Why I was so wrong to sneer at heterosexual marriage

SARAH VINE says getting hitched is the best framework there is for a lifetime together.  Almost too late, I realised that the feminist rejection of marriage was a big con. Luckily for me, I finally met a good ’un before it was too late, and had a child. Unmarried couples with children who break up now exceed the married ones. Parents who marry are far more likely to stay together than those cohabiting

When I was young and ignorant, I thought marriage was an outmoded institution: at best an irrelevance, at worst a throwback to the bad old days when women were little more than objects to be bought and sold.

Women like me — independent, educated, capable of re-wiring a plug — had no intention of getting married.  Instead, we expected to enter into long-term partnerships on an equal footing, and bring up our children in an atmosphere of mutual understanding.

That was the theory.

In practice, I soon discovered that rather than helping me find the perfect ‘life partner’, this approach merely landed me with a succession of creeps who, as the saying goes, were delighted to be able to have their cake and eat it.

Almost too late, I realised that the feminist rejection of marriage was a great big con.  All it did was play into the hands of men seeking all the upsides of a relationship without any of the responsibilities.

Luckily for me, I finally met a good ’un before it was too late, and just about snuck in under the wire in time to start a family.  Fifteen years in, I now know the truth about marriage. Which is that, with the exception of certain parts of the world which have only a passing acquaintance with the 21st century, getting hitched is as much a boon for the female of the species as it is for the male.

But that’s not all: because a marriage can be a very good thing for the children it produces, too.

A new statistic shows that the number of unmarried couples with children who break up has now exceeded the number of married ones.

And this is despite the fact that there are nearly four times as many families with children headed by married couples. Marriage: Sarah Vine who is married to Michael Gove, right, says that she was lucky that she settled down and got married and adds that getting hitched is good for women and men

In other words, parents who marry are far more likely to stay together than those who are simply cohabiting.

Given what we know about the long-term effects on children whose parents split up — for example, seven out of ten offenders come from broken homes — this is hugely significant. It shows that getting married is more than just an excuse to throw a party.

For those who want to start a family, marriage is the vital foundation stone. Because, let’s face it, sharing your life with another person is never easy. Introduce children into the equation, and it can become fiendishly hard. Whoever first suggested that having a baby brings a couple together was clearly delusional.

Children are tailor-made to drive people apart, or at the very least set them at each other’s throats.

They also have a habit of ruining everything from your waistline to your sex drive, not to mention your bank balance and upholstery.

Despite all this, you love them and they do bring you joy; so you have another, and maybe even another.