Last week, the Iona Institute released a report detailing the extent of marital breakdown and the proliferation of new family forms in Ireland, including a surge in the number of children raised by lone parents.

Iona Institute representatives debated this issue on a number of programmes and came up against a flat-out denial that there is any disadvantage attached to being raised by one parent. A UN report issued in 2007 has a different view.

In that year, Unicef brought out “Child poverty in perspective: An overview of child well-being in rich countries, Innocenti Report Card 7”.

Here is what it had to say about being raised in single parent families or stepfamilies::

“The use of data on the proportion of children living in single-parent families and stepfamilies as an indicator of well-being may seem unfair and insensitive. Plenty of children in two-parent families are damaged by their parents’ relationships; plenty of children in single-parent and stepfamilies are growing up secure and happy. Nor can the terms ‘single-parent families’ and ‘stepfamilies’ do justice to the many different kinds of family unit that have become common in recent decades. But at the statistical level there is evidence to associate growing up in single-parent families and stepfamilies with greater risk to well-being – including a greater risk of dropping out of school, of leaving home early, of poorer health, of low skills, and of low pay. Furthermore such risks appear to persist even when the substantial effect of increased poverty levels in single-parent and stepfamilies have been taken into account (although it might be noted that the research establishing these links has largely been conducted in the United States and the United Kingdom and it is not certain that the same patterns prevail across the OECD).”

The UN – which is no-one’s idea of a socially conservative organisation – believes family structure matters for children. Why can’t our opinion formers and policy-makers grasp this basic point?