A study carried out earlier this decade in the UK, where divorce, civil marriage, early sex education and contraceptive distribution and what have you have been available for ages, showed that an estimated 88,000 children aged under five years of age were affected by the separation of their unmarried parents in 2003, compared with about 31,000 children under five whose married parents divorced, this research found.

The findings show that it is now no longer plausible to argue that all kinds of relationship are equal. The evidence is irrefutable. Unmarried parents are five times more likely to break up than married ones. Encouraging partners who do not want to marry to do so simply does not work.

The same argument was put forward that children of co-habiting parents could be disadvantaged. They were more likely to live in a number of different de facto step family arrangements because their parents were more likely to split up than married parents. It has now been proved that the more transitions, or similar experiences that children have, the more detrimental it is to their well being.

It is therefore justified that the state helps married couples more.

Equalizing for tax purposes as is the case in some brackets in Malta married couples and unmarried partners is not helping pointing those seeking intimacy into forming lasting marriages if they can still get the same tax advantages with filling out separate tax returns. For the organs of state to come up with studies, hold parliamentary committee meetings and conferences on the family without helping married couples more is just hypocritical.

G. Bonett

MARSALFORN