Culture and Social Rehabilitation Minister Dale Butler has thrown his Ministry's support behind the Family Intimacy Centre, which aims to reduce the divorce rate in Bermuda.

That's laudable. As Mr. Butler said in the House of Assembly last week: "What we need is healthy marriages because healthy marriages equal strong families."

Although there are non-traditional families in Bermuda and elsewhere that are successful and are successfully raising children, that idea is generally inarguable, not least because Mr. Butler puts the emphasis on "healthy" marriages. Unhealthy marriages can be absolutely toxic to families.

And again, leaving aside the exceptions that prove the rule, what is virtually indisputable is that dual parent households are almost always "stronger" than single parent households, because children get more attention, living conditions are generally better and there are fewer financial and emotional stresses.

Often, when the parents are married, that adds to the stability of the household as well, simply because the parents have made a literal commitment to each other.

Having said all of that, it is worth making two points.

One is that Mr. Butler's announcement was predicated on what appears to be a statistical falsity – that the divorce rate is increasing.

That does not seem to be the case. Measuring divorce rates is notoriously difficult. It is not as simple as dividing the number of divorces in a given year by the number of marriages, especially in Bermuda where many visitors have their weddings.

One measure is to see how many divorces there are per thousand people; in 2007, there were 3.3, compared to 3.6 in the US. In 2006, there were 2.8, and in 2005, there were 3.4.

Ten years earlier, the rate was 3.7 in 1998, 3.8 in 1997 and 3.7 in 1996.

Applying per capita rates of anything to Bermuda is also dangerous, because the Island's small population means that anomalous spikes or declines in a single year can cause massive changes in a "rate".

Nonetheless, it seems clear that the divorce rate over ten years has declined slightly.

There may be several reasons for this, not the least of which is that fewer people may be getting married in the first place.

Does it matter?

It does to the extent that reliable statistics are critical to good policy making.

And it is also true that the freedom to divorce is relatively new. There was a time not so long ago when spouses were forced to remain together regardless of the misery and abuse that was engendered.

What really matters is the effect divorce has on children, and anything the Family Intimacy Centre, which organises marriage enhancement workshops and counselling, can do to improve families the better.

What may be more important is what agencies like The Family Centre and others can do to strengthen all families and to improve parenting.

Study after study and book after book tell us that the most important predictor of success is parenting. One study cited in the book "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell suggests that children from different social classes learn at pretty much the same rate in school. But the enriched learning, and sense of entitlement (in the most positive sense), that wealthier children get in after school programmes and holidays gives them an enormous advantage over a number of years, and this is not affected by social differences like race or gender.

"Outliers" makes this point: Some people "make it" in life through a combination of hard work and circumstance. But if those circumstances were available to all, the world would be a vastly better and fairer place.

Good parenting need not be dependent on wealth, race or class. It can be available to all. Let's make it happen.