While the number of Catholic marriages in Ireland is steeply declining, new data released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) highlights the rise of ceremonies belonging to “other religious denominations”, to use the CSO’s term. Now, you might think this means Muslim ceremonies, or perhaps those that take place in African Pentecostal churches, but these...

Family breakdown is one of the chief reasons why many people in Britain remain in poverty and cannot climb up the social ladder, according to a major new report called “Two nations”, published by the Centre for Social Justice. The essential argument is that social disadvantage contributes to family breakdown, and in turn makes it...

Press Release from the Iona Institute Proposed deletion of protection of the home from the Constitution is concerning Tuesday, December 5, 2023 – The Iona Institute needs to study the wording of the new amendments properly before giving a full reaction. We note, however, that the proposed English-language replacement to the section on mothers-in-the-home no...

Some people find the evidence that on average the two-parent family is best for children highly unpalatable, and they will resist it strongly. Melissa S. Kearney, a professor of economics at the University of Maryland in the United States is discovering this at first hand with the publication of her new book, ‘The Two-Parent Privilege’....

The ‘housewife’, which is a woman who stayed at home to raise her children and look after the home, used to be a very common figure. The ‘househusband’ was extremely rare, and still is. New American figures show that today 26pc of mothers and 7pc of fathers are stay-at-home parents. The number of stay-at-home mothers...

Happiness levels are declining in the United States, according to a new study, and one big factor seems to explain this, namely falling marriage rates. Conversely, married people are significantly happier than the unmarried.  Sam Peltzman, professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, has studied trends and differences in happiness among the US population...

We rightly hear a lot in the media about rising levels of homelessness. What we hear less often is that the single biggest cause of homelessness in the case of families is what a new report calls ‘relationship breakdowns/family circumstances’ rather than termination notices. It is the second biggest cause for single households. The ‘Homeless...

Introduction: Ireland has witnessed some very dramatic social changes in the last decades and we see these strongly at work in the area of family life. We have witnessed a decline in the rate of marriage, a huge growth in the number of people who are divorced or separated, a decline in the fertility rate...

Fertility rates are declining almost everywhere, and we are not recognising the dramatic consequences for future generations, a new documentary highlights. But the documentary comes up with a rarely recognised reason for what is taking place, namely that many women who want children find for various reasons that their wish is not fulfilled. Over the...

You probably didn’t notice at the time, but a judge in New York opened the door a few weeks ago to legal recognition of so-called ‘polyamorous relationships’, which involve three or more people who are romantically involved with one another. Ruling on a case, Judge Karen May Bacdayan, opined that perhaps the “time had arrived”...