Kevin Baldeosingh
As a matter of principle, I believe everyone should be free to choose their spouses and co-habit with them in whatever manner is most suitable for their needs–marriage, common law, or visiting–without anyone judging them for their choice.
As an empirical matter, however, I think a couple who has children, or are planning to have, should be married. The data from more developed countries is unequivocal: children who grow up in single-parent homes are more likely to have bad outcomes, ranging from delinquency to teenage pregnancy and even to death. And boys are more likely than girls to have negative experiences. There is no equivalent formal research in T&T, but what evidence exists suggests that criminals are more likely to come from single-parent homes, and that children from two-parent homes are more likely to succeed academically.
Now bear in mind that I am just speaking in terms of probability. There are plenty of people from single-parent homes who are high achievers personally and professionally. But these individuals are exceptions, not the rule. Moreover, there may well be mitigating factors that explain their success. They may have been born with high IQs and/or the kind of genetically wired resilience that allows them to make their way in a world stacked against them. Or they may be from a upper-class single-parent household, where resources and a social network compensate for the absence of a father.
The core fact, however, is that two-parent families have better parenting practices, generally, than single-parent ones. This does not imply that single mothers (or, more rarely, fathers) are not just as loving and committed to their children. It may just mean that, given the limits of time and energy, one person cannot do what two can (and, since married people tend to have doting grandparents for their children as well, two people cannot do what four can).
A study on Child Rearing Practices in the Caribbean, prepared by the Family Development Centre at UWI and edited by Carol Logie and Jaipaul L Roopnarine, found that married parents set more rules for their children than single parents did. Such rule-setting, when done with explanations and consistently, rather than in a vikie vie and authoritarian manner, prepare children to function in school and, later, work. Married families also had more positive behaviours–ie praising children when they accomplished something, hence reinforcing desirable behaviour. In single-parent families, the usual approach is to attempt to get desirable behaviour mainly by punishing negative actions.
Any person who considers rearing a child the most important thing they can do, therefore, should try to find someone they feel comfortable committing to. Ironically, though, many studies in developed societies have shown that children reduce marital satisfaction, at least for the first few years. And how a couple deals with that is also important for children's emotional development, since a household where the two adults are continually in conflict, and where the children don't see them reconciling, may be as almost as pernicious as being in a single-parent household.
In the final analysis, of course, a romantic arrangement is a personal choice. But this doesn't mean that policy decisions don't affect such choices. So people involved in child-care programmes should lobby for incentives for people to get married, given that matrimony itself appears to be a protective factor for children.