Marriage works for women

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Last week was International Women’s Day. To mark the occasion a group of protesters blocked the entrance to the London office block we share with a Christian medical group.

Using a megaphone they chanted anti-Christian, pro-LGBT and pro-abortion slogans and intimidated female staff. When challenged, many preferred to continue shouting rather than to debate their ideas.

But if those protesters really had women’s best interests at heart they would have been chanting pro-marriage slogans.

Marriage is good for women just as it is for men. Research suggests that it provides:

• Health benefits: married people tend to live longer, have fewer heart attacks, a lower risk of depression, and better survival rates for cancer and major operations [Harvard Medical School].
• Happiness benefits: young women who are married are far more likely to report higher life satisfaction than their unmarried peers according to studies in the US. They also drink less [National Marriage Project].
• Security benefits: married women are far less likely to be abused or suffer domestic violence than women who cohabit. They are also less likely to have an unfaithful partner [Civitas].
• Economic benefits: studies in America have found that higher levels of marriage are strongly associated with economic growth and higher family income. Married women tend to enjoy substantially higher family incomes than unmarried peers [AEI 1, AEI 2].

Caring for women means caring about the family environment which many thrive in: marriage. I hope that message was not entirely lost on the protesters amidst the shouting.

This is an extract from one of the Coalition for Marriage’s regular communications with its supporters. If you would like to register as a marriage supporter and receive these updates, you may do so here.