Harry Benson with Rachel and Richard Savage. The couple received advice from the Bristol Community Family Trust after the birth of their first child. Photograph: SWNS.COM/ SWNS

In the weeks after the birth of their first child, Rachel and Richard ­Savage, struck down by the crushing exhaustion that comes with tending to a wailing newborn, found themselves sniping and quarrelling with unusual frequency. “It’s hard to remember precisely what triggered it, but I’m terrible at being tired,” Rachel says. Her husband remembers a lot of recriminations over which of them was supposed to be getting up to feed the baby and who had neglected to perform tiny tasks around the house.

A month before the arrival of their son, Rachel had attended a one-hour relationships course, Let’s Stick Together. In retrospect, she thinks, this helped to stop these arguments from escalating into something more serious.

“We were told to expect a more bumpy time in our relationship once the baby came along,” she says. “Just acknowledging that this would happen was a huge help when we started bickering more than usual. It meant that I didn’t start worrying that my marriage was in trouble.”

A third of Bristol’s first-time mothers attended one of these courses last year (about 900 women), according to the charity that runs them, and the model has attracted the attention of the Conser vative party leadership. Shadow families spokesman David Willetts paid tribute to the course late last year and indicated that he would like to spread the model further afield.

With attitudes to marriage and family relationships crystallising divisions between the two parties in the run-up to the general election, the nature of this course offers a revealing insight into how the Conservatives propose to help forge strong family units. … Continue Reading

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