Decline of nuclear family may have benefits

The decline of the traditional nuclear family "may not be a bad thing”, a leading judge has argued, because a wider family made up of step-parents and half-siblings may provide a healthier environment for children.

Lord Wilson of Culworth, a justice in the Supreme Court since 2011, also gave his backing to gay marriage because it would strengthen, rather than weaken, the institution of marriage.

 “Death has always enabled the surviving spouse to remarry but the availability of divorce precipitates many more remarriages and in their wake come many more step-families and relationships of the half-blood,” Lord Wilson, 68, said.

“So the blended family now often replaces the nuclear family.  I am not convinced that it is a bad thing: might it not be healthier for children to learn at a very early age to cope with relationships in a mixed and wider family group?”

Lord Wilson pointed out that same sex marriage was “not a novel concept” and had been allowed in ancient Egypt and Republican Rome.

“Far from destroying marriage, I think that to allow same sex couples into it strengthens it; but in my view the most important benefit of same sex marriage is the symbol that it holds to the heterosexual community ... that each of the two types of intimate adult love is as valid as the other.

Lord Wilson argued that marriage was an “elastic” concept. For example, although polygamy was frowned upon in Western culture it was a “deeply rooted facet of marriage in other respected cultures”.

Marriage between first cousins is illegal in parts of the world but it is “inconceivable” that it should be banned in Britain because it is “deeply rooted in the culture of our Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities” despite the increased risk of genetic abnormalities in their offspring, he added.

Lord Wilson also pointed out that Australia allows a woman to wed her uncle, and France permits about 20 posthumous marriages to take place a year, if the surviving member of the couple can prove they were genuinely engaged.

He added: “It seems bizarre but, if it really helps the broken-hearted, we have at least to ask: why not?”

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