Such arguments are rarely heard today. In the USA and Britain, as well as in Australia, the evidence is mounting that children are generally better off brought up by their two natural parents than in any other circumstances. Children from what we used to call 'broken homes' tend, on average, to perform less well at school, they are less healthy, they are more likely to get into trouble with the police, and they are less likely to find and hold down a 'good job'. Of course, if parents are locked into vicious battles then their children might benefit from a separation but most marriages ending in divorce are not like that and most children of divorced and separated parents would benefit if their parents made more of an effort to stay together. It turns out that staying together 'for the sake of the children' might be the wise thing to do after all.
Marriage is, after all, just a 'piece of paper'.
The problem with this argument is that we know that parents who are married stay together much more successfully on average than parents who simply cohabit. The reason is probably that married couples are more committed to making their relationship work. At the Institute of Family Studies, Robyn Parker has recently been carrying out discussions with married and unmarried couples to find out what makes for a strong family unit. One of the answers seems to be that the strength of a union depends crucially upon each partner's prior commitment to it. Couples who stay together are those who have jointly determined that separation is not an option.