Publication of a report by the Centre for Social Justice
England rugby star Courtney Lawes today calls on the Government to incentivise marriage, as a new report reveals cohabiting couples are four times more likely to separate.
Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, the 31-year-old lock insists: “A stable family means one where the parents are married.” Lawes, who plays on the second row for Northampton where he was brought up by his father Linford and Valerie, his English mother, spoke out to coincide with the publication of a report by the Centre for Social Justice think tank, warning that family instability is one of the leading causes for negative outcomes for children.
He reveals his own half-brother did not enjoy the stable upbringing he did, and ended up in jail – and questions if his life might have been different had he “grown up in a stable home”.
He said: “My dad tried to be there for him as much as he could be. But unfortunately that didn’t prevent my brother from adopting a bad lifestyle – drugs and criminality that eventually ended in prison. I’m forced to ask the question of how his life might have been different if he had grown up in a stable home.” The sibling is now “doing great for himself and raising a son of his own”.
Family Structure Still Matters, written by Cristina Odone, the former Catholic Herald editor, for the Centre for Social Justice, found cohabiting couples are four times more likely to split up, while 70 per cent of young offenders come from families where parents have separated.
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