'Marriage before baby in carriage' is recipe for success

Couples who get married before having children are more likely to stay together than those who don't, new research claims.

People who start a family but never marry are almost three times more likely to split up before their children are in their mid-teens than married couples, the study by the Marriage Foundation, in the UK, found.

The report on the study said that 76% of mothers who were married before having children were still with their husband by the time their first child was 13 or 14 . By contrast, only 44% of the those who married after becoming mothers, and only 31% of those who never tied the knot, were still together with their partner at the same point.

Only 24% of those who married before having children split up, compared with 69% of those who never married.

Of those who were still together by the time their child was 14, 93% were married - most of them since before the first child was born.