Marriage and a Stable Society
By Daniel Lilley
“‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” (Matthew 19:5,6; NIV)
Of all the elements where Britain is facing a relational deficit, one of the clearest is the decline in marriage.
In a lonely nation, where 58 per cent of adults report feeling lonely often, [1] it should not surprise us that the marriage rate has fallen by two-thirds in the last 50 years. The marriage rate (number of over-16s marrying per 1000 per year) was 63.5 in 1972 and has now been under 20 every year since 2017. [2] Isolating Church of England weddings, the numbers are even more stark; with less than a fifth as many of these in 2022 as in 1972. [3] Among men under-35, the marriage rate has fallen by five-sixths in a half-century. [4]
This remarkable decline has been induced by a mixture of both many delaying marriage and many never marrying at all: the average age when first marrying has climbed ten years since the early 1970s, [5] 84 per cent of religious and 91 per cent of civil marriages are now between couples that already live together, [6] and the proportion of 50-year-olds who have never married is up four times for men and six times for women since 1990. [7]
It has also been starkly uneven. The ‘marriage gap’ – the difference in marriage rates between wealthier and poorer individuals – has doubled since the late 1980s. [8] The Marriage Foundation estimates 34 per cent of the least affluent women and 71 per cent of the most affluent are married when they have their first child, a gap of 37 percentage points. [9] The Centre for Social Justice [10] and the Institute for Fiscal Studies [11] estimate similarly.
Marriage is in general retreat, but the retreat is far faster for the less affluent.
Such social churn is not without its consequences: lower couple formation in general has led to a striking fall in birth rates, from a peak of 2.93 per woman in 1963 to 1.44 per woman in 2023 now; [12] and couples forming, but not marrying, is resulting in an unprecedented rise in fatherlessness. Cohabiting parents are around three times as likely to separate in the first five years of their children’s lives as married couples, [13] and we have thus reached a point where nearly half of children are growing up without a father at home. [14]
The stability gap is not simply because wealthier, more highly educated people tend to have stable families and also tend to marry: World Family Maps [15] and Marriage Foundation [16] studies have shown marriage to be a larger factor behind family stability than either education or income.
Nor is the stability coming from couples staying together miserably, as shown in two studies, from 2017 [17] and 2024 [18], looking at the outcomes of couples 10 years on from considering their relationships to be ‘on the brink’. In the initial study, while 70 per cent of cohabiting couples had separated in the decade since considering themselves ‘on the brink’, 70 per cent of married couples had remained together. Perhaps even more crucially, just 7 per cent of those married couples that had stayed together were unhappy in their relationship 10 years on. The 2024 study found none of the sample of married couples that had stayed together (65 per cent, in that instance) were still unhappy 10 years on. For those that had stayed together, things had improved.
Why has this happened?
This all raises the question why. There are two questions here: why has marriage retreated in general? And why are poorer couples increasingly marrying less than richer ones?
The latter question – why the marriage gap between poor and rich is growing – has three answers that are especially important.
First, and most challenging, is the feedback loop effect: as marriage becomes less common, it reinforces its own decline. People whose parents, role models, and friends have not married are unlikely to do so themselves. The demographic trend compounds itself.
Second, and easily addressable in principle, but unlikely to change soon, is the public messaging effect: politicians – and to some extent celebrities – have consistently told the public that marriage is unimportant. In 2017, Marriage Foundation research found that it had been a decade since a cabinet member had discussed marriage in a speech. [19] This has hardly changed in the years since, with the slight exception of Reform. In 2024, the only major party whose manifesto even mentioned marriage was Reform, [20] and Nigel Farage did recently propose increasing the transferable marriage tax allowance. However, even in these cases there was no explicit framing around marriage, with the focus instead on benefits and birth rates, respectively. [21]
Third is the cost of weddings. A quick flick through top wedding magazines and you will be informed that the average wedding costs upwards of £20,000; £25,000 including the engagement ring and honeymoon. [22] Part of this is the nature of the dataset – those who buy wedding magazines and complete these surveys are not generally the ‘no frills’ type – but there is also underlying truth to it. Survey evidence from both Marriage Foundation [23] and the Thriving Center of Psychology [24] have found that most young people view weddings as unrealistically expensive.
What can be done?
This final problem is solvable: much of a wedding’s cost is related to venue hire, a cost forced upwards by regulatory barriers to entry. Unless they are having a religious marriage, which now accounts for just a sixth of weddings in England and Wales, a couple will need to find a venue that has gone through the bureaucratic process of becoming an ‘approved premises’. The very cheapest end of this is register offices, although even these weddings will normally still cost about £500 in total – a lot of money for many couples. The other end of the range is hotels and stately homes, often costing £10,000 to £20,000.
This roadblock can be cleared. The Law Commission proposal to reorganise wedding law around the officiant, not the venue, would substantially reduce costs, simplify weddings, and bring the law in line with that of close neighbours such as Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Ireland as well as comparable countries such as Australia, Canada, and the United States. [25]
But, although helpful, this policy will only go a small way to turning around this particular ship, and the former two causes will need addressing if we are to see genuine change in the marriage gap. First, we urgently need our leaders – political or otherwise – to become much braver in defending the importance and value of marriage given the state’s financial interest in reducing its welfare obligations. One mustn’t underestimate the value that the prevailing mood music has on social behaviour – indeed, the swing in mood music towards a particular progressive liberal brand of feminism in the 1960s and 1970s can take some credit for the decline of marriage.
Second, we need to think biblically about turning around this feedback loop. We need the Church and Christians to be bolder in advocating for healthy committed marriages as an aspect of God’s common grace for the flourishing of society. We need disadvantaged young men and women to grow up seeing successful, loving, covenantal marriages in the way their richer contemporaries do. Such role models will also be crucial to increasing their economic prospects – 29 per cent of families with a lone parent are in long-term worklessness compared with 2.3 per cent of couple families. [26]
But, as we address this feedback loop, we also need to think bigger about the first why: why has marriage retreated in general?
Here the question moves away from politics and towards mission. Ultimately, the larger deterioration of marriage is one facet of a society-wide relational deficit. As society has moved away from a morality of responsibility for a common good – values anchored in the Gospel – to a morality centred on protection and maximisation of individual autonomy, relational capital has deteriorated. The decline of marriage is a strong example, but so is the rise in the fractured, identity-driven, and victimhood-based politics we see today. [27]
Responding to this is about conviction in the social value of marriage, but it is also about loving the stranger as Jesus loved them, and them seeing and knowing that love. It is about understanding a broader cultural emptiness and filling it with the Gospel. Shoots of this have already been seen in the not-so-quiet revival where young people – especially young men – are increasingly appearing at church yearning for community and meaning. [28]
Reversing the general decline in marriage is best done when zooming out to the purpose of marriage: to know and reflect God’s love for us more deeply (Ephesians 5:31-32, 1 John 4:7-12). If this is God’s purpose for marriage, how we look to revitalise marriage in the political sphere should be based in this purpose. It is about a broader cultural return towards value being found in loving commitment to others. It is about demonstrating covenant through embracing people in the mutually sacrificial love of church family life, and ultimately about teaching that there is no one better to live for than Jesus. The joy of marriage has its root in the joy of living for something more than ourselves – for our spouse, but ultimately for the Lord (Ephesians 5:21-33, Psalm 16:11). In a sense, it has the same answer every question did every week at Sunday School: it’s really about Jesus.
Register here for the upcoming webinar on 21 July at 7:30 with Daniel Lilley presenting Marriage and Stable Society
The views and opinions expressed above are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the Jubilee Centre or its trustees.
[1] Centre for Social Justice (2024) Lonely Nation: Part 1: How family can help end the loneliness crisis. Available at: https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/library/lonely-nation (Accessed: 30 May 2025)
[2] Office for National Statistics. (2024) Marriages in England and Wales. Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/marriagecohabitationandcivilpartnerships/bulletins/marriagesinenglandandwalesprovisional/previousreleases (Accessed: 30 May 2025)
[3] Ibid
[4] Ibid
[5] Ibid
[6] Ibid
[7] Ibid
[8] Benson, H. (2023) The Marriage Gap. Marriage Foundation. Available at: https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/MF-note-Marriage-Gap-Feb-2023.pdf (Accessed: 30 May 2025)
[9] Ibid
[10] Centre for Social Justice (2020) Family Structure still matter. Available at: https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/CSJJ8372-Family-structure-Report-200807.pdf (Accessed: 30 May 2025)
[11] Kiernan, K. et al. (2022) Families and Inequalities. IFS. Available at: https://ifs.org.uk/inequality/families-and-inequalities/ (Accessed: 30 May 2025)
[12] Office for National Statistics (2024) Births in England and Wales. Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/bulletins/birthsummarytablesenglandandwales/2023 (Accessed: 30 May 2025)
[13] Kiernan, K. et al. (2022) Families and Inequalities. IFS. Available at: https://ifs.org.uk/inequality/families-and-inequalities/ (Accessed: 30 May 2025)
[14] Centre for Social Justice (2025) Lost Boys. Available at: https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/CSJ-The_Lost_Boys.pdf (Accessed: 30 May 2025)
[15] Institute for Family Studies (2017) Essay: The Cohabitation-Go-Round: Cohabitation and Family Instability across the Globe. Available at: https://worldfamilymap.ifstudies.org/2017/%20files/files/WFM-2017-FullReport.pdf (Accessed: 30 May 2025)
[16] Benson, H. (2022) Married poor more stable than unmarried rich. Marriage Foundation. Available at: https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/MF-10-year-research-note-The-Stability-Gap.pdf (Accessed: 2 June 2025)
[17] Benson, H. and McKay, S. (2017) Couples on the brink. Marriage Foundation. Available at: https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/MF-paper-Couples-on-the-brink-FINAL.pdf https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2017/02/MF-paper-Couples-on-the-brink-FINAL.pdf (Available at: 30 May 2025)
[18] Benson, H. (2024) Trapped in an unhappy myth. Available at: https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/MF-report-Trapped-in-an-unhappy-myth.pdf (Accessed: 30 May 2025)
[19] Benson, H. (2017) “Marriage-rich” Cabinet need to back marriage. Marriage Foundation. Available at: https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/MF-paper-Cabinet-and-marriage.pdf (Accessed: 30 May 2025)
[20] Reform UK (2024) Our Contract With You. Available at: https://archive.org/details/reform-uk-our-contract-with-you (Accessed: 2 June 2025)
[21] Whannel, K. (2025) We want to make it easier to have children - Farage. BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yx062pvlvo (Accessed: 5 June 2025)
[22] Shafiee, S. (2024) How Much Does a Wedding Cost? The 2024 UK Average.
Available at: https://bridebook.com/uk/article/how-much-does-a-wedding-cost-the-2024-uk-average (Accessed: 2 June 2025)
[23] Benson, H. (2022) Wedding Guests and Costs. Marriage Foundation. Available at: https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/SCR4-MF-Wedding-costs-and-guests-v2.pdf (Accessed: 2 June 2025)
[24] Thriving Center of Psychology (2023) I Do Not: Gen Z, Millennials Shifting Expectations About Marriage In 2023. Available at: https://thrivingcenterofpsych.com/blog/millennials-gen-z-marriage-expectations-statistics/ (Accessed: 2 June 2025)
[25] The Law Commission (2022) Celebrating Marriage: A New Weddings Law. Available at: https://lawcom.gov.uk/project/weddings/ (Accessed: 2 June 2025)
[26] CSJ Data Tracker Percentage of children in long-term workless households. Work – Social Justice Data Tracker. Available at: https://socialjusticedatatracker.org.uk/work/ (Accessed: 2 June 2025)
[27] Sacks, J. (2020 Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times. Hodder & Stoughton
[28] Bible Society (2024) The Quiet Revival. Available at: https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/research/quiet-revival (Accessed: 16 June 2025).
