Is marrigage best?

[anotheoldgit]

Labour finally admits married parents are best for children.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-109784 5/Labour-finally-admits-married-parents-ARE-be st-children-all.html

Put the flags out! The government has finally admitted that children are best served by being brought up by their own two married parents. Well, you don't say. For more than two decades, this statement of the blindingly obvious has been denied by the left-wingers who control our culture. Instead, they insisted that there was no such thing as a broken family, that all types of household were as good as each other for bringing up children.

Melanie Phillips

[sara3]

excuse me.. I'm a full-time working one parent family.

can you please point out the preferential treatment I should be getting?

[hippyhoppy]

in my opinion, marriage is best left well alone... it was my non 15 year wedding anniversary yesterday - the best day of my life!

[jenty]

married parents are only better for their children if they are a happily married couple..if there not the children would be better off being brought up by just the one parent...

[madmaggot]

Actually, in my humble opinion, it depends!
For children to be brought up by parents who are constantly at each other (physically or mentally) has to be worse than the parents seperating. But, I do think that children need the stable presence of a male role model such as a grandfather to give a balanced upbringing. Things don't always work out as one would have hoped when deciding to have a family.

[hippyhoppy]

saying that - Dad sees the kids alot - little man is spending the night this evening.. and Christmas day will be just the four of us with wine and presents.. if fact I get on with him better now than within the last 3 years...

[jenty]

OUCH!!!! no knowledge

[BillySugger]

Marriage is a wonderful institution - but who wants to live in an institution ?

[naomi24]

Marriage is best if the marriage is good. If it's not, then a child is better off with one good parent.

[Kromovaracun]

I have to say, I don't know much about the issue. It's one that there's lots of sociological research gone into, and I'm not particularly familiar with it.

However, I'm also extremely sceptical of attempts to simplify the issue by saying things like 'children are best served by being brought up by their own two married parents'. Making such a ludicrous simplification of the issue is just so.... dumb. It's counter-productive, it fails to consider the complexities of the issue and it really doesn't help at all. I also don't have any time for people who insist that they know best about what's good for kids purely based on the virtue of being a parent.

So, to answer the question: I don't know. But people who pretend they do annoy me.

[terambulan]

Ideally children are best reared by their biological parents.
Marriage between them is convenient but not necessary.

[Quinlad]

Regular readers of Melanie Phillips don't want a thoughtful study of complex issues, Kromo. They want to see profound subjects rendered inordinately simplistic.

And Melanie does that time after time in her inimitable, hectoring way.

[keyplus90]

I have no doubt that marriage is always better not only for children but for the couple as well. Because by going ahead with the marriage what is it you doing different? Commitment. You are committing yourself for whatever the future would throw at you two. It is a common known factor that many people do not want to get married because they do not want to commit themselves and always want to leave a door open. There is nothing wrong in that as you have the choice of divorce even if the things do not work out in the marriage but at least you have one extra bonding reason to view your problems and try to make it work.

[beso]

Utter rubbish.

My parents were married but my lasting memory of home life is them living under an uneasy truce. They split as soon as the kids had left home.

I didn't know what affection was as a child and my self esteem problems continued to come against me for a very long time afterwards.

Conversely I know very happy well balanced young people who have grown up in "broken" homes. They say that they really liked having the diversity of two homes and two sets of parent figures and don't feel at all traumatised by their upbringing, rather they feel priviliged.

What counts is that the kids know both their parents love them and want to spend time with them. Among the parents it is all about respect. I count my wife's ex among my very best friends and we regularly spend time with him socially.

Most of the disaster stories about split families are down to one or both parents poisoning the child's mind or the custodial parent denying access of the other. My mother tried to do this even while I grew up.

I have three well balanced children who are now in their twenties. Two are from my first relationship and the other is my wife's daughter from a previous marriage. They all regularly spent time with both their parents.

I was a second father to my wife's daughter and she still gives me a father's day card every year as well as one to her Dad.

We all respected the rights of the kids to have their parents and the kids all treat each other as siblings to this day despite only spending a couple of nights a week in the same house at the same time.

[naomi24]

beso is absolutely right. An uneasy truce - and often all out war - is of no benefit to children whatsoever. In fact being raised in such at atmosphere can be frightening for a child and can cause long term emotional damage. Married parents who are happy together, support each other and care about their children is the ideal, but unfortunately Melanie Phillips, and anyone who thinks it's that easy, seem to forget that we don't live in an ideal world. As Krom says, they fail to consider the complexities involved. They need to get rid of the rose-coloured glasses.

[Le Chat]

Children would rather be from a broken home, than living in one.