Yeah, We Know.

From Britain comes a controversial survey indicating that the best environment to raise children arises from a primitive and nearly-forgotten family arrangement referred to in the report as marriage.

We were not sure what to make of this, but apparently this so-called "marriage" thing is good for society.

Unmarried parents are up to five times more likely to experience family breakdown, according to the survey of 15,000 families carried out for the social justice policy review group headed by Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader.

The findings will put intense pressure on David Cameron to offer voters a cast-iron guarantee that he will put marriage at the heart of Tory policies on the family.

Some of the Conservative leader's advisers want him to tone down the party's support for marriage because they fear the party risks alienating support from unmarried families.

But the study said that such a strategy was misguided. A statement from Mr Duncan Smith's policy review said: "By tacitly promoting cohabitation and undermining marriage, policy-makers are exposing more children to the perils of family breakdown, reflected in higher levels of crime, anti-social behaviour, education failure and mental and emotional disturbance."

For some reason, at least in Britain, although the empirical evidence seems to suggest that this "marriage" thing is good, there is apparently a lot of political wrangling about it. I can't imagine why. In any event, the supporters of "marriage" have also found out that it is more important even than money!

Mr Duncan Smith said that the study offered compelling evidence that marriage must be the basis of Government policy to tackle family breakdown.

"This is a serious study and will help the policy group establish the causes of the UK's very high levels of family breakdown," he said. "What is particularly interesting is the way the report shows that the Government's assumption that children's outcomes are solely dictated by socio-economic factors is wrong.

"The structure within which they grow up and are nurtured is vital to their well-being.

"The Government's corresponding attempt to airbrush out references to marriage from family research is a form of censorship."

Read story here.

If we could get some kind of movement going in Connecticut to promote these "marriages" they want to have in Britain I think it would have a good effect on our society, too!

Tags: Christian, Connecticut, Evangelical, Marriage, Family, Politics