A senior High Court judge has said that couples should seriously consider getting married if they plan to have children.
Sir Paul Coleridge, who has served as a family lawyer and judge for decades, said: "Far from being old-fashioned, marriage is an engine for social progress, the most effective structure ever invented for nurturing children and building social solidarity."
“Protection of marriage”
"The reality of the family is very simple. If your relationship is stable enough to cope with the rigours of child rearing then you should consider seriously adding the protection of marriage to your relationship."
He added that “stability is the name of the game” for families and that couples should not have children unless their relationship is sufficiently stable to deal with the strains of child rearing.
"I don't think [couples] should have children until they are sure that their relationship is stable enough to cope with the stresses and strains," he said.
"If your relationship is not stable enough to cope with children you should not have them."
Less stable
He suggested that cohabitation was a less stable form of relationship than marriage and criticised politicians for being ignorant of the benefits that marriage brings.
Earlier this year, the Office for National Statistics reported that the proportion of children born to unmarried mothers in England and Wales was a record 47.5% in 2012.
It was also revealed in the 2011 census that the number of married couples in England and Wales had dropped to 45% from just over 50% ten years ago.
Family breakdown
The Marriage Foundation think tank, set up by Sir Coleridge, recently suggested parents who were not married were twice as likely to break up as those who were married.
Christian Guy, director of the Centre for Social Justice, told the Telegraph:
"A lot of people don't realise that long-term cohabitation with children is really rare – most people with children who are still together after many years are married.
"Long-term results show that there is something different about being married, it is more stable. People are bound together when they are married in a way that they are not if they are just living together."
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