Sorted Magazine

Tag: Harry Benson

  • Marriage research: Harry teams up with Professor Galena Rhoades

    Marriage research: Harry teams up with Professor Galena Rhoades

    As Marriage Week 7th-14th February 2023 draws to a close, Harry Benson, Sorted Columnist and Research Director at the Marriage Foundation closes this series with a brief personal update on the progress he is making with his own PhD.

    Harry writes: I’m half way through and have finished my third rewrite! I’ve got 25,000 words on paper and at least 20 tables and charts. The results are interesting and new. So it’s mostly now a case of presenting them in a way that makes my supervisors smile rather than cringe! One super thing is that I’m using some of the results for a new joint paper with Professor Galena Rhoades at the University of Denver. We’re aiming for one of the top two family journals. Next steps are awaiting my supervisors’ verdict on my latest effort. Then I have a couple of new projects to start, get this journal article written, and reconnect with my fellow students back in Bristol.

    May your marriage, and marriages of those you love, flourish!

    Main photo courtesy of Harry Benson.

  • Marriage research: The latest publications

    Marriage research: The latest publications

    As part of Marriage Week 7-14 February 2023 Harry Benson, Sorted Columnist and Research Director at the Marriage Foundation shares the latest publications based on academic research.

    Harry writes: Our latest reports Rock ‘n Rollers twice as likely to divorce and Attitudes to Marriage and Commitment and indeed all of our research can be found here

    We have a new leaflet out summarising our work and our most important findings

    Our glossy A4 brochure Marriage Works includes the cover of key research papers and the accompanying press releases.

    Harry’s books

    Commit or Quit – The Two Year Rule and other Rules for Romance

    With ‘rules for romance’ road-tested by my own children, this is for those in their 20s and 30s. It is about how to choose well and how not get stuck

    What Mums Want (And Dads Need To Know)

    Our bestseller that reached #11 on Amazon, Tells our own back-from-the-brink story. The secret: husband, love your wife, and she will love you right back, in that order

    If you shop on Amazon, you can now support our work by using Smile. They give us 0.5% of whatever you spend. Just put Marriage Foundation in the charity box, it’s easy!

    Photo: Courtesy of Harry Benson

  • Marriage research: Marriage Foundation in the media

    Marriage research: Marriage Foundation in the media

    Harry Benson, Sorted Columnist and Research Director at the Marriage Foundation shares some of the stories which have hit the headlines.

    Sunday Telegraph Couples who marry because of family pressure 50 per cent more likely to divorce
    Harry Benson, Marriage Foundation’s research director, commented: “What this research shows conclusively is that the reasons why people get married has a significant material impact to whether they stay together. While this might seem obvious, this has never been quantified. But the message is clear. Get married for love and your future together and not because it is either expected of you or because of family pressure.”

    Sunday Express: Married pop and rock stars are TWICE as likely to get divorced – study
    Top actors and sports stars also have a higher chance of splitting up than non-celebrities but musicians are top of the divorce charts. Researchers from the Marriage Foundation have been tracking nearly 500 A-list celebrities who tied the knot between 2001-2010 in ceremonies which featured in Hello or similar magazines.

    Financial Times: Lawyers urge UK ministers to speed up reform of cohabitation rights
    Harry Benson, research director at the Marriage Foundation, a charity that champions the institution of marriage, said introducing a new law would effectively remove the need for couples to make a decision on their future relationship commitment. Also what is the legal definition of cohabitation — is it when couples move in together? How is that defined? When they bring the toothbrush or the suitcases?”

    Mail on Sunday: As it’s revealed rock stars are TWICE as likely to divorce as the average person, here are the couples who’ve beat the odds – and the musicians who weren’t so lucky
    Harry Benson, research director of the think tank and study author, suggests the reason celebrities are bucking this trend, despite being at the top of the income scale, is fame. In the paper he writes that the ‘ego and opportunity’, which go hand in hand with being a famous name, is the most likely explanation for the group’s higher divorce rates. This potentially relationship-destroying combination is particularly in evidence with musicians due to their lifestyle, he says.

    The Marriage Foundation have also appeared or been quoted in Conservative Woman, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Independent, i paper, Mail on Sunday, The Week,Times, BBC Radio 5 live and BBC Radio Bristol

    Main photo credit: Peter Lawrence via Unsplash

  • Marriage research: ‘Sliding’ into marriage linked to high divorce rates

    Marriage research: ‘Sliding’ into marriage linked to high divorce rates

    Throughout Marriage Week 7th-14th February 2023, Harry Benson, Sorted Columnist and Research Director at the Marriage Foundation shares a series of daily articles about the latest academic research.

    Harry writes: Couples who slide into marriage have higher divorce rates than those who decide, according to our survey of 905 ever married adults. It’s all about commitment! Couples who “slide into marriage”, because of family pressure, are up to 50 per cent more likely to divorce than those who marry for love.

    Our survey looked at 905 couples who married for the first time after the year 2000 in the era of online dating. They were asked how much they agreed or disagreed with each of twelve reasons for why they might have got married.

    Those who said they: “felt they had to marry due to family pressure” i.e. due to social pressure, had a significantly higher probability of divorce at just 34 per cent compared to 23 per cent of couples who did not identify these reasons.

    Those who agreed that their marriage “just kind of happened” i.e. slide into it, had a 29 per cent probability of divorce over the duration of the study compared to 22 per cent of those who disagreed.

    In contrast, those who were more intentional about their marriage, who agreed that they married “in order to build our life together” i.e. as the cornerstone of life together, were more likely to stay together. They divorced at an overall rate of just 24 per cent compared to 37 per cent among those who did not agree.

    Read our report here

    Main photo courtesy of Harry Benson

  • Marriage research: Rock ‘n rollers have the highest celeb divorce rates

    Throughout Marriage Week 7th-14th February 2023, Harry Benson, Sorted Columnist and Research Director at the Marriage Foundation shares a series of daily articles about the latest academic research.

    Harry writes: Rock’n rollers have the highest celebrity divorce rates, finds our latest analysis. Our new report, covered in the Sunday Express and Mail on Sunday, shows who has bucked the trend.

    Rock stars face the highest risk to their marriages, perhaps due to adrenaline-fuelled nightly performances on tour in front of huge crowds followed by after parties, alcohol and opportunity! Despite their wealth, money doesn’t seem to protect the marriages of celebrities.

    The problem is fame. In my analysis, I’ve divided celebrities into categories of music, screen, and sports/other. At 60%, music stars have the highest divorce rate over 18 years, followed by screen stars at 53%. Sports and other stars have the lowest divorce rate at 42%, yet this is still higher than the UK average at 32%.

    While fame itself may not be quite so toxic for sportsmen and women whose daily routines tend to involve tremendous self-discipline and little to no alcohol, ego and opportunity are clearly sufficient to raise divorce risk above average levels.

    For screen stars it is easy to imagine how inappropriate close relationships can become established with other fellow actors because of the intimacy and suspension of normal daily life required to pretend to be somebody else during a film or theatre season.

    But it is rock stars who face the highest risk to their marriages.

    Read our report here.

    Photo: Wikimedia Commons

  • Marriage research: Births outside marriage above 50% for first time

    Throughout Marriage Week 7th-14th February 2023, Harry Benson, Sorted columnist and Research Director at the Marriage Foundation, shares a series of daily articles about the latest academic research.

    Harry writes: Births outside of marriage have been hovering just below 50 per cent for the past decade. A sharp increase above 50 per cent in 2021 is almost certainly a knock-on effect of the ban and restrictions on marriage during lockdown in the previous year.

    New births data for 2021 from the Office for National Statistics have shown a sharp fall in births within marriage to below 50% for the first time. But have a deeper look and you can see that the share of births within marriage has fallen between 5% and 8% across all socio-economic groups. This is a phenomenon that has affected everyone.

    In typical years, as many as one in six marriages take place either just before or just after their baby is born. Many of these couples will have been forced to delay their wedding. Although the overall trend remains down, we should expect to see some sort of rebound in births within marriage in 2022.
    Read my full comment here.

    Photo: Negative Space

  • Marriage research: Divorce cases rose by 9.6% in 2021

    Marriage research: Divorce cases rose by 9.6% in 2021

    Throughout Marriage Week 7th-14th February 2023, Harry Benson, Sorted Columnist and Research Director at the Marriage Foundation shares a series of daily articles about the latest academic research.

    Harry writes: Divorces were up by 9.6% in 2021. According to new figures from the Office for National Statistics there was a big rise in divorce in 2021. Some of this is real. But most is a one-off due to lockdown and court delays.

    We have seen little to no indication of a big rise in 2021 divorces either from lockdown surveys that look at how much people are thinking about divorce or the Ministry of Justice figures that report divorce applications. We wrote a report on this here.

    So does this 9.6% rise suggest a problem with marriages or a problem with the divorce system?

    One way of looking at it, is to recognise that almost all changes in divorce rates over the past 40 years have come from divorces granted to wives rather than husbands. This system changed in April 2022 but it gives us a way of seeing if there’s any real change.

    If the recent rise is all about the system, we should see fluctuations in the husband divorces in the last few years. And we did. Read my full comment here.

    Main photo courtesy of This Morning