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ISSUES: Marriage
Chapter 2: Divorce
Does religion help couples stay together?
I
’m often asked if Christians have
lower divorce rates than anyone
else. Although I point out that I
don’t know of any UK studies on this,
evidence from the US is fairly mixed
that religion – or ‘religiosity’ as it’s
usually called in the academic papers
– is linked to higher rates of stability.
In any case, if you were going to make
a social science hypothesis based on
what you read in the Bible, there’s a
much better candidate than simply
whether one subscribes to a certain
religion or not. Jesus is reported in
the gospels as saying: “What God has
joined together, let man not separate.”
Therefore anyone who includes God in
their marriage ought to do better.
And so it seems. US studies show very
nicely that people who apply their
faith into their marriage – those who
see their marriage as ‘God-inspired’ or
‘sacred’ – tend to do better.
Anyway, I thought it was about time
we had a look at the link between
religion and stability. So I asked my
long-time colleague, and world-class
stats expert, Professor Steve McKay at
the University of Lincoln, if we could
do a study on this.
Using data from theMillenniumCohort
Study, we looked at the religious and
ethnic groupings of 10,000 or so new
mothers who had babies in the years
2000 or 2001, and then followed them
through to when their children were 11
years old to see who was still together
and who wasn’t.
You can read our full report online,
published in 2016 and reported in the
Daily Telegraph
.
Our initial finding was that Christian
and Muslim mothers overall were
more likely to stay together than
non-religious mothers. The same was
true for Christian fathers, though not
Muslim fathers.
However, we also looked at a whole
load of other background factors
and their independent influence on
stability. As we had already found in
some of our other research, being
married, being older, being better
educated, planning your pregnancy,
and being happy in your relationship
all have their own effect on a couple’s
odds of staying together.
But when we added these factors into
the mix and compared like-with-like,
the apparent advantage in stability
to Christian mothers and fathers
disappeared. The reason they tended
to do better was down to their greater
likelihood of being better educated
and also being married.
So it’s being married that is partly
responsible for making Christian
parents more likely to stay together,
even if the fact that they are Christians
makes them more likely to get married
in the first place.
Yet even after taking all these
background factors into account,
and comparing people of similar
age, education, marital status and
relationship happiness, two groups
stood out in terms of their religion or
ethnicity.
Muslim mothers did especially well.
Because we included relationship
happiness in the mix, we can rule out
any suspicion that they are somehow
repressed as a group.
Black fathers did especially badly.
Even if they were married and happy,
they were still more likely to split up
compared to other fathers.
Both of these findings suggest there
is an important influence of culture –
rather than religion – in play here. One
effect is positive and one is negative. It
leaves us asking questions about what
they are doing differently, whether
they think differently about marriage
and relationships, and whether they
have different levels of social support
What is it that makes Muslim mothers
especially stable in their relationships,
yet Muslim fathers are no different to
anyone else?
What is it that makes black fathers
especially
unstable
in
their
relationships, whereas this is not the
case for black mothers?
November 2016
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The above information is reprinted
with kind permission from the
Marriage Foundation. Please visit
for further information.
© Marriage Foundation 2017
