WOMEN should not feel apologetic about describing themselves as housewives, the Lord Chancellor said yesterday, writes Terence Shaw, Legal Correspondent.
In a speech marking the start of National Marriage Week, Lord Mackay said there was a need for younger people to understand that home-building and parenting were worthwhile and were valuable to society.
Speaking of his commitment to the Christian ideal of marriage, he said any suggestion that full-time mothers did not work was "preposterous".
Caring for children was "extremely hard work and this needs to be understood and respected, not ignored", he said. Neither should fathers be ashamed to spend more time at home with their children.
He stressed the importance the Government attached to promoting marriage and providing support to save marriages facing breakdown.
Resources were needed to research the causes of marriage breakdown and ways of preventing it.
Recalling the Government's commitment to spend £2.3 million this year on marriage support, Lord Mackay said others needed to match that example. Firms were affected by break-ups and had much to gain by supporting marriage. In a review of the place of marriage in society, he said he believed action could be taken to reverse the trend of declining marriages and increasing divorce.
As a minister, he had an interest in supporting marriage to reduce the consequences to society of the "tragedies of failed relationships" and the cost of supporting broken families.
There were limits to what the Government could achieve through legislation. Laws on marriage and divorce had to strike a balance between freedom and social cohesion.
He believed that the Government had helped to "put marriage on the map", through the Family Law Act, which provided a way of trying to rescue "saveable" marriages. More than 40 organisations have bid for funds for one-year projects beginning in April to support marriage. These were being assessed but they included imaginative ideas to develop traditional counselling while testing newer approaches.
A clergyman has urged the Church of England to soften its stance on second marriages in cases of adultery or desertion. Writing in the Church of England Year Book, the Very Rev David Edwards, the Provost Emeritus of Southwark Cathedral, said that the divorce of the Prince and Princess of Wales was "bound to have important consequences".
