National Affairs Rory Leishman
Iain Duncan Smith, former leader of the British Conservative party, has written a major policy paper on the family, in which he urges his parliamentary colleagues to single out married couples for special tax benefits. It’s an excellent idea that politicians in Canada should be no less eager to embrace than their British counterparts.
Not so long ago, special benefits for married couples were a commonplace feature of tax and social policies throughout the Western world. It was not until 1991 that the Conservative government of former prime minister Brian Mulroney induced the Parliament of Canada to extend marital benefits under the income tax act to heterosexual couples living as husband and wife in common-law relationships.
In conjunction with other social factors, these policies have contributed to a sharp rise in the number of common-law unions, which, according to census data, accounted for 14 per cent of families in Britain in 2006, up from nine per cent 10 years earlier. In Canada, the proportion of common-law unions reached 16 per cent of all families in 2006, up from six per cent in 1981.
Many scholars welcome this trend. In a paper published by the Law Commission of Canada, Katherine Arnup, a feminist history professor at Carleton University, enthuses: “Despite moral and religious concerns voiced in the 1960s and 1970s, for example, heterosexual common-law relationships increasingly resemble heterosexual marriages, demonstrating a degree of commitment and longevity not anticipated by social commentators of earlier decades.”
Such complacency is folly. Smith has far better reason to warn: “Marriage and co-habitation are not the same thing.” Citing British statistics, he notes that “regardless of socio-economic status and education, cohabiting couples are between two and 2.5 times more likely to break-up than equivalent married couples. Indeed, just one in 11 married couples split up before their child’s fifth birthday, compared to one in three unmarried couples.”
Drawing upon evidence from Statistics Canada’s Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, Peter Jon Mitchell of the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, likewise reported last year in “Growing Up Married, Growing Up Common-Law” that among Canadian children aged six to 11 years old in 1995, the proportion living with only one biological parent in the home was nearly 49 per cent in households with co-habiting couples, as compared to just six per cent for children in two-parent, married families.
Smith observes that while marriage is directly linked to better mental and physical health for both adults and children, the converse is true of breakdown-prone common-law unions. Studies of British children have found that family breakdown is linked to “higher levels of abuse, lower levels of achievement in education, the development of behavioural problems and engagement in destructive activities such as offending and substance abuse.”
Correspondingly, Mitchell reports that a follow-up survey eight years later of the same Canadian children examined in 1995 found that the teens who had lived in common-law families when younger were significantly more likely to smoke, sell drugs and engage in sexual intercourse.
Research throughout the Western world has conclusively demonstrated that children thrive best under the care and guidance of both of their biological parents united in marriage. Yet, few politicians acknowledge that fact.
With an election impending, David Cameron, the current leader of the British Conservative party, is promising to introduce a tax credit for all couples, married and common-law, heterosexual and homosexual, with young children. But even that policy is too much for Ed Balls, the secretary of state for families in Britain’s Labour government. He rejects any tax support for couples on the ground that it could “stigmatize children” in single-parent families.
What nonsense. Stigma ranks among the least of the problems facing the children of single parents. Any politician with an enlightened concern for children would encourage all parents to get married and stay married.
To this end, Smith has proposed a tax break for married couples with young children. It’s a sound policy that should be revived not only in Britain, but also in Canada. Would that some member of the Canadian Parliament, Conservative or otherwise, would follow the example set by Smith in advocating this sound and compassionate approach to fostering healthy and stable families.
