MarriageTweets

It seemed like good news on marriage last year. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported a record number of registered marriages since 1989 and a 10 per cent drop in divorce numbers since 1999. The reality is that marital relationships have never been more unstable in Australia. The number of marriages has increased because the population has grown. However, the proportion of married people has not really changed. To get a true picture of the situation concerning divorce, we need to take account of the fact more and more couples (about 1.2 million) have entered cohabiting, or de facto, relationships. The ABS refers to those in registered marriages together with those in cohabiting, or de facto, relationships as the “socially married”. We know from surveys (in the absence of official statistics) that de facto relationships break up much more frequently than formal marriages. But because these break-ups are not officially registered as divorces, the rate of break-up of the socially married is not represented in the ABS figures. If they were, the rate of separation of the socially married would be higher than the formal divorce statistics.