Earlier this week, British Prime Minister David Cameron was attacked by the Centre for Social Justice over his failure to support marriage and the family since coming into office a year ago. The irony is that the CSJ was founded by one of his own Ministers, Iain Duncan Smith. Gavin Poole, the centre’s chief executive,...
I didn’t spot this story at the time, but it is absolutely extraordinary. As we know, some pharmacists object to selling the so-called morning-after-pill because it can act as an abortifacient. In some countries the law forces them to sell it come-what-may. But in Berlin recently, a pharmacy had its windows smashed because of the...
MP Nadine Dorries has bravely proposed a new law requiring that schools teaching abstinence education to girls aged 13-16. I say brave, because there is something about the word ‘abstinence’ that makes some people break out in spots. She would have been better off using a term like ‘sexual delay’. I was on the breakfast...
The marriage of Kate Middleton to Prince William last Friday was a teaching moment par excellence. The Church of England used it to full advantage to gently teach about the nature of marriage, and the message was very traditional. First of all, we had the Dean of Westminster Abbey, John Hall, explaining the nature of...
On May 26, The Iona Institute is hosting a conference called ‘Women, home and work: towards a policy that’s fair to all families’. One of the speakers will be Jonas Himmelstrand of The Mireja Institute in Sweden who will speak about family policy in Sweden, especially its much lauded childcare system. Jonas was recently in...
Today’s Irish Times has a revealing feature on the difficulties faced by adopted children try to find their birth parents. The piece speaks of the “huge emotional turmoil” experienced by both the adoptee and their birth parents. Underlying the piece is the assumption that adopted children ought to have the right to access information about...
Could the wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton next week give the institution of marriage in the UK a boost? One prominent family policy expert certainly hopes so. Jill Kirby, chair of the Family Policy Group at the Centre for Policy Studies, suggests in this piece in the Daily Telegraph that marriage there could...
Since coming to office in February, Education Minister Ruairi Quinn has certainly been forthright in advancing a secular education agenda. His call for the transfer of “at least half” of all Catholic primary schools to alternative patronage caused waves, but his suggestion that the teaching of the sacraments took up too much school time was...
The latest Eurostat figures again demonstrate that the continent’s demographics are headed off a cliff. According to the latest figures, there has been a slight improvement in the overall total fertility rate (TFR), from 1.47 per woman of childbearing age to 1.6, since 2003. However, this is still far below the replacement level, which requires...
Writing in the current issue of ‘InTouch’, the magazine of the INTO, Fionnaula Ward, Primary Education Officer of Educate Together wonders how to go about teaching atheism in Educate Together schools. She acknowledges the potential difficulties while obviously hoping they can be overcome. She points out that Educate Together schools currently try to acquaint pupils...
