance was not always right.  There was often an overemphasis on women’s obligations—to husbands, to children, and to the community—at the expense of individual development.  But today, the goal of balance is often replaced by the contemporary libertarian rejection of all obligation in the name of individual freedom.

A second cause of family disintegration may be seen in the rejection of marriage and family by many intellectuals and academics in the 1960’s.  In 1967, Edmund Leach, then one of the most influential sociologists in the western world was invited to deliver the Reith Lectures on BBC Radio.  There Leach developed his claim that the “family looks inward upon itself.”  According to him, the inwardness of family life intensifies emotional stress between husband and wife, and parents and children—creating a strain greater than most can bear.  Leach concluded:

Far from being the basis of the good society, the family, with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets, is the source of all our discontents.[44]

Leach’s view of the family was not isolated.  David Cooper and R. D. Laing saw the intense privacy of the family, with its network of introverted, intense and compulsory relationships as destructive of the individual self.  Cooper described the nuclear family as “the ultimately perfected form of non-meeting;”[45] and Laing claimed that the “initial act of brutality against the average child is the mother’s first kiss.”[46]

It was against this background that American sociologist Jessie Bernard wrote The Future of Marriage in 1972.  Bernard argued that the modern marriage is best understood, not in the conventional sense as a union between man and woman, but as separate and unequal “his” and “hers” marriages, which confer health on men and the opposite on women:

We do not clip wings or bind feet but we do make girls sick.  For to be happy in a relationship which imposes so many impediments on her, as traditional marriage does, a woman must be slightly ill mentally.[47]

Bernard proposed a new order consisting of a range of relationship options founded on two bases:  the contemporary feminist critique of marriage[48] and an optimism that human beings can accept any kind of relationship if they are properly socialized into it.[49] Bernard asserted:

There is no Ideal Marriage fixed in the nature of things, that we will one day discover…Every age has to find its own…any form of marriage is transitional between an old one and a new one.[50]

The need to enlarge the role of women and the notion that family roles are in transition remain strong in critiques of family.[51]  As James Wilson has written, “to defend the two parent family is to defend, the critics worry, an institution in which the woman is subordinated to her husband, confined to domestic chores with no opportunity to pursue a career, and taught to indoctrinate her children with a belief in the rightness of the arrangement.”[52]  However, to identify the strengths of couple families is not to defend oppression.  It is a spurious argument which suggests that conventional family relationships mean confining women to domestic roles or condoning abuse within the family.

In her recent survey of health data, the Australian family researcher Moira Eastman has demonstrated the fallacy in Bernard’s thesis:

Despite Bernard’s claims, research in a number of countries finds that being married is correlated with markedly better mental and physical health and higher levels of happiness than being never married, separated or divorced and that this is true for both men and women.[53]

Eastman identified eight myths about family that have currency in academic and popular discussions:  Family is a recent invention; the (traditional) family has almost disappeared; the two-parent family is no longer the norm; marriage is good for men and bad for women; families are unsafe places; no productive work takes place in the family home; family is essentially an extreme right-wing issue; and current family trends cannot (and perhaps should not) be reversed.  She concludes: “The evidence to contradict them is sufficient to support the claim that they are myths in the sense that they are not based on fact.”[54]  Yet Norval Glenn has recently illustrated the anti-marriage bias in many current sociology texts about families.[55]

The second notion prevalent in some discussions about family is the idea that family roles are in transition.  This was particularly evident in many writings during the United Nations Year of the Family.  But reassuring words about transition fail to comfort family members experiencing divorce at a rate three times that of two decades ago, or of the mother and children in difficulty surviving poverty because of insufficient child support, or any one of millions of children growing up in homes where no one has a job.  Call it what you like, people intuitively know that families are under pressure and that their break-up is tragic.

As a consequence, our nations face massive public costs.  Public investment in welfare programs has risen markedly over the past quarter century.  For example, social security benefits in Australia have grown from $1,379 million in 1971 to $33,917 million in 1991—or from 17 to 27 percent of GDP.  Family payments increased from $198 million to $2,466 million over the same period.  And single-parent benefits rose from $40 million in 1974 to $3,057 million two decades later.  In the United States, public aid expenditures have grown from just over $20 billion in 1980 to more than $40 billion by 1992.[56]

While government programs are important, “almost no amount of public investment in children could offset the private disinvestment that has accompanied the decline of marriage.”[57]

IV.  VALUING THE CULTURE OF MARRIAGE

How can we value the culture of marriage?

First, there is a need to re-establish the ideal of marital permanence.  Norval Glenn, one of America’s leading sociologists, has written:

There are strong theoretical reasons for thinking that a decline in the ideal of marital permanence will tend to make marriages less satisfactory, not just less stable.  For instance, the person who enters marriage with the notion that he or she may remain in it only for a few years will not be inclined to fully commit or make the kinds of investments that would be lost if the marriage should end.  And if a person constantly compares the existing marriage with real or imagined alternatives to it, the existing marriage will inevitably compare unfavourably in some respects.  People are hardly aware of needs that are currently being well served, but they tend to be keenly aware of the needs that are not being satisfied.  And since attention tends to center on needs that are not being especially well met in one’s marriage (and there are always some), the grass will always tend to look greener on the other side of the marital fence.  Therefore, merely contemplating alternatives to one’s marriage may engender marital discontent.  Furthermore, persons who still strongly adhere to the ideal of marital permanence may be afraid to commit strongly to their marriages if they perceive a general weakening of the ideal.[58]

Research undertaken by Glenn and others has indicated a tendency of many couples to hold back on marital commitments because of the perceived probability of marital disintegration in our society.  A second, equally strong finding is that couples with stable and longlasting relationships, typically believe that the daily stresses and strains of marriage would probably have led to divorce had the ideal of marital permanence not been such an important part of their relationship.

Second, there is a need to understand that marriage is not a static state between two unchanging people.  Relationships may begin with romantic love, but must move from the ecstasy of attraction through a process of self-knowledge, if they are to thrive.  Differences of opinion, attitude and view are a normal part of any relationship between two people.  Increasingly, marital therapists are viewing these differences as an indication that growth needs to happen, rather than a sign of inevitable unhappiness.  However couples must have the skills to deal with differences in a constructive manner and the encouragement to work on their relationship before normal differences lead to chronic, unresolvable conflict or marriages in name only.

Author of Second Chances, a groundbreaking study of the children of divorce, Judith Wallerstein says in her latest book, The Good Marriage:

As I compared the happily married couples with the thousands of divorcing couples I have seen in the past twenty-five years, it was clear that these men and women had early on created a firm basis for their relationship and had continued to build it together.  Many of the couples that divorced failed to lay such a foundation and did not understand the need to reinforce it over the years.  Many marriages broke because the structure was too weak to hold in the face of life’s vicissitudes.  The happy couples regarded their marriages as a work in progress that needed continued attention lest it fall into disrepair.  Even in retirement they did not take each other for granted.  Far too many divorcing couples fail to understand that a marriage does not just spring into being after the ceremony.  Neither the legal nor the religious ceremony makes the marriage.  People do, throughout their lives.[59]

Thirdly, there is a need to speak again about values.  Marriage is about persistence, courage, loyalty, forgiveness, and self-sacrifice.

V.  A POLICY FRAMEWORK

It is a peculiarity of the modern era that national debate has been framed, almost exclusively, in economic terms, ignoring the social, the cultural, indeed, the spiritual dimensions of national life.  There are three bases, we suggest, to a just and healthy society: a vital market; an efficient and caring state; and a vibrant community.

A vital market

There can be little debate, given the history of this century, that a vital market is a necessary element of economic growth, adequate social welfare, and democratic freedom.  The fall of the Berlin Wall marked more than the end of a particular ideological regime; it marked also the failure of the command system, both as a harbinger of economic progress and as a vehicle for human rights.

An efficient and caring state

However, the market alone does not and cannot deliver a just society.  There will always be those who are poor, ill, disabled, unemployed, or in need of care.  There will also be projects of societal interest, ranging from the defense of the nation, through the promotion of adequate health and education and the protection of the environment, to the provision of the infrastructure necessary for an adequately functioning community.

Sometimes the debate about the role of the market and the state is simplified to two opposing propositions, one in favor of the market, and the other in favor of the state.  The reality is that both are important.  The question, for example, should not be one of intervention versus non-intervention.  All governments intervene in the economy.  The real issue is the purpose of the intervention, and the efficiency of the outcome.  Even Adam Smith accepted that there may be circumstances where, for example, protection of an industry would be justified.

But reliance on either markets or government can lead to injustice.  The notion that all aspects of society can be treated as a commodity leads to untrammelled consumerism, in which the interests of some are ultimately ignored.  Even in economic terms, this is dangerous, as Australians have found over the past decade with very low savings, rising debts, and increasing interest payments.  On the other hand, the suppression of the market, by the all-knowing hand of government during this century has led to some of the worst forms of totalitarianism imaginable in many parts of the world.  A just and healthy society requires a balance between the market and the state.  In establishing this balance that the community is important.

A vibrant community

Because individuals gain meaning and identity from their relationships with others, a liberal democracy dedicated to full and free human development cannot afford to ignore the conditions that are most conducive to the fulfillment of that ideal.  If we do, then liberal democracy neglects the very basis of its own maintenance.

For it is in the institutions of civil society—in families, and in voluntary associations such as churches, charitable agencies, even sporting and cultural clubs—that democracy is sustained, by balancing the power of both market and state, and by helping to counter both consumerist and totalitarian tendencies.

The Harvard scholar, Mary Ann Glendon writes:

The myriad of associations that generate social norms are the invisible supports of, and the sine qua non for, a regime in which individuals have rights.  Neither the older political and civil rights, nor the newer economic and social rights, can be secure in the absence of the social arrangements that induce those who are disadvantaged by the rights of others to accept the restrictions and interferences that such rights entail.[60]

In other words, if we, as nations, cannot preserve and support the institutions of community in which relationships are developed and nurtured, then we are not merely placing at risk the welfare of many people, particularly the young and the elderly, we are weakening the very foundations of democracy itself.

These three things—a vital market, an efficient and caring state, and a vibrant community—are the bases of a healthy nation.  How we balance them will determine our future.

VI.  FAMILY POLICY

How should we treat families?  The National Commission on America’s Urban Families identified three prevailing national responses to the trend of family fragmentation: namely, deny the problem, treat the symptoms, and change the economy.  The Commission stated, “each of these approaches are championed by serious, sincere people.  Each contains elements of truth and insight.” But the Commission found that these responses, both taken individually and or together, to be fundamentally inadequate because ‘they do not contain the realistic possibility of halting or reversing the personal and societal problems that stem from the trend of family fragmentation.”

We suggest that family policy should be founded on two principles which the key mediating or bridging structures in society, such as family and voluntary associations.[61] These principles are:

1. Public policy should protect and foster the family; and

2. Wherever possible, public policy should be implemented through the family.

3. These two principles establish a minimum and maximum position.  In some policy areas, government should leave families alone, or at least adopt a neutral position towards them.  In others, it should utilize the family itself or other mediating structures to deliver programs of assistance.

Within this framework, we suggest a five-fold approach to the development of a comprehensive national family policy:[62]

1. The adoption of a national family policy;

2. The recognition of society’s preference for families;

3. The strengthening of marriage and the relationships between parents and children;

4. The building of community support for families; and

5. The fostering of a moral culture for families and children.

Programs can be developed in each of these areas that will help to re-build .a culture of marriage.  In the following section, we will offer a number of specific suggestions for rebuilding a culture of marriage.

VII.  RE-BUILDING A CULTURE OF MARRIAGE

Marriage

The notion of educating people about marriage strikes a dissonant chord with some people.  In a letter to the Melbourne Age a few years ago, a skeptic of education asked “Whatever happened to old fashioned love, the kind that would last through the years?”[63]  Surely, if couples were only more committed to each other, relationships would last.

While this sentiment may be true, it overlooks the remarkable cultural changes of the past half century.  As Norval Glenn notes, “Marriage now tends to be highly hedonistic throughout the Western World and is becoming at least moderately so in many non-Western Societies…Given America’s [and we would add other Western nations’] highly hedonistic orientation towards marriage, their motivation to marry and their commitment to the institution of marriage must be affected by their perception of how well marriage is serving the needs and desires of married persons.”[64]

This changed cultural attitude is reflected in the tendency for cohabitation to be a pathway into marriage.  Despite increasing evidence to the contrary,[65] many people consider “trail marriage a good idea.”[66] The Australian marriage educator Jim Pilmer writes:  “There is evidence to suggest that many of these couples marry to make unsatisfactory relationships work.”

The view that love will prevail reinforces two powerful social myths:  First, that marriage is entirely private, and not to be shared with anyone else, except in the most general way, and secondly that marriage is natural and we all know innately how to do it.  Until people receive adequate education about marriage, these myths will continue to prevent effective resolution of relationship problems.

There is a need to focus as much discussion on marriage as there has been on divorce.  Denis Ladbrook, Professor of Social Work at Perth’s Curtin University, observes:

Given the importance to human well-being of both occupations and relationships, it is somewhat incongruous that entry to them is treated so differently by our society.  Much preparation and all sorts of protective regulations set parameters on who can do what in the public domain of occupations, but little preparation and few safeguards are put in place for the private domain of personal and family relationships.[67]

In Australia, a marriage cannot be solemnized unless the couple have given the celebrant at least one month’s notice.  In many countries, the period of notice is much shorter.  Given the consequences of marital breakdown, shouldn't we at least discuss lengthened notification periods accompanied by the opportunity afforded by marriage education for couples to reflect upon the obligations they are about to accept.  Many people are unaware of their legal and financial responsibilities upon entering marriage, and no more aware of them when it ends.

Of more importance is marriage education—which provides opportunities for couples to evaluate their decision to marry and improve their relationship skills.  This is distinct from marriage counseling, which tends to involve crisis intervention in a pressured relationship.  The finding by a 1992 Australian study of marriage education that 5 percent of couples postponed or cancelled their wedding after attending a marriage preparation program supports other research about the effectiveness of these courses in preventing ill-advised unions.[68]  Speaking at the 1991 Australian Marriage Education Conference, Dr. Barbara Markey noted that as many as 15 percent of couples who undertake a pre-marriage inventory and attend a preparation course in the United States either postpone or cancel their wedding.  More recent studies reinforce this conclusion.  Studies of both the PREPARE and FOCCUS pre-marriage inventories have shown that the results can be accurate in identifying couples who later developed dysfunctional marriages, and in predicting couples with high quality versus low quality marriages.[69] The combination of these findings and the high divorce rate has led every Catholic diocese in the U.S. to require couples to participate in marriage education, and for most of them to implement a minimum notification period of at least six months.[70] In other cities, religious leaders from all faiths have committed to only marry couples who participate in marriage-education programs.[71]

The Australian experience may provide a model for the encouragement of programs of marriage education.  Since 1976, Australian governments have provided grants to approved organizations providing marriage education.  These programs are offered by a range of community and church agencies, providing couples with a choice between organizations.  In turn, the agencies advertise their programs, particularly through religious and civil marriage celebrants.[72]  It is estimated that up to a quarter of couples contemplating marriage participate in a program, although the attendance is much higher for couples marrying in a church, and very low for those being married civilly.[73]  The program which are facilitated by trained marriage educators, usually extend for two days or a series of evenings.  Some 100 agencies and groups throughout Australia offer the programs.  Typically, the group sessions cover expectations of marriage; the influences of family backgrounds; communication skills; managing conflict; intimacy and sexuality; family planning; and finances, budgeting, and home buying.  Church-based agencies usually include a session on spirituality.[74]  In recent years, marriage educators have extended use of programs such as FOCCUS and PREPARE, for individual couples.  The Marriage Education Programme in Melbourne has recently developed a new program involving pre and post-wedding components and the publication of a regular newsletter for newly married couples.

The promotion of marriage education has largely been through the efforts of two national bodies, the Catholic Society for Marriage Education and the Marriage Educators Association of Australia, who have worked co-operatively for more than a decade, producing promotional materials, conducting training workshops and conferences, publishing a quarterly magazine, sponsoring research, and communicating with the federal government.

In 1995, the former Labor government increased funding to agencies,[75] and last year the new Liberal/National government doubled the grants over a three-year period.[76] The challenge in Australia is to implement effective strategies to increase participation in these programs and to extend their availability to couples in various stages of the life cycle.

Taxation

The taxation system should better acknowledge the private investment in societal good accompanying marriage.  No amount of public investment in families and children can compensate for the level of private disinvestment accompanying marriage breakdown and a rising level of out of wedlock births.  Yet those who have framed taxation laws in many states have failed to recognize this private investment in a public good.

In nations like Australia and the United States, the taxation system has been skewed away from families with children over the past few decades.[77]  In a recent Australian study, Professor Anne Harding found that “the real after-tax incomes of the bottom 20 percent of Australians, after adjustment for the needs of their households, rose during the 11 years [1982-1993/94] by more than $15 per week.  Similarly, the real needs adjusted income of the top 30 percent of households rose by a similar amount.  [But] the forty percent of Australians living in the middle of the income distribution…faced a $12-a-week real decline.[78]  Those experiencing the decline are largely families with children.

In 1960, the available tax allowances in Australia were $286 for a spouse and $312 for children—or 11.96 percent and 13.04 percent of average income respectively.  By 1993, the allowance for a spouse a children, including the family payment, had fallen to about 5.25 per cent and 4.0 percent of incomes respectively.  Taking into account tax and welfare benefits (the “effective tax” rate), between 1960 and 1990, the effective tax burden on individuals rose 83 percent, while that on families rose 360 percent.[79]

Some nations, such as France have recognized the needs of dependent children and have designed family-based taxation systems, thus supporting marriage and family life.  In Australia, the new federal government has increased the tax-free threshold for parents with dependent children.  But these measures need to go further if the devaluation of the relationship between parents and children in the national economy is to be redressed.

Divorce Laws

During the 1960’s and 70’s, many nations adopted unilateral no-fault divorce laws.  As in the case of Australia’s Family Law Act, the new laws were based on provisions in the United Nations’ Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.  The Covenant recognizes the centrality of family in society:

The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

The Covenant also provides that:

States parties to the present Covenant shall take appropriate steps to ensure equality of rights and responsibilities of spouses as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.  In the case of dissolution, provision shall be made for the necessary protection of any children.

Although the importance of family was stressed in debates about changes to law, the divorce of the parties remains the operational basis of the legislation.  Under previous legislation, the concept of fault determined the outcome of the divorce application.  In cultural terms, partners who walked away from a marriage or caused their spouse to leave risked the consequence of societal opprobrium.  The introduction of unilateral no-fault divorce law changed this cultural norm, allowing partners to leave a marriage on the premise that a short period of separation constitutes the irretrievable breakdown of the relationship.  Hence, today, spouses can leave a marriage at will.  Some commentators have noted that marriage has become the only legal agreement that can be breached without regard to the terms upon which it was made.  As Professor William Galston has said, the “divorce epidemic did not just happen.  The legal codes…aided and abetted it through the institution of no-fault divorce.”[80]

Galston suggested that two cultural changes were damaging families:  first, the culture of rights without responsibilities, and, secondly, the ethos of instant gratification.  These cultural shifts are reflected in attitudes fostered by no-fault divorce.  Marriage is often perceived as a right, as is the right to leave it, without corresponding duties.  Nonetheless, obligations such as the sharing of property can be imposed by a Court, despite any previous understanding of the parties to the contrary.

We believe that both pillars—rights and responsibilities—must under gird family policy.

It is not uncommon to hear calls for the extending of the period of separation required to obtain a divorce, so as to construct an impediment to family breakdown.  Some commentators have proposed a new set of rules based on the principle of “children first,” so that issues such as property division between the parents not even be considered until the needs of children have been met.[81]  In some U.S. States, proposals have been advanced to repeal unilateral no-fault divorce laws.[82] Others have called for more effective child-support legislation, or for a two-tiered system of allowing couples to choose between a fault and no-fault system.[83]

It is doubtful, given the Australian experience of a national child-support system over the past decade, that effective child support alone can remedy the problems of divorce.  Even if the considerable administrative burdens of such a system can be reduced and payments collected from all appropriate parents, the reality is that divorce creates economic winners and losers, especially when former partners re-marry.[84]  Maggie Gallagher observes:

There is no social program on the horizon which can give back to divorced couples the economies of marriage, nor can the law compel the kind of enormous—sacrifices from working overtime, to taking a second job, to mortgaging the house to pay for college—that married fathers [and we would add, many mothers] routinely make for their children, but which divorced fathers seldom do.  The collapse of marriage leaves everyone poorer.  For children the decline is partly fueled by the inexorable law that two households cannot live as cheaply as one, but it is fueled too by the equally inexorable reality that over time mothers and fathers who are not married develop conflicting economic interests and competing family obligations.[85]

William Galston has argued that unilateral no fault divorce—in which one party can readily obtain a divorce without the other’s consent—should be replaced for couples with dependent children by an updated fault scheme, with the alternative of a five year waiting period.  “And even in cases involving minor children in which both parties consent, there should be suitable braking mechanisms:  a mandatory pause of at least a year for reflection, counselling and mediation.”[86]

While we are unconvinced that limitations on divorce such as extended separation periods are generally an answer, we do believe that marriage contracts—in which couples determine the arrangements for their own marriage, including their respective rights and responsibilities should the terms breached and the contract broken—are desirable.  The adoption of marriage contracts would establish a new principle of responsibility.  Currently, many parties to a marriage are barely aware of the range of financial, social and emotional commitments, much less have any say as to where ongoing responsibility lies, should one or other of the parties decide to divorce.

Given the acceptance of the principle in many countries that parties to a marriage may order their own financial arrangements concerning property, subject to the overview of the court, there is no reason why such responsibility should not be returned to them for maintenance and ongoing parenting responsibilities.  Naturally, this would need to be subject to the courts’ obligation to ensure the best interest of the child.  States can define the types of marriage contracts that are contrary to public policy and not to be enforced, and can enforce other acceptable contracts.  It is also possible for States to deem certain conditions to be part of all contracts.  In this manner, rights upon the ending of marriage would be related to obligations assumed by the husband and wife upon entering their “partnership.”[87]

Other measures

There are a series of other measures which can be directed to rebuilding a culture of marriage.  Even a partial list would include:

• The adoption of national family policies;

• Urging national, community and religious leaders to reclaim the language of obligation and virtue, and the promotion of marriage and family life;

• Promoting education about marriage throughout the life cycle, in the schools and elsewhere; and promoting other programs to assist parents in raising children;

• Encouraging employers and employees to recognize family responsibilities in the scheduling of work, and helping them to keep the family home rather than the workplace as the primary focus of meaning in life;

• Recognizing the value of the household economy and its part in national well-being;

• Supporting community groups that provide support for families, and utilizing them rather than state bureaucracies where assistance is to be delivered to families; and

• Recreating a moral climate for children, especially in the media.

VII.  CONCLUSION

The past two decades have not demonstrated the alternatives to marriage and healthy family life to be conducive to human happiness.  Nor have the pessimistic views of the 60’s and 70’s, born of the excessive individualism of the era, inspired the majority of young people, for whom marriage and family life remain an important aspiration.  But we should not ignore the trends.

The dominant public culture of the 80’s and 90’s, expressed in the language of economics, has been about the individual and the private sphere, rather than the family and the cornmunity.  The influence of this culture extends to relationships:  the primacy of individual fulfillment and the reemergence of cohabitation as a private marriage.

While we rightly cherish individual freedom, we cannot live without roots in families, communities and voluntary associations.  How we achieve a balance between the two will determine much of the future happiness of our children.  Few tasks could be more irnportant.  As Vaclav Havel, the President of the Czech Republic, wrote in Summer Meditations:

There is no reason to think that this struggle is a lost cause.  The only lost cause is the one we give up on before we enter the struggle.[88]

Endnotes