Married mothers and fathers are the happiest category of individuals, according to new research from the Institute for Family Studies (IFS).

The results run counter to the often prevailing cultural narrative that marriage and parenthood are not fulfilling, particularly for women.

Based on data from the US 2022 General Social Survey, IFS scholars Brad Wilcox and Wendy Wang show that a combination of marriage and parenthood is linked to the biggest happiness dividends for women.

Among married women with children between the ages of 18 and 55, 40% reported they are “very happy,” compared to 25% of married childless women and just 22% of unmarried childless women.

Only 17% of unmarried mothers are very happy, making them the least happy women.

Similarly, 35% of married men ages 18-55 who are fathers report being “very happy,” followed by 30% of married men who do not have children.

Unmarried childless men, and especially unmarried fathers, are the least happy. Less than 15% of these men say they are “very happy.”

Use of Artificial Intelligence by fertility clinics to efficiently sort through embryos and select the most suitable for implantation is a programme of ‘AI led eugenics’, a leading pro-life politician has claimed.

Lord David Alton, who sits in the British House of Lords, was commenting on a newspaper report that a fertility clinics are now using an AI tool to analyse embryos in minute detail and pick up tiny flaws that are undetectable to the human eye. The most flawless ones are implanted to increase a woman’s odds of becoming pregnant as a result of IVF.

Lord Alton said this technology is used to “detect and determine which human embryos will be destroyed and which ones be saved”.

“This is AI led eugenics”, he claimed. “We need instead Authentic Intelligence, Ethical Intelligence – not more eugenics”.

Lord Alton said since embryo experimentation was legalised in Britain in 1990 an estimated three and a half million human embryos have been destroyed or discarded.

“The ‘special status’ which the UK Parliament was told the human embryo would be given was rapidly jettisoned and grotesque demands acceded to . . . for procedures foretold in CS Lewis’ dystopian 1945 novel, That Hideous Strength – with the fiction now fact”.

Family policy in Britain reveals an ambivalent attitude to marriage and stands in stark contrast to the marriage-promoting policies of Hungary, according to a pro-marriage think tank.

Harry Benson of the Marriage Foundation says If the UK has any kind of family policy, it revolves around daycare and getting parents into work.

“Aside from regulatory changes, government almost entirely avoids distinguishing marriage, the family form most closely associated with couple stability and beneficial child outcomes”.

By contrast, in 2010, the Hungarian government implemented a series of financial incentives aimed at addressing a national fertility rate well below the EU average.

The consequence was that from 2010 the number of marriages in Hungary rose by 84% before lockdown in 2019 and 89% by 2020. Hungary was the only country in Europe to see an increase in new marriages during the first year of lockdown, rising 3% against the previous year.

A primary school has won a case in which it was alleged to have discriminated against non-Catholic pupils by giving ice-creams as a treat to those who took part in a Communion choir.

A mother of a pupil complained to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) that children who took part in a Communion choir in May 2022 were called from their classrooms and given the treats for taking part in the ceremony.

The mother said these children then returned to class eating their ice-creams and that her child, who was in second class and not of the Catholic faith, felt unfairly excluded.

In its finding, the commission concluded that the ice-creams given to children who took part in the choir’s activities amounted to “more favourable” treatment rather than “less favourable” treatment.

It agreed that the choir was not restricted on the basis of religion that “no religious ground has been established for the treatment which was given to those children who opted to take part in the choir’s activities”. As a result, it said the mother had not established religious discrimination.

A fertility clinic in Ireland has been using AI software to select embryos for implantation and the system has reportedly proved so efficient relative to traditional methods that the clinic has started offering “payment by results”.

Traditionally, an embryologist examines multiple embryos under a microscope and decides which is the best to implant. The AIVF tool analyses all the embryos in minute detail and can pick up tiny flaws that are undetectable to the human eye.

Dr David Walsh, founder of First IVF, which runs fertility clinics in Dublin and Kildare, claims the proportion of successful pregnancies per cycle had increased from 31 per cent to 50 per cent since he started using the AIVF system last year. This is not independently verified.

Walsh recently introduced a scheme under which patients pay only half of the cost of the treatment upfront, with the rest withheld until they become pregnant.

In what has been hailed as a victory for free speech and pro-life activism, Britain’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman has announced that silent prayer near abortion providers is not a crime.

Ms Braverman has written to every police force in the UK to say that “silent prayer, within itself, is not unlawful”.

In the past 12 months, at least 3 people in Britain were arrested for what critics described as “thought crimes” – praying silently at facilities where abortions were performed.

The Home Secretary also reminded police that “holding lawful opinions, even if those opinions may offend others, is not a criminal offence”.

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce – the pro-life advocate whose arrest for “praying in my head” went viral, racking up millions of views worldwide – welcomed the intervention by Ms Braverman.

She told the Catholic Herald: “It is not for the Government to determine my beliefs on abortion, my beliefs that women deserve better support, nor police the faith that I hold in my own mind.

Catholics attending Mass at least once a week in Italy have decreased by almost half in two decades, dropping from 36.4% to 18.8% between 2001 and 2022, with a notable acceleration of the trend from 2020 onward, according to the latest figures of the Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat).

The Europe Correspondent for the National Catholic Register, Solène Tadié, says the data shows that the closure of churches during the COVID-19 health crisis drove away a number of worshippers who did not return after the restrictions were lifted.

She notes that in 2022, 31% of the population claimed not to have entered a church at all except to celebrate a wedding, baptism or funeral — compared with 16% in 2001, figures she calls “unprecedented in Italy’s history”.

In a general context which was already very unfavourable to the faith, “the various lockdowns and other restrictions put in place between March 2020 and May 2022 as part of the health and political crisis triggered by COVID-19, “completed the haemorrhage”, she says.

“Indeed, churches remained closed for many months in 2020, depriving the faithful of access to the sacraments, and often of contact with their priests, leading many to feel abandoned in the face of the prospect of illness and in some cases death”.

Israel has an obligation to tackle the harassment of the Christian minority in Jerusalem, Tánaiste Micheál Martin has warned Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Mr Martin also called on the Palestinian Authority to ensure that the rights of Christians are protected in the West Bank.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs called on Mr Netanyahu to “preserve the status quo of the holy sites” in Jerusalem, which include sites sacred to Christians, Jews and Muslims, during a diplomatic visit to Jerusalem this week.

His comments come at a time of increased tensions in the Holy Land, with a spike of anti-Christian harassment in Jerusalem.

Christian residents and pilgrims have reported being verbally abused and spat on, with priests, religious and laity targeted, sometimes by Jewish extremists.

Earlier this year, the head of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land warned that “the frequency of these attacks, the aggressions, has become something new”.

A lowering of support for marriage is likely to lead to a further lowering of the birthrate, according to a leading economist.

David Higgins was speaking as the Government announced it will plough ahead with referendums on family, gender and the protection of mothers in the home. This would involve removing the special standing of marriage in the Constitution.

Mr Higgins said, “if our society is now ambivalent towards marriage, it surely follows that we will have less of it. We are already seeing this in falling marriage rates. It must also surely follow that the birth rate will continue to notch lower”.

He noted that CSO Census data for 2022 show that 29pc of married households have three or more children, as opposed to 19pc of cohabiting households and 15% of single parents.

The result for society, he says, will be a stark choice: “The generation that follows ours will either face much higher taxes (a heavier burden on fewer working people), or the services provided to our (now older) generation will shrink.

“A referendum which weakens the standing of marriage in the constitution may be a symbolic marker of this coming economic challenge”.

Both the First Minister and Health secretary of Scotland have expressed their opposition to the legalisation of assisted suicide in Scotland.

Earlier this week, the First Minister, Humza Yousaf, said he was increasingly against the idea saying: “I feel even less persuaded after a recent discussion with the Glasgow Disability Alliance.

“They were incredibly strong in their opposition to assisted dying, given that they felt that they would be the ones, as they described it, that would be the thin end of the wedge when it came to assisted dying.”

Asked on Wednesday whether he supported the ‘assisted dying’ legislation, Health Secretary, Michael Matheson said: “No, I don’t. I’ve opposed it previously.

“It’s an issue which I’ve raised as a matter of personal conscience and it’s something which I continue to oppose.

“Because I don’t believe it’s society’s responsibility to make those decisions.”

He said such a law might put pressure on sick and disabled people to opt for ‘assisted dying’.