Jill Kirby of UK think-tank, the Centre for Policy Studies, has a useful column in today’s Daily Telegraph, reacting to suggestions by Dr Katherine Rake, the new head of the State-funded Family and Parenting Institute (FPI) that the two-parent family model is outmoded, and that it’s ‘unrealistic’ to encourage it.

Marriage policy is increasingly a political battle-ground in the UK with the Conservatives under David Cameron insisting marriage must be given additional support and Labour equally insistent that this is pointless, and maybe even undesirable, given the huge changes that have occurred to the British family over the last few decades. 

Apart from our still relatively low divorce figures, practically all other measures of family health, or rather ill-health, are converging on UK rates and therefore the debate now taking place in Britain over marriage will hopefully take place here sometime as well. One of the aims of The Iona Institute is to ensure that it does.