The new poll by Gallup/Red C suggesting that Ireland is now less religious than Iceland certainly generated lots of headlines, but what did it really tell us about how religious we are? After all, as David Quinn pointed out in his Irish Independent analysis piece on the matter, roughly a third of Irish people still...

Robert Oscar Lopez has written a very heart-felt account of being raised by two mothers and no father and the consequences of this in his life. Obviously the account of one person is purely anecdotal and some of the unfortunate twists and turns that occurred in his life would not have happened to others who...

Is our Government as pro-child as it claims? Irish Independent reporter Thomas Molloy has dug up a few figures to suggest it might not be. He writes: “As a society, we have made a conscious decision to favour the elderly (who vote) and discriminate against children (who don’t). “There is no other country in Europe...

A row of sorts has broken out in The Irish Times between two of its contributors over the endlessly controversial question,  ‘what do women want?’ It’s an immensely clichéd question, of course, but in respect of the proper balance between work and home, there is no one right answer, anymore than there is for men....

It is scarcely believable that there is a growing threat to the practice of religiously motivated male circumcision in Europe. A fierce debate has erupted over the practice, chiefly in Germany following a court decision there against it. However, curbs have also been placed on it in certain Swiss and Austrian hospitals. In addition, we...

A major new report on Britain’s most dysfunctional families commissioned by the British Government in the aftermath of last year’s riots makes for disturbing reading but much of it is depressingly familiar. Quite apart from the accounts of serial physical and sexual abuse, it’s the casual neglect of children and the failure of mothers to...

When we made the morning-after-pill available from pharmacists without the need for a doctor’s prescription the change took place without any debate. We never asked whether the number of unwanted pregnancies would come down as a result, or what effect it would have on women’s health, or the effect it would have on sexual behaviour....

‘That was the sexual revolution for her. Men willing to sleep with her, but not willing to build a family’. Even The New York Times is starting to cotton on to the fact that the high number of births that take place outside marriage is a problem. Last week it ran a big feature examining...

Sometimes, in a culture which often seems to be overwhelmingly anti-religious, parents of faith must feel that raising their children in their religion is an uphill climb. So it’s encouraging to see that there is evidence that the struggle is worth it. This piece, from Family Edge, an Australian website, shows that children raised by...

Let’s dispel a key myth about this current “debate” about same-sex marriage.  Should such a time comes for a referendum, there will be no debate, not a rational one at any rate.   Briefly, a debate is when two parties present their arguments for and against a motion respectively, and the motion is voted upon...