Moral panic. This is the name given to a negative phenomenon becoming controversial and its consequences being judged to be more severe by those affected than they really are. The decrease in the number of new marriages and the high rate of divorce is now something that affects everybody - and with the second Sunday of February having been World Marriage Day this problem has become especially topical. The loneliness of young adults, the recognition of their parents that they will probably never have grandchildren and the disintegration of families are propelling a great many people into unhappiness.  

If between 2001 and 2009 the structure of families had not been modified in Hungary, 25,000 more children would have been born," claims Ferenc Kamarás, a demographer from the Hungarian Central Statistical Office, as he points out how rapidly changes have taken place in family life in recent years.

The age of the bachelor

While in 1980 18 per cent of the population were unmarried, last year it was 32 percent - and within this, 38 percent of men were single. In 1980 there were 80,000 new marriages; but in recent years the number has not even reached half of this, while the number of divorces has barely decreased. Yet, the quality of our lives is determined by the quality of our relationships with others and people tend to look for happiness in having a partner. Twice as many of the people who feel that they are unhappy live alone than in a relationship. 

Marriage is undergoing a crisis but what has replaced it is even worse. Common law marriages are more insecure and break down more frequently than marriages. Ákos Tárkányi, a demographer, points out that if parents live in common law marriages, in Norway they are two and half times more likely to split up than if they were married, while in the United States, France and the United Kingdom they are five times more likely to do so.

Of Hungarian intellectuals in their thirties who officially live alone in big towns 42 per cent have previously had four or more partners with whom they have cohabited, according to research carried out by sociologist Ágnes Utasi. The community looks helplessly upon the crisis of relationships around them as if nothing could be done about this problem. Yet, this is not true.

But what is happening to us and why is it happening so quickly? The same thing has come into play here that took place in western societies in the second half of the sixties after the widespread availability of the pill; however, in Eastern Europe all this only gathered pace in the middle of the eighties. While the decrease in the number of new marriages has come to a halt in the West, up to now Hungary has been setting new negative records month after  month. 

It is difficult to say whether it is a reason or a consequence but the proportion of unmarried people in the 30s to 40s age group is also high. It is trendy to say that society has become ‘singlified' and that women consciously choose to be alone, but according to domestic research this is not the case. The overwhelming majority of women who are alone in their thirties have already gone through a divorce, and indeed have children. According to the indications the typical Hungarian single person (who has never married and has no children) is not a woman but a man.

According to Ágnes Utasi's research, what lies behind the increase in the number of thirty- somethings living alone is the behaviour of men in this age group who are putting permanent partnerships further and further off. 

More than just a certificate

But why are men procrastinating so much? It would be worth starting from the point that today's marriages are quite different from those in the past. They hardly have an economic role, people in a relationship simply want to be happy and thus tie the knot for this reason. While people are starting their sex lives at an ever younger age, they are increasingly putting marriage off further into the future. By the time they get married both men and women have learnt the "routine of splitting up". However, they do not acquire any practise in how to smooth over conflicts in a relationship, and while tension can occur in marriages founded on the pursuit of happiness, the most important tool to resolve conflict is now divorce.        

The fact that a high number of marriages end in divorce is also alarming to those preparing to get married. If "till death do us part" lasts two to three years, the marriage certificate really is just a piece of paper and nothing more. In Germany and Sweden there is little difference in the stability of relationships between married couples and couples living in common law marriages. In Hungary this is not the case: as far as their duration is concerned, the majority of common law marriages more closely resemble a going-out-type relationship or its bed and breakfast type version.  Marriages in Hungary are not stable, but compared to common law marriages they are rock solid; and this explains why people in the latter type of relationship have fewer children. 

Men are also shrinking away from marriage because of the distribution of chores within the family. According to Norbert Schneider, a German population researcher, up to now men had been used to taking only a minor role in parenting. Now, however, they are expected to participate more and more in bringing up children. Yet, indicators suggest that many do not want to follow this new trend. According to a German survey, 28 percent of German men aged 30-44 would like to remain childless - and this number is 20 percent for women. Men use strange tactics to put off getting married. Researchers have coined the phrase ‘parasite children' to describe people aged 30-40 who still live with their parents. The phenomenon is so widespread in Spain that it is already causing demographic problems; and in Hungary 14 percent of men in their thirties still do not have children and live in their parents' household.   

Because of the different attitudes held by men and women a strange situation has developed in the "marriage market": men want to get married later, while independent women in their age group are already past their first divorce and have usually given birth to children - this makes starting a new relationship difficult.

The congratulations of the state

From now on the state secretariat for social welfare led by Miklós Soltész will present every couple who are preparing to have a register office wedding with a memorial certificate as an expression that the state regards marriage as a value. An internet home page, designed to provide help in every topic concerning the family, will soon be launched. The initiative marks the government's intention to consolidate marriage; which is of course just a symbolic gesture, although it perhaps serves as a counterpoint to the articles in some magazines for girls that are blatantly anti-family. For example, an issue of Joy magazine last year encouraged people to split up and to run away from a relationship if a couple were able to understand one another's thoughts. In contrast, Duna Television has come forward with a good example and dedicated the second Sunday of February to the theme of marriage and invited famous couples who talked about the ups and downs of their lives together. 

And there is no shortage of the downs. For example, a research was carried out in which the lives of Hungarian and German married couples were compared and contrasted over a protracted period, and one of the things this revealed was the huge and striking difference in their housing conditions. In total, only 35 per cent of Hungarian married couples lived in their own flat or in rented accommodation. Over a third of them were not able to run a household because they were stuffed into a room in the home of one of their parents. Improving housing conditions might well be the responsibility of the state, but creating stability in marriage fundamentally depends on the couple and their immediate community; in other words, whether or not acquaintances and relatives help them to solve or to aggravate their marital conflicts.  

Many people believe that divorce is a private matter, and this provides the excuse to justify leaving couples to themselves. Such is society's tact that in schools fathers are declared as carers in printed material, as if they were already divorced. In some cases the state gives more support to people that split up than to those who stay together. (The former are entitled to more child and unemployment benefit.) This does not send a good message despite the fact that it has a sound reason behind it: divorce represents one of the greatest risks of exposing children to poverty.  

However, numerous methods could help to create stability in marriages. We have to accept that conflicts, and indeed divorces, are part and parcel of family life. A high proportion of couples consider it natural that they have their boilers checked every year but they rarely measure the "happiness level" of their marriage. It might seem like an idea borrowed from a women's magazine, but perhaps it would be worthwhile for couples to think about how many times in the preceding 30 days they had a conversation in the evening, how many times they laughed together and how many times they went out somewhere together. 

Another way of measuring the stability of a marriage is to see what topics arguments revolve around; typical issues are money, sex and raising the children. The distribution of power within a marriage can indicate how healthy or unhealthy it is and changes must be made if in the end it is always the same person who succumbs in marital rows.
 

Things that make a marriage last and things that do not

+ If man and wife think about gender roles in a similar way and can fulfil their partner's expectations.
+ A good marriage can have more conflict than an unhappy one but the couple are capable of resolving problematic differences.
+ Most of the unhappiness in families stems from what kind of models our parents provided us with.
+ People who are religious and who come from big families rarely divorce because they regard marriage as a value.
+ Pre-school children stabilize marriages. However, parents receive less tenderness from adolescents, and this applies to mothers especially, so partners have to compensate for this, otherwise the relationship can suffer a crisis.

- The risk of divorce is increased if the respective parents of the couple are divorced. According to research, divorce has a devastating effect upon children which follows them throughout their whole lives.
- A second marriage is more likely to end in failure than the first.
- In contrast to the widely held belief, having a ‘trial marriage' by living together before marriage also increases the risk of divorce.
- The success of a marriage can be negatively influenced if at some point in the past either one of the parties had a child. Conceiving a child before the wedding also increases the risks of divorce.
- Marriages concluded between people aged under 20 are often more unstable than ones between older people.

Is help allowed?

Dare to Love!  is the title of a booklet that has recently come out. This publication is the description of a forty-day "cure" which helps couples to fix their relationships. It is primarily aimed at religious people and debates have already begun to evolve around it: should we or can we recommend a book like this to our family members and friends who are struggling in their marriages, or is it tactless to interfere?    

The recipe is simple: on the first day, no matter what happens, you are only allowed to say positive things to your spouse. On the second day you have to give them a call just to say you were thinking about them. On the third day you have to surprise your spouse with some little gift. The effectiveness of the marriage therapy is based on two things: on the one hand, if a spouse sees the reason for the breakdown of the relationship as being caused by his or her partner, the problem can be helped by strengthening this spouse's self-knowledge. On the other hand,  many problems are communication-based. If it is possible to get one of the parties to give up their offensive-defensive position and to turn this into open, gentle communication, this will also change the reaction of the other party.