It seems family structure matters after all. An important new paper from the ESRI devotes a chapter to this question, and after controlling for factors like poverty, it nonetheless finds that being raised in a two parent household as distinct from a one parent household can confer certain advantages on children. The paper is called...

The Irish State seems to have a “deep seated aversion” to the unborn child. Who said that? It might surprise you that it was not a pro-life activist, but rather High Court judge and former Labour party councillor, Richard Humphreys. In July, he delivered a judgement that the unborn child enjoys more rights and protections...

The Irish Times has carried yet another article calling for an end to publicly-funded denominational education. It argues that Ireland should copy Quebec if it wants to end its “patronage problem”. Through an Act of Parliament, highly secular Quebec basically brought a shuddering halt to public funding of denominational schools 16 years ago. The article,...

“Budget 2017 discriminates against every parent of young children who does not use day care. That might mean you. Contrary to what you often read, only a minority of parents put their children into day care and only a minority want to. But the child-care plans outlined in this week’s Budget are aimed exclusively at...

Actress and comedian, Sally Philips, performed a tremendous service this week with her BBC 2 documentary, ‘A World without Down’s Syndrome’. She shone a light on the fact that in Britain, nine out of ten children diagnosed in the womb with Down’s Syndrome are aborted. In Iceland, according to the programme, every Down’s Syndrome baby...

Over the course of the last fortnight there has been widespread media attention on the birth of the world’s first ‘three parent child.’ Although this claim is misleading for several distinct reasons, it has served to focus attention on issues of foundational significance with respect to the limits of biomedicine. The child in question was conceived...

If your parents are divorced there is less chance that you will be religious. That is the finding of a new poll from the Public Religion Research Institute. In other words, a high divorce rate is driving down religious belief. The US poll (which deals with drivers of irreligion generally) finds that if your parents divorced...

I had a very interesting debate about childcare on RTE’s Today with Sean O’Rourke yesterday. I was debating ex-Senator Jillian Van Turnhout, formerly of the Children’s Rights Alliance. I argued in favour of parental choice when it comes to child-minding. Jillian argued in favour of State-sponsored, State-funded, State-regulated ‘early education’. It was a clash of...

There is growing anecdotal evidence that couples in Irish hospitals are being pressured into having abortions after being informed that their babies suffer from a serious disability. This is eugenics, and it violates both the right to life and, paradoxically, the right to choose. In his column in The Irish Catholic this week, David Quinn...

Here in Ireland, there is a strong campaign against faith schools. Their ethos is under attack for not being ‘inclusive’ enough, as is their admissions policy. Meanwhile, the British Government has just heaped praise on Catholic schools and said more are to be built in order to meet public demand. The contrast with the situation...