W. Europe’s Highest Rate of Marriage Breakups : Britain Pressured to Reform Liberal Divorce Laws, Promote Family Life

LONDON —  With the highest divorce rate in Western Europe, Britain is coming under pressure from some quarters to reform its liberal laws and promote marriage as the bedrock of a stable society.

Family and divorce experts say the nation is slipping toward moral bankruptcy, citing not only marital breakups but mounting numbers of abortions, spiraling illegitimacy and the growing number of children in one-parent families.

“We are living in a sort of throwaway society where people’s relationships are increasingly being seen as disposable as maybe a car or household item is considered disposable,” said Prof. Richard Whitfield, chairman of the National Campaign for the Family.

Britain’s divorce rate started climbing after the 1969 Divorce Reform Act changed the grounds for divorce from marital misconduct to the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage. And it soared after a 1984 “quickie divorce” law reduced from three years to one year the period a couple had to wait before filing for divorce.

EEC Statistics

According to statistics from the European Economic Community, Britain had the highest divorce rate among the 12 member nations--168,100 in 1986, which is 3 per 1,000 people or 12.9 per 1,000 couples.

Close behind was Denmark, followed by the Netherlands, France, West Germany and Belgium. Sweden, which is not an EEC member, would fall third, behind Denmark, according to its 1987 government statistics.

The United States is far ahead in the divorce race, although its rate dropped from 5 per 1,000 population to 4.8 in 1986, or 1,159,000 divorces, according to provisional statistics. At the same time, U.S. marriages also declined in 1986--from 2,425,000 in 1985 to 2,400,000.

Jack Dominian, a consultant psychiatrist and director of the Marriage Research Center in London, said the divorce rate in Britain means that a third of current marriages are heading for dissolution and that 1 in 5 children under 16 will come from broken homes.

$3.7-Billion Divorce Cost

The center, set up in 1971 to provide research, education and counseling, estimates that the overall cost of divorce is $3.7 billion a year. That includes $2 billion in welfare payments mainly to divorced and separated women and an estimated $550 million for children taken into care from broken homes.

“Some divorce is inevitable, but the current level and the damaging consequences are unacceptably high,” Dominian wrote in a recent article in The Times of London.

He said it was time to spend more money supporting marital stability and give top priority to researching the reasons for marital conflict and to educating children in personal relationships to better prepare them for marriage.

George Brown, a lawyer and author of “Brown on Divorce,” the latest standard work on the subject, said a report in 1986 by a task force set up by President Reagan in the United States recognized that the government must pursue pro-family policies. He said that Britain should do the same.

Reforms Urged

At the same time, he said, Parliament should reform divorce laws “to give more time to a proper inquest into whether the marriage actually has broken down and to provide for reconciliation and expert counseling to achieve it.”

He also called for the establishment of family courts, a specialized family welfare service and the reintroduction into matrimonial law of “a moral base--a sense of right and wrong, of culpability and of forgiveness.”

“These are all matters for the state,” Brown said. “But marriage is equally vital to the church. This is one matter where their interests coincide. The church should start by preaching the sanctity of marriage and conducting its own research into the causes and effects of marriage breakdown.”

The Church of England, which preaches that marriage is for life, started allowing divorcees to remarry in church in 1985 at the discretion of clergy and bishops. The state church has published numerous statements on marriage and family life. In February, its ruling General Synod will debate a new report on the doctrine of marriage.

New Group Formed

In 1986, an interdemoninational group called the National Council for Christian Standards in Society was formed to address what it called “the social and moral problems of the nation.”

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, at the annual conference of her Conservative Party in October, stressed the importance of family life.

“The family is the first place where we learn those habits of mutual love, tolerance and service on which every healthy nation depends for its survival,” she said.

But Brown, Whitfield, Dominian and others said her words must be matched by new government policies and increased funding. Divorce is not on the government’s current legislative program.

More Funding Sought

Zelda West-Meads, spokeswoman for the National Marriage Guidance Council, said the organization needs more government money to run its 160 centers around the country and help preserve marriage and family life.

“If you’re in crisis and ring up the Marriage Guidance Council, you have to wait an average of four to eight weeks for an appointment,” she said. “And in the inner cities it can be four to six months.

“We’ve certainly had letters from people saying their marriage broke down while waiting. It’s very heart-rending, and something we’re not happy with.”

Lesley Rimmer, deputy director of the Family Policy Studies Center, said the 1986 statistics indicate the divorce rate is stabilizing after a big surge in the wake of the 1984 legislation.

But there is still widespread concern that Britain leads Europe in marital instability.

Teen Marriages

“I think one factor is we are probably still seeing the results of a very high proportion of marriages that took place between teen-agers in the early 1960s and early ‘70s,” said Rimmer, a sociologist-economist. “There is a very, very high risk of teen-age marriages breaking down in comparison to marriages at age 24 and later.”

Kathleen Kiernan, a demographer at the Social Statistics Research Unit, said Britain has one of the youngest age patterns of marriage in Western Europe. The average age at first marriage in England was 22.8 years in 1985.

“The United States has the youngest age pattern of marriage in the Western world and it has the highest divorce rate, though it’s changing very rapidly because the age of marriage is getting higher,” she said.

Another reason Britain leads Europe, she said, is that countries like Sweden and Denmark have fewer marriages.

Catholic Influence

“There’s more cohabitation, which means their divorce rates are lower even though the rate at which couples break down is probably no different,” she said.

West-Meads noted that many European countries are predominantly Roman Catholic and that couples are encouraged by the church to stay together.

“I think they also don’t see divorce as socially acceptable, as people see it in this country,” she said. “I think if you have people around you who think it’s OK to divorce, then more people are going to do it.”