Is Marriage With Children A Requirement To Be A Good Leader?

If a middle-aged woman lives with her boyfriend and has no children is she still fit to run the country?

With Australia’s first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, being 48-years-old, childless, and living with her divorced dad boyfriend of 4 years, that is a question that is heating up in Australia.

One of Australia’s most outspoken social commentators, Bettina Arndt, has said that because Gillard is a role model many women will end up copying her lifestyle. And that her “lifestyle choice may influence other women into making big mistakes about their lives”.

Arndt worries about the “losers”. Women who cohabit in a series of relationships that never make it to marriage and so end up childless and alone in their 40s, and children who might be born into these unstable de facto relationships.

I doubt that Gillard’s relationships status will have much effect on the women of Australia. Stats show that over 72% of couples live together before marrying, so the number who live together without reaching that stage of marriage is also high. Other statistics are that 29% of all 25 to 34-year-olds and 24% of 35 to 44-year-olds have ever cohabited.

With huge numbers of couples living together without being married, Gillard is not a trend-setter, but simply an example of what’s already happening.

We also need to stop patronising women who are not married. There are many reasons why this might be the case. In some cases they have chosen to be unmarried, rather than sliding into that kind of lifestyle by accident. Some of them are divorced and some never find the right guy to settle down with. What’s so bad about that?

But none of this makes them “losers” or victims. It’s much better to be a serial monogamist than someone who married and is miserable.

Not to mention the fact that many women choose to marry and have children with their husband, but end up divorced and single parents. There really are no guarantees in life and we can’t assume just because women marry they are happier and have more stable lives than those who do not.

In fact, recent studies have gone against what Arndt thinks. Rather than cohabiting being a factor in breaking people up, it’s been found to have little impact on their marriages.

They found that living together before marriage did not have a significant impact on the couple’s marriage longevity. Their conclusion was that “there is not a negative effect of cohabitation on marriages”.

When we look at what is happening with the conservative politicians in Australia, they actually don’t seem to care about Gillard’s marital status. A Family First senator has said that this is irrelevant and they are more interested in her leadership style.

Frankly, even understanding everything I have pointed out here, none of it is really our business and it will have no bearing whatsoever on Gillard’s ability to run the country.

And I’m willing to be that being the first female Prime Minister she will inspire many young women to get involved in politics; something we can all applaud regardless of our marital status.