The topic of this year’s Merriman Summer
School in Co Clare is ‘Changing Irish Childhoods’. It ends on Sunday. So far it
has been addressed by such people as Children’s Minister, Frances Fitzgerald (pictured),
Norah Gibbons of Bernardos, and Mary O’Rourke.

To judge from the reports of their speeches
in The Irish Times, one very important subject has been absent from them, namely
the importance of marriage.

A dominant theme of the talks to date has
been what the State can do for children, and the additional powers it needs to
do what the speakers believe the State really needs to do.

What has been missing is a very fundamental
point, namely that the stronger marriage is in a given society, the less need
there will be for the State to help out.

As we have argued again and again, marriage is the most pro-child of all social institutions
and unless and until Irish policy-makers realise this, they cannot serve
children as well as they would like.

Family policy in Ireland has been largely
captured by the family diversity point of view. Rightly, politicians believe
they must help children wherever they are, and without
judgement.

But this desire in no way precludes
promoting marriage strongly and doing everything reasonably possible to ensure
that as many children as possible are raised by their own married mother and
father.

For one thing, children are far less likely
to be abused within the married family compared with every other family type.

It is sometimes claimed that the married
family is the least safe place for children because most children who are abused
live in married families. But that is only because the married family remains
the predominant family form.

However, children are much less likely to be
abused in the married family proportionately speaking, and that is the key
point.

The Fourth National Incidence Study of Child
Abuse and Neglect, published by the US Government last year demonstrates
this. (See table on page 5-20).

It shows that the number of children per
thousand who are abused or neglected in a given year and who live with their
married biological parents is 6.8.

When children live in step-families the
figures soars to 24.4 per thousand. When they live with a single parent on her
own it is 28.4, but when the mother is living with a partner who is not her
child’s father, it jumps to 57.2.

This last figure is eight times higher than
the figure for the married, biological family.

No Government or organisation that really takes the
interests of children seriously can afford to ignore figures like these. But
they are continuously ignored and the average politician probably isn’t even
aware of them. Why is that?

No pro-child policy that leaves out marriage
promotion is truly pro-child. We can only hope this Government takes note of
that. If it doesn’t, it will represent a triumph of ideology over
facts.