Marriage and Relationships - The Views of Teenagers
All the major religions and in fact most of societies throughout the world support long-term lasting relationships. Religion has much to say about marriage and relationships and R E should be a major player in the education of young people on this subject. This is a major reason why we should not neglect RE in our schools and a key reason why young people should find RE an important subject to study.
A poll of 1011 young people in England aged 14-17 was conducted by Survation in December 2017. This was commissioned by the Social Justice Centre and the Family Stability Network. The results were weighted to provide a cross-section of opinion. These were the results:
72% said they wanted relationship education to help them build long-term lasting relationships as adults.
78% said learning how to develop lasting long-term relationships was just as or more important than learning about long-term careers.
Despite half of young people experiencing marriage and family breakdowns 77% of teenagers still said developing a long-term lasting relationship in life is important or very important to them.
78% of teenagers wanted to get married and only 4% ruled it out completely. This is a big one for Religious Education.
When asked ‘is being married and living together the same thing?’ 41% said yes and 39% said no.
Where do young people learn about developing long-term, lasting relationships?
58% look online
42% said that there wasn’t enough good information on line.
29% would ask a teacher
72% said they would go to friends for advice.
66% said they would go to parents for advice
56% said they think it is harder to form long-term lasting relationships now than it was for past generations.
(These statistics are from a poll conducted by Survation for the Family Stability Network and Centre for Social Justice and more information can be found on their website https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/csj-blog/new-polling-three-quarters-young-people-want-relationship-education-school-help-understand-build-long-term-lasting-relationships-adult)
