Is being married the ideal relationship status for raising children?
Regis Magnae
Posts: 6,810 Forum Member
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https://twitter.com/suttonnick/status/409802612091789312/photo/1/large
Sir Coleridge says in the Telegraph that people have no right when it comes to children, only duties, and marriage is the best way to ensure those duties are fulfilled.
Meanwhile, the Mail refers to a father allegedly denied the right to have contact with his daughter due to his ex-partner.
https://twitter.com/suttonnick/status/409807255668654080/photo/1/large
I'm personally undecided on the issue. I certainly believe that parental stability is optimal to a decent childhood, but whether marriage is a panacea, I'm unsure.
Sir Coleridge says in the Telegraph that people have no right when it comes to children, only duties, and marriage is the best way to ensure those duties are fulfilled.
Meanwhile, the Mail refers to a father allegedly denied the right to have contact with his daughter due to his ex-partner.
https://twitter.com/suttonnick/status/409807255668654080/photo/1/large
I'm personally undecided on the issue. I certainly believe that parental stability is optimal to a decent childhood, but whether marriage is a panacea, I'm unsure.
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There is no difference between being brought up by married or unmarried parents.
Marriage just means the couple have legal rights when it comes to split and death.
I'm pretty sure that some people have even had, and raised, children successfully whilst married to someone who wasn't the other parent.
His other point was that parents have no rights when it comes to children, only responsibilities. This is obviously true. Children are not property. They are little human beings. They are not 'yours'. You just look after them till they can look after themselves.
The link in the OP seems on its face a very worrying story. The family courts need to assert their authority more. Parents who refuse to obey court orders need to be punished. If the woman in that case really has broken 82 orders, then frankly she needs to go to prison.
Blimey, what a curious mish-mash of disparate concepts, all mangled together to provide opposing viewpoints.
The rights of a parent to have access to an existing child are nothing whatsoever to do with the "right" of people to have kids to begin with, and then the "duties" and "responsibilities" mentioned are those which a parent has toward an existing child.
Frankly, I don't care if people are married, single, gay, straight, living on a hippie kibbutz or part of a flying circus as long as they are able to provide for any kids they have.
Which means not dropping one sprog after another cos there's nothing good on the telly and insisting you have a "right" to have them while you're living on benefits.
But it is becoming more of a middle class thing with males afraid of taking responsibility and committing themselves.
why?.
If it was the other way around then merely by marrying families would become more stable - which is clearly untrue
This, exactly this.
Stability and loving parents are the most important thing, not marriage itself. I believe in the family ( including gay & lesbian couples ) but not in the type of marriage the church pushes, if that makes sense. My niece's parents split up when she was about 4 or 5 and what's been most important for her is stability and routine - she spends the school week with her mum and the weekend with her dad / grandparents and that routine is never disrupted except for during the school holidays.
I certainly think a child has the right to see both its biological parents on a regular basis ( unless they're abusive ) and because of that, I'm unsure about sperm donation, if it means a child never knows it's biological father.
Are you glad your parents were married?
You don't explain why.
That's not to say that every marriage is the ideal relationship status for children though...
IIRC, that's what the evidence supports.
Of course, these people are more likely to have successful, long-term marriages but it's the stable and loving environment that matters, not whether they're married.
There's an error of reasoning involved with this conclusion too. They look at children who do well and find that more of their parents are married and then infer that marriage is therefore the cause of successful outcomes for children. That's actually reasoning back-to-front! (It's a case of the Affirming the Consequent fallacy if anyone likes fallacy spotting
If all is happy and stable in a loving relationship, give me a reason NOT to get married. I my opinion its only fair on the children.
To my knowledge, no one really cares if kids parents are married or not. When I was younger, I called my friends parents "Mrs ... or Mr ..." now my kids friends call me by my first name, times change. I don't feel my partner and I have been unfair to our children by not getting married. We have been there for them and have provided a stable family home for them from day one and shall continue to do so. If all is happy and stable in a loving relationship, give me a reason TO get married.