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An abandoned baby in Portugal has highlighted why some cohabiting couples split up

The relationship between Mark Beddoes and Katherine Penny, the couple who abandoned their three-month-old baby in Portugal before flying back to Britain, appears to encapsulate much of what critics of unmarried couples say is corrosive of society, not least a fear of commitment.

Leaving aside the question of whether Penny acted in the way that she did because she was emotionally unstable after her birth or consciously indifferent to parenthood, the couple's emotional compact appears ill-defined and unsteady. Beddoes has denied three times he is the father of the child. Neither now have a job, money or accommodation.

Cohabiting couples, on average, stay together 26 months. They are between three to four times more likely to break up than their married counterparts. However, there are cohabitees who remain with one partner for life. What makes the difference is not the presence or absence of matrimony but the terms and conditions on which individuals enter into a relationship.

How to stop the casual drift into coupledom and then parenthood is, of course, one of the main concerns of social policy makers since it is often this type of union that generates single parent families, poverty, and children who experience multiple changes with all the potential for abuse that that can bring.

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? by Adrienne Burgess, published this week, is an excellent dissection of how and why some relationships last while others don't.¹ Assets matter; in the main, those who are poor in confidence and income are more likely to have rootless liaisons than those who have qualifications and savings.

Burgess points out that researchers can predict with 90 per cent accuracy, over a nine-year period, who will stay together. Durability is more likely if the couple manage change well, are supportive, have a knowledge of each other's lives and share a similar approach to dealing with conflict and intimacy.

The problem, of course, is that for rich and poor alike, love is irrational and blind. Nevertheless, just as we are slowly learning better ways to manage divorce in the interest of our children, so a greater understanding of the factors that predicate disaster and success may not stop the drift into doomed relationships, but it might encourage some of us to apply the brakes more often.

¹ Adrienne Burgess, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?, Vermillion £7.99