Geldof slams 'easy
divorces'
Sir Bob Geldof, the
pop star turned Third World campaigner, has made a passionate plea for children
to be brought up by two parents, claiming the "because I'm worth it"
society is creating a damaging number of single parent families.
The former punk rocker
has emerged as an unlikely champion of the family, arguing that marriage should
be taken more seriously and greater value should be attached to domestic life.
Speaking in a television
documentary, Geldof on Marriage, he says: "Marital breakdown costs the
state about 15 billion ($NZ40 billion) a year and most of that is spent on single
parent benefits.
"I know it's uncool,
and I truly have no desire to cause upset or offence by saying this, but the
truth of every study is clear: dual parent upbringing produces healthier, better
educated children. That's it."
The consequences of
divorce, on the other hand, are dire, he says. "Children of divorced parents
are much more likely to do worse at school, commit crimes, go to prison and
more likely to commit suicide. Divorced men live shorter lives than married
men and are more likely to get cancer."
He blames the "because
I'm worth it" society for leading people to abandon marriages for what
he regards as self-indulgent reasons.
He says: "We hop
from product to product, channel to channel, station to station and, most damagingly,
lover to lover, trading each one in for a new model as soon as passion fades.
"Perhaps a lot
of it is down to an overblown sense of self. We imagine ourselves to be free
people, but we should not be free to destroy others, especially children. We
have confused freedom with the idea of choice, we have become voracious consumers,
not just of stuff, but of the soul."
Geldof, former lead
singer with the Boomtown Rats who was acclaimed for his work on Live Aid, experienced
the difficulties of single parenthood himself after his wife Paula Yates left
him and later died. He believes that the government should act to protect the
institution of marriage by making it more difficult to divorce.
"This marriage
stuff is a serious thing. It is not to be entered into and dissolved on a whim
and to make light of it is
a profound mistake. Yet that is precisely what the law allows us and encourages
us to do."
He laments what he sees
as the decline in the importance attached to family life. He says: "Has
the need to work hard, to produce, to earn, to spend, become more critical to
the government - and perhaps our emptier selves become more important than the
truer world of the home? Have we so devalued domestic life and its culture of
companionship and warmth and nurture and safety and calm to the point of being
almost irrelevant?
"We're all encouraged
to put work first and domestic matters such as our families and our relationships
second - and those who don't are regarded with suspicion ... have we completely
lost the idea of home being important?
"You know when
you come home ... and she's doing something nice, like making a meal or something,
I don't know if it's just me, it's so feminine, it's so sexy."
Geldof on Marriage has
been broadcast in Britain and a second programme, Geldof on Fathers, also. He
is already known as a campaigner for the rights of divorced fathers.
Geldof's own family
life descended into turmoil when Yates left him for Michael "Hutchence,
lead singer of the rock group INXS, in 1995.
Geldof, now over 50
years old, eventually won custody of their three daughters after a bitter legal
battle, and also became guardian of Yates's daughter by Hutchence. The INXS
frontman was found hanged in his hotel room in Sydney, Australia, in 1997 and
Yates died of a drug overdose in 2002.
Geldof also argues that
too much emphasis is placed on the attractions of the wedding day, without thought
for the real meaning of the marriage vow.
He says pre-marital
classes might go someway to making the scale of the commitment clear.
"Why is it you cannot support the institution of marriage without sounding
terrifically old-fashioned or Right-wing. It's wrong.
"We've got to take
back the right to speak about the most important institution that man has evolved
over thousands of years."
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