Marriage

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh]

My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester for securing this debate and introducing it with great passion and eloquence.

I would have liked to speak about the role of marriage and marriage support in general, but I am struck by one absence in the debate as well as in the work that has been done. If one looks at the Hart report, there is virtually nothing about ethnic minorities and their patterns of marriage and matrimonial breakdown. If one looks at the excellent briefing notes provided by the Library, the same absence is very striking. I therefore thought that I would say something about the ways in which this problem is faced within ethnic minority communities.

At one level, ethnic minority communities face the same problems as the rest of society, but there are other areas in which their problems are very different and distinctive and require a great deal of cultural sensibility if they are to be understood in their own terms. The percentage of matrimonial breakdown is much lower in ethnic minority communities and the rate of cohabitation is much lower, as is the rate of divorce. However, the situation is changing. As ethnic minorities are integrating into our society, they are beginning to share some of its weaknesses and mistakes.

If we are to address those problems, we will have to show a great deal of cultural sensibility. That is what I thought multiculturalism was about, and I am sorry that the Prime Minister chose to attack it in his recent rather uneven speech because, ultimately, multiculturalism is an attempt to understand how different communities, historically located in different places and embedded in different conditions, face the same problems and deal with them in their own peculiar ways.

I want to highlight six or seven important problems that ethnic minorities face. The first is forced marriages, which are declining but are still there in very significant numbers. They need to be tackled. If forced marriages are to be tackled effectively, the Government cannot rely on bureaucracy alone but will have to depend on the support of ethnic minority communities. That requires taking ethnic minorities into their confidence.

Secondly, sensitive marriage counselling is absolutely key. When I look at courses on marriage counselling in our colleges and universities, I find that the multicultural dimension is not as fully emphasised or appreciated as it should be. Therefore, we will have to pay some attention to who does the counselling, where it takes place and how the counsellors are trained.

Thirdly, within ethnic minority communities, families have traditionally been joint families. Young couples have been eased into marriage and helped to face the problems of marriage in times of crisis by family elders. In some cases, the elders are here; in some cases, the elders are elsewhere in the countries from which people come or from where women or men have arrived for marriage. I generally find that our visa regulations make it extremely difficult for elders, from the sub-continent in particular, to come here to help out young couples in times of marriage difficulties.

Fourthly, within ethnic minority communities there is a strong network of support. Communities move in at difficult times when they detect the subtle ways in which the marriage is beginning to face problems. I think we have to find some way in which the network of support that ethnic minorities have built up is encouraged, not replaced by bureaucratic methods.

Fifthly in relation to marriage in ethnic minorities, indiscriminate cuts are leading to the closure of all kinds of support networks, especially Sure Start and other mechanisms. Sure Start has played an important role in looking after children and relieving stress that happens to families passing through a difficult crisis. These cuts are going to impact very badly on ethnic minorities as well as on society at large. I very much hope that the Government will rethink the likely consequences of small economies in the long run.

In Asian families, one issue that is not widely noticed is that marital crises occur not only in the first 10 to 15 years of marriage; sometimes, they occur much later in life, when people are in their 60s or even 70s. I was struck by that when I was deputy chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, when these things were constantly brought to our attention. In such families, people get married for all kinds of reasons and perhaps there has been no initial friendship. As a result, during the marriage their children become their bond and, through children, they are able to sustain their relationships. When the children grow up and leave, the two individuals are left facing each other in their two solitudes. No bonds have been built up other than those through their children, who have gone. Grandchildren live miles away and are not able to visit regularly. Therefore, couples in their 60s can begin to drift apart, facing each other in their intense solitude, which leads to domestic violence, mental illness and all kinds of acute problems. When we talk about marriage counselling, let us also bear in mind the problems of elderly couples.

The last issue that I want to raise follows from what I have said so far. Many noble Lords might have been surprised by some of the facts that I have mentioned or some of the problems which I have alerted. This simply goes to show why research into the marital problems of ethnic minorities and the ways of dealing with them is crucial. Whatever research the Government undertake, they must set aside resources for consultation with ethnic minorities.

Finally, on the nature of marriage, I hope that we can make a better case for marriage than that it helps people to avoid Alzheimer’s disease or that it reduces costs to the national budget or whatever. If that is all that marriage does, I do not think it is an institution worth saving. Ultimately, marriage differs from cohabitation in four important respects: it implies mutual commitment; it implies ritualisation of a relationship; it is public, in so far as a public announcement is made; and, finally, it creates a collective unit, which is not simply two individuals together but a single unit encompassing two people. In so far as marriage has these four features, it is better than cohabitation, but one should not make the mistake of thinking that cohabitation is not a viable alternative.

Let us find ways of encouraging marriage and let us recognise the difference between marriage and cohabitation, but let us not turn this into a qualitative, categorical difference, which it is not.