Legal News
Senior judge warns that marriage is under threat (20 February 2014)
Date: 20/02/2014
A leading judge has warned that the traditional “nuclear” family is in danger of being “wiped out”.
Supreme Court judge Lord Wilson said that the UK’s divorce laws have resulted in traditional families being eroded and being replaced by “blended” households consisting of step parents and half-siblings.
Lord Wilson said that as he watched couples take their wedding vows, he feared for them.
“The availability of divorce has had a profound effect on social demographics,” said Lord Wilson.
“So the blended family now often replaces the nuclear family.
“I am not convinced that it is a bad thing – might it not be healthier for children to learn at a very early age to cope with relationships in a mixed and wider family group?” he added.
Lord Wilson also backed gay marriage, saying that same sex marriages served to strengthen marriage rather than weaken it.
He said that children were best brought up in stable households with two parents, however – ideally parents who are married. Lord Wilson cited evidence on family relationships from Sweden, the US and UK, which he said supported the idea that marriage helps make the family unit more stable.
“I am convinced that sexual relationships which lead to full cohabitation between adults are valuable, in particular to any resulting children,” said Lord Wilson.
“I would have thought – although, at my age, I have forgotten the details – that it is highly desirable to be able to apply four eyes, four ears, four hugging arms, four tender lips and two separate stress levels to the daily care of a child,” he added.
The 68-year-old judge was speaking about the decline of the nuclear family during a visit to Northern Ireland.
As many as four in 10 (42%) couples now divorce and Lord Wilson spoke of “the uncomfortable mismatch between the promises and the reality” – referring to the vows which couples make on their wedding day and divorce.
“Divorce is now so much a part of our culture that perhaps we do not realise the extraordinary inroad which it has made upon the traditional concept; except when, in church, we hear the couple promise… to take each other ‘for better or worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part’,” he said.
Lord Wilson also spoke of his concerns over intermarriage between close family members in some cultures, which he said might lead to “disabling abnormalities” in some children.
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