MARRIAGE is on the way out. Within 25 years, nearly half of all men in their 40s and more than a third of women will not have walked up the aisle.

Maybe they won't have found the right person. Maybe they're scared of commitment. Maybe they're just frightened of the £15,000 bill that comes with the average wedding. It's an awful lot of dosh. And do you really need a string quartet, 100 balloons and £1,000 worth of flowers to make your day complete?

But maybe it's just that times have changed. Couples used to say they married for love. But earlier generations also married for sex. Conducting a sex life was tricky when standards were strict, contraception unreliable and adults still lived at home, by their parents' rules. Quaint.

In barely 20 years, times have changed dramatically. When did you last hear that phrase "living in sin"?

Now Zara Phillips and rugby player boyfriend Mike Tindall share a home, as apparently do Prince William and Kate Middleton. If it's good enough for the Queen's grandchildren...

The other traditional reason for marriage was that men needed a housekeeper and women needed a protector. Well, most men under 40 at least have mastered the washing machine and the checkout. Most women are quite capable of supporting and protecting themselves, thank you.

So who needs marriage?

Children, that's who. If grown-ups want to live on their own, or live with someone and still remain free, that's up to them and nothing to do with the rest of us. But all the research shows that children do better when parents are married - even better than when their parents are living together in a pretty solid relationship.

It's why, still, even the most free of spirits take one look at that blue line in the pregnancy test and think well yes, maybe now's the time for commitment.

Marriage can be fragile enough, but cohabitation is even more so - with more children going through the trauma of break ups, separations and moving in and out of family set ups.

Despite its many faults, marriage is still the best way we know of bringing up children. So let's hope the news of its death is exaggerated and that it struggles on for a few more years.

And if you're thinking of tying the knot and are worried about the bill, remember you don't have to have the string quartet.

REASSURING to know that at last crisps, chocolates and fizzy drinks are to be banned from school vending machines. The baffling question is why on earth they were ever allowed in there in the first place. What doesn't make children fat, rot their teeth or send them high as kites out of that lot? Just the thing for a happy afternoon's teaching.

But school dinners are also going to change. Instead of chips and burgers, children are to receive proper well balanced meals, says Secretary of State for Education Ruth Kelly. This has been greeted with approval all round.

Which only goes to show that commentators have little recall of their own school dinners. Ah yes, grey mince, lumpy mashed potato, semolina, indeterminate pies and an awful lot of cabbage and beetroot.

Bet the kids can't wait.

COMMON sense rules. Ricky Gervais's advert persuading men to get themselves checked for prostate cancer is no longer confined to after the 9pm watershed. Though the squishy sound effect (don't ask) has been removed.

Thirty thousand men a year get prostate cancer. In recent years, the problems of breast cancer have had massive publicity. We are used to hearing and watching women talking about it at great length and in great detail. We have had heartrending stories and intimate photographs, all of which have helped make women much more aware of the risks and signs.

Meanwhile, men and their problems get comparatively little publicity.

It seems only right and fair that the chaps should get a smidgen of the air time - with or without the squish.

SO now we have shopping bulimia. It's a new "illness" discovered by researchers for Prima magazine. It involves all those people who buy something, take it home, don't wear it and return it and get their money back. Researchers put this down to the fact that we change our minds or feel suddenly guilty.

Not so. Quite the reverse.

What happens is that when we're going round big stores they are doing their best to hypnotise us. They are very good at persuading us to part with our money. And, being human, we fall for it.

Then we get home. Our eyes snap open. And we realise that at least half the things we've bought, we can do without. So off we go back to the shops.

It's not fickleness or guilt - just common sense. And a victory over big business.

AT last. French Connection are dropping their FCUK logo - already banned in America, where the Puritan streak of the Pilgrim Fathers still holds some sway. The decision was inspired, no doubt, by the fact that their profits have plummeted. I could never bring myself to buy anything with the FCUK logo. Not because I was outraged or offended - but I was quite irrationally irritated by their silly, smutty adolescent humour and just couldn't be doing with it.

Maybe French Connection has begun to grow up.

LATEST research shows that young children do better when brought up by their mothers. Sounds sensible to me. But stay- at-home mothers, don't get too smug.

As sure as night follows day, pretty soon there'll be another piece of research saying the complete opposite.

Whether you're working, staying at home or trying to do a bit of both, it makes no difference. A mother's place is in the wrong - so you might as well do what suits you and learn to ignore the researchers.

Published: ??/??/2004