An interesting study featuring Irish participants, claiming to show that unmarried people are more likely to be depressed than their married counterparts, featured in the UK and Irish news today.
The study paints a bit of a depressing picture for singletons – claiming that people who are unmarried could be around 80 per cent more likely to be depressed than those who are married. The study found the risk of depression for unmarried people could be higher in men and those who had more education.
The study, which featured participants from Ireland and the UK, appeared on Sky News today, which reports:
“The authors suggest the lower rates of depression among married people could be because couples are able to socially support one another, have better access to economic resources and have a positive influence on each other’s well-being.
“They analysed data from more than 100,000 people across seven countries, including nearly 7,000 from the UK.
“Some 222 people from the UK’s 2007 Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey (APMS) reported having symptoms of depression. Of those, 73 were married, 62 were single, 55 were divorced or separated and 32 were widowed.”
It is not the first study of its kind to point to the scientifically proven benefits of being happily married – another study from the US, published in March by researchers at the University of Chicago, also said that marriage is an unrivalled factor for happiness. The survey, which polled adults in the United States about their happiness since 1972, turned up a consistent 70 to 30 per cent split between those who say they are “very happy” or “pretty happy” and those who say they are “not too happy” – with marriage being a defining point of differentiation. There is an array of research which says the same thing.
Despite the fact marriage rates are falling in the UK and Ireland, and people are also choosing to delay marriage, the institution of marriage undoubtedly remains in good shape for the upper middle class.
The thing I find infuriating about the progressive politics and anti-traditional marriage views often penned on the pages of newspapers like The Irish Times and The Guardian is that bourgeois professionals remain – for all their talk of hating the old, backwards Ireland – highly conservative in their own personal lives.
They are perfectly happy, writing in the columns of national newspapers, to encourage others to leave their husbands and go it alone – or to delay having children, but they themselves do not do the same.
Quite frankly, I think that’s cruel – and it could be argued that, whether deliberate or not – its a tactic that maintains a class gap. We all know that those who often bash marriage are the same people who do not want to be in the lower-income bracket, scraping by on their own with children.
Even worse, I’ve seen an increasing trend in our press of encouraging people to admit they do in fact regret having their children – that this is something we should not be ashamed to admit. Studies on ‘parental regret’ have almost become a new trend, but it only points to a culture which is so firmly anti-family and anti-life that it should be rejected at all costs.
We are constantly encouraged by those at the top who shape the national conversation to pursue individualism at all costs — when in the end, we know in our hearts, it can just make us lonely and miserable.
That brings me back to the new study out today – which also emphasises a finding that divorced or separated people had a 99 per cent higher risk of depression. The outlet reports: “The study, which also looked at people in the US, Mexico, Ireland, South Korea, China, and Indonesia over a follow-up period of four to 18 years, found being unmarried was associated with a 79% higher risk of depressive symptoms compared to those who are married.
“It also found people who were divorced or separated had a 99% higher risk of showing signs of depression.”
Those in the top jobs, the government Ministers and barristers and newspaper editors, who spout the most liberal worldviews, are in fact the most traditional in their own behaviour. Overwhelmingly, they are married, and they do not have children outside of the institution of marriage. They know that children are better off in two-parent homes, and that the institution of marriage is not truly irrelevant, but a much easier way to live.
The answer to that is simple really – those in the higher classes know that the marriage gap is real, and that being married is something that will contribute powerfully to their happiness when it comes to wealth, health and education. It seems that those who rally against rigid, old fashioned Ireland are the ones determined to foster a new inequality in our society by making marriage a kind of luxury item.
Our government, if it is genuinely concerned about helping those at the bottom, should consider what it could do to incentivise marriage. There is a glaring contradiction between how lefty people are in their politics and how traditional they are in their own lives. Marriage should be celebrated, and we should practise what we preach.
Progressives like to shred marriage, but the truth is that the data shows it makes us happier.