Mums are most likely to be happy if they are married, according to a new analysis which puts the spotlight on joyful parenting. A study of 3,700 mothers who had their first child between 2000 and 2002 found 52% were “highly satisfied” with their life when their son or daughter was 14.
But this was the case for 59% of those who were married and who had wed before the child’s birth – and for 61% of those who wed after the birth of their first child. In contrast, 49% of mums who never married but were still with their partner were highly satisfied.
Marriage and relationship stability
The analysis by Harry Benson, author of Reliable Love: The Psychology of Marriage and Commitment, is based on data from the Millennium Cohort Study. He said that “parents who marry before, during or after pregnancy face a significantly lower risk of their relationship breaking down than couples who never marry, regardless of their socioeconomic and other background characteristics”.
Mr Benson argues that “policies which encourage more couples to marry could potentially reduce the high levels of family breakdown we currently see”. He acknowledged concerns that this could “result in more couples remaining in unhappy relationships” but said the latest evidence shows “mothers who married and stayed together were substantially more likely to report high life satisfaction than mothers who stayed together but never married”.
Psychological benefits of marriage
He said: “The results therefore provide no evidence that encouraging marriage simply means encouraging more couples to remain unhappily together. Instead, they raise the possibility that marriage is associated both with greater relationship stability and, among couples who remain together, with greater maternal life satisfaction... This phenomenon can’t be explained by other background factors such as age, education, wealth, housing type, employment status, etc. But perhaps, the psychological benefits of being married, of being in a committed relationship with your partner that has been unambiguously expressed through the act of marrying, can go some way to explain these results.”
Government policy, he said, has been “at best ambivalent” towards marriage and “at worst put significant barriers in the way of poorer couples from tying the knot because of the punitive and capricious benefits system”.
Government response
A Tory spokesman said: “Conservatives believe in the family. At our conference, we announced plans to end the childcare cliff edge that stops couples getting free childcare when their earnings increase, and we also pledged to let each married couple and civil partnership leave up to £1million, as well as their family home, to their loved ones tax-free. We are on the side of hardworking families.”
