That antiquated institution marriage seems to be making a comeback. What’s more we’re hearing about it in the most unlikely places. Last week The New Statesman told us that marriage wasn’t in fact ‘withering’ as they’d suspected we’d suspected, but that it was ‘cautiously putting out green sprouts’. Then this week The Economist tells us that marriage is recovering and explains ‘why marriages are lasting longer’. For the marriages advocates amongst us this all looks very promising: not only is it no longer antediluvian to want to marry, marriages are getting more robust. But whilst all this is good news in principle, a generation of stable, gender-equal partnerships is not actually just around the corner. Nor, therefore is the end of high family breakdown. As The Economist points out the greater longevity of marriage in recent years is a lot to do with parallel increases in cohabitation. Because cohabitation has become so normalised the people who marry today are ‘a more select group’. Consequently whilst divorce rates have remained relatively stable over the last 20 years, cohabitation rates have risen enormously – as has family breakdown. Ideology has changed, but practice is being a little slower.