Growing up with two married parents may be the greatest privilege of all, according to an influential US economist.

Melissa S. Kearney came to this conclusion after more than two decades worth of research on poverty and social inequality. She says there is widespread resistance to this idea within academia both for personal and ideological reasons.

Her upcoming book, the Two-Parent Privilege, published by the University of Chicago Press, she says in nearly all advanced economies, the share of people getting married has plummeted in recent decades.

Such trends are problematic, Kearney says, because of the lost economic benefits.

The reason marriage is so powerful is because two people combining their income, assets and time create economies of scale that can support families on a range of fronts, whether it be securing a mortgage or paying for childcare.

Research from the Marriage Foundation, a thinktank, previously found that nearly 90pc of new mums across Britain’s richest households were married.

This then dropped to just over 20pc when looking at the UK’s poorest.

Notably, children whose parents are married also tend to earn more than their peers.

The effectiveness of the three day waiting period has again been underlined as over 1,900 women did not go through with an abortion last year, after a consultation with a doctor, according to the Pro-Life Campaign (PLC).

The HSE revealed there were 10,779 women who received a first consultation for an abortion in 2022, based on the number of claims for reimbursements by GPs. At the same time, claims for abortions performed totalled 8,876. This shows that 1,903 first consultations didn’t result in the final abortion appointment.

PLC spokesperson Eilís Mulroy said, “It’s reasonable to infer that the vast majority of these 1,903 cases were of women who changed their minds during the three day wait period. Most presumably decided to keep their baby. The 2022 figure complements similar figures from previous years, and offers a strong endorsement to the effectiveness of the three-day waiting period. This provision in the law gives women in the stressful situation of an unplanned pregnancy a vital window of time to reflect”.

She added: “It would be highly irresponsible to scrap the life-saving three-day reflection period considering the mounting evidence of its effectiveness as a small but significant safeguard which mitigates against the life-ending decision which many women come to deeply regret. Medical Council guidelines clearly state that a patient’s consent is not a once-off and shouldn’t be acquired in a stressful situation”.

The Scottish government has postponed a ban on so-called ‘conversion therapy’ amid fears it could criminalise parents who question their child’s wish to identify as a different gender to their biological sex.

Holyrood had promised to publish legislation by the end of 2023, but last week’s Programme for Government included no such legislation.

It has been replaced by a consultation which will not report until next year.

Long-promised plans regarding ‘conversion therapy’ in England are also mired in delay.

But the postponement in Scotland of the ban, which covers both gay and trans conversion therapy, is more surprising as the SNP has been much more forward in its support for the trans rights agenda.

The delay follows the row over Scotland’s attempt to bring in a law to make it much easier for people to legally change their self-identified gender.

“Being pro-family should be a national minimum”, said the President of Hungary, Katalin Novák yesterday at the start of the Budapest Demographic Summit.

The biannual meeting, held since 2015, is a major forum where politicians, church leaders, and experts discuss the most important current issues affecting families.

The Hungarian President stressed that the ‘demographic winter’ that has set in in the developed world is now turning into an ice age, but if there are no children, there is no future. “The pillars of our lives, the foundations of our Christian culture, are cracking and crumbling, and if we do not take care of our values, which we believe to be inviolable, we will sacrifice ourselves before we become victims of the coming ice age”, she said.

The Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, also spoke at the gathering. She said that her government’s top priority was to bring about a major cultural shift in thinking about families, as Italy, like the rest of the Western world, is facing a serious demographic crisis.

She added that the Italian economy was facing a serious crisis, as the number of births had fallen, leading to a strong anti-family mood, and the image of the family in the media had gradually faded away, with individuals now appearing as consumers.

The European Parliament has voted in favour of a report that would pave the way for the sale of human embryos. The measure passed with 483 votes to 52, with 89 abstentions

The Federation of Catholic Family Associations (FAFCE) pointed out that embryos and foetuses constitute human life and including them in the list of Substances of Human Origin report (so-called SOHOs) and as “unborn offspring” not only reduces them to the level of common cells, but also opens doors to their use for research and industrial purposes, which goes against the respect of dignity of human life.

FAFCE asked whether the European Parliament “wants to promote eugenics?”

“We hope that the EU policymakers will be wise enough to avoid an additional divide in Europe, respecting the inherent value and dignity of human life and human procreation: this is what it at stake and we wonder if many who voted this morning really realised that”.

EU Bishops also expressed their “deep concern“.

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.