David Quinn
For many years, I have taken part in debates about the family. In all that time, I have focused on the importance of both mothers and fathers being closely involved in the raising of their children. It is why I have always argued for the importance of marriage, because marriage has evolved in practically all societies going back thousands of years as the main vehicle by which we encourage men and women to raise their children together.
Last week, Labour’s Ivana Bacik said she wants Ireland to hold yet another referendum on the family”
This has been my basic argument whether I have been debating lone-parent families, divorce, cohabitation or same-sex marriage. It is also the basic argument used by Christians ever since the very beginning of the Church.
In each case you face the accusation of being hard-hearted and intolerant, that is, intolerant towards those raising children alone, or have been through a divorce, are living together outside marriage, or towards same-sex couples who wish to marry.
This makes it a tricky debate to take part in and it is probably why the Churches now tend to avoid commenting on the family, or if they do, adopt ‘family-diversity’ language and say they respect all families equally.
Last week, Labour’s Ivana Bacik said she wants Ireland to hold yet another referendum on the family. We might have redefined marriage, but the Constitution still commits the State to guarding marriage with ‘special care’. She thinks this is discriminatory. Instead, she believes, the State should protect all families equally, especially now that the family in Ireland has become much more diverse.
Tanaiste, Leo Varadkar, has made a similar argument. I predicted at the time of the 2015 marriage referendum that this would be the next step.
The problem is that as the family becomes more ‘diverse’, it means in practice fewer children being raised by their two married parents. The parents might have divorced and separated, or only lived together for a few years without marrying, or might never have married or cohabited at all, meaning the child has never lived in the same house with both parents at the same time.
Family diversity
In practice, ‘family diversity’ often means family break-up, or the failure of a family consisting of mother, father and child, to form at all.
In the years I have spent arguing this issue I have often citied international studies which show that children tend to benefit in various ways when raised by their mother and father under the same roof.
But now we have a growing body of Irish research showing the same thing. This is mainly thanks to the ‘Growing Up in Ireland’ study, which is tracking thousands of Irish children through their childhoods to find out how they are faring.
One thing the study allows us to do is look at child outcomes by family structure, meaning whether the family is a lone-parent one, a two-parent one and so on.
For example, the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) produced a paper in May looking at adolescent behaviour. One of the things it found was that family structure makes a difference.
An earlier ESRI report from 2016, called ‘Cherishing all the children equally’, found something similar”
It reported: “Family structure emerged as having a significant and consistent relationship with adolescent behaviour, with poorer behaviour across all domains for those in lone parent families or families that experienced separation during the young person’s adolescence.”
It said this held true even after taking into account factors like the education level of the parents.
An earlier ESRI report from 2016, called ‘Cherishing all the children equally’, found something similar. Again, it looked at family structure and discovered it makes a difference in the lives of children.
It stated: “family structure does indeed represent a source of inequality in children’s lives, and places children in single parent households at risk of poorer developmental outcomes” compared with children raised in two parent households.
These findings are almost never trumpeted, probably for fear of causing controversy or upsetting ‘family diversity’ ideology which insists there are no real differences between family types from a child’s point of view, and therefore we need not worry about the fact that fewer Irish children are growing up with a married mother and father living in the same household.
Children benefit
Now we have a brand new ESRI study called ‘Fathers and infancy from infancy to middle childhood’, and this finds that children benefit when their father is actively involved in their lives. The children in this report are tracked till the age of nine.
The press release accompanying the report says, “children who have a good relationship with their father are happier, feel less anxious and are more engaged in physical activity”, than their counterparts who do not have a good relationship.
Unsurprisingly, it finds that children who are not living with their fathers are less likely to report that they get on very well with them (65% versus 79% of those living with their fathers).
The number of children not living with their fathers increased as time went on, which is not very surprising.
This highlights the importance of government and employer support for the kinds of working arrangements that would help foster this early involvement”
The report’s authors concentrate very much on policies that encourage fathers to spend more time with their children during early childhood because of the benefits this has later on for children. They favour more flexible working hours and more parental leave for fathers.
Emer Smyth, the lead author, says: “Early involvement and bonding with the baby sets the tone for father-child relationships later in childhood. This highlights the importance of government and employer support for the kinds of working arrangements that would help foster this early involvement.”
As with earlier ERSI reports on broadly the same topic, what is notable is what is missing, namely any recommendation that the Government should do more to encourage marriage because it increases the chances of a child being raised by their mother and father under the same roof.
Remarkable oversight
This is a remarkable oversight, but not surprising given the strength of family diversity ideology.
Nonetheless, the growing body of research about the family in Ireland and the lives of children greatly strengthens the argument that both fathers and mothers matter in the lives of their children, and marriage is still the best way of getting them both involved together. We should not be scared to highlight this, nor should Christian leaders.