Earlier this week, British Prime Minister David Cameron was attacked by the Centre for Social Justice over his failure to support marriage and the family since coming into office a year ago. The irony is that the CSJ was founded by one of his own Ministers, Iain Duncan Smith.

Gavin Poole, the centre’s chief executive, accused the Coalition of “compromise-driven inaction in tackling our devastating culture of family breakdown”. Cameron had previously promised to support marriage and tackle family breakdown.

His failure to do so will have pleased one person at least, namely Suzanne Moore of The Guardian. In February she launched a scathing attack on Duncan Smith, and the Tories generally, over their support for marriage and their intention (now seemingly abandoned) to introduce a small tax break for married families.

Moore wondered why, if “marriage is so damn good” it need propping up with tax breaks? I was once asked that question myself at a conference.

But without realising it, her own article gives the answer to that question.

In it, she paints a picture of a society blighted by unhappy relationships and at one point says she is stunned at “the number of younger people still prepared to jump into marriage”.

So, which is it? Is marriage so strong it needs no help from the Government, or is it so fragile that it’s amazing anyone still bothers with it?

In fact, to judge from her article, the latter seems to be her answer.

For example, she describes how, when her own marriage broke up, she was “shocked at the number of people who wanted to tell me how awful their seemingly OK relationships were. They were only together because of the children, they had outgrown each other, they have affairs, they never had sex, or indeed hardly communicated.”

I like that bit about staying together “only” for the children. I’d have thought putting aside your own personal happiness for the sake of your children is admirable.

She talks about people “stuck” in unhappy marriages. But in the UK it is very easy to get out of a marriage. If they’re “stuck” it’s not because of any legal or social impediment, nor because of any financial impediment that has anything to do with marriage in particular.

If they’re “stuck” it may be because getting out would be too much bother emotionally speaking. But this could apply to a cohabiting couple every bit as much as a married couple.

In any event, Moore seems to think the be-all and the end-all of any marriage is personal happiness and once you’re not happy you should get out.

In fact, Moore has both a dystopian and a utopian view of human relationships. On the one hand she believes that many relationships are doomed to failure and seems mildly amazed when they work out.

On the other hand, this dystopian view stems from a more utopian belief that our relationships should make us happy all the time, which is an impossible, self-defeating notion if ever there was one. How many relationships could survive under such a crushing burden? Only the very best.

In any event, a lot of Britons obviously believe what Moore believes, which goes a long way towards explaining the very high rate of marital breakdown in Britain. It explains the same phenomenon in lots of other Western countries as well, including increasingly here in Ireland.

But in fact marriage is about much more than the happiness of the married couple. Marriage is also a social institution that is bigger than any particular couple. We have made it a social institution mainly for the sake of children and it is aimed much more at their welfare than at the welfare of adults.

Moore doesn’t consider whether marriage should have this aim at all because it is obvious she believes it should not, and indeed if it should not, then there is little enough reason why the State or society should give it any special recognition and support.

So we need to make up our minds; is her highly individualistic, adult-centred view of marriage the one we favour, or do we believe that it is a social institution in which the welfare of children is more important than the often transitory happiness of the adults?