Letter: After marriage

Sir: David Aaronovitch ("I'm sorry but your children are not your own private property", 16 March) makes a good point when he suggests that the relative ease with which one can obtain a divorce has no bearing on the rate at which divorce occurs.

One of the inevitable results of our rising divorce rate is that it must continue to rise. Divorce is a solution to a marriage problem and children, who learn most of their problem-solving techniques from their parents, learn this one too. If their parents are divorced the chances are that they will also divorce one day - divorce and separation will, therefore, continue to gather speed.

Since people will inevitably continue to separate, we should make more effort to study how this can be done without wrecking our children's lives, because it can be and often is done well. First we must learn to talk about divorce as a fairly common occurrence which may affect anyone, and stop just wringing our hands and bemoaning the demise of marriage.

BARBARA KEW

Gloucester