26% of mothers and 7% of fathers in the US are stay-at-home parents, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

Over the past 30 years, the share of stay-at-home parents has fluctuated, rising during periods of higher unemployment.

Between 1989 and 2021, the share of mothers who were not employed for pay decreased slightly, from 28% to 26%. Over the same span, the share of fathers who were not working increased from 4% to 7%.

Due to these diverging trends, dads now represent 18% of stay-at-home parents, up from 11% in 1989.

The reasons mothers and fathers give for not working for pay differ significantly. In 2021, the vast majority of stay-at-home moms (79%) said they took care of the home or family. About one-in-ten (9%) said they were at home because they were ill or disabled, and smaller shares said they didn’t work because they were students, unable to find work or retired.

Stay-at-home dads cite more varied reasons for not working for pay. In 2021, 23% stayed home to care for the home or family.

About one-third of stay-at-home dads (34%) were not working due to illness or disability. Some 13% were retired, 13% said they could not find work and 8% were going to school.

Marriage is the “the most important differentiator” of who is happy in America, and that falling marriage rates are a chief reason for why happiness has declined nationally, according to new research from the University of Chicago.

Surveying thousands of respondents, it revealed a startling 30-percentage-point happiness divide between married and unmarried Americans.

This happiness boost held true for both men and women.

“Marital status is and has been a very important marker for happiness,” researcher Sam Peltzman concludes. “The happiness landslide comes entirely from the married. Low happiness characterizes all types of non-married. No subsequent population categorization will yield so large a difference in happiness across so many people.”

Commenting on the news, sociologists W. Bradford Wilcox and David Bass said it further confirms that Americans who are married with children are now leading happier and more prosperous lives, on average, than men and women who are single and childless.

About 1,000 people gathered in Dublin last week to hear concerns about the Government’s proposed new Social Personal and Health Education course for secondary school students.

One of the speakers at the National Stadium, Aontú’s Peadar Tóibín TD, said there was a broad mix of different faiths, communities and groups who attended. “There is significant concern over the extreme nature of the Government’s new curriculum,” he told The Irish Catholic.

The draft senior cycle SPHE programme aims to teach about gender ideology, gender identity, abortion, ‘white, male or Irish privilege’, among other topics.

Pastor John Ahern of All Nations Church, Dublin told the Irish Catholic: “People are concerned about their children, irrespective whether it’s Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, Muslims or Jews, nobody wants their children indoctrinated, particularly regarding the teaching of beliefs that are completely contrary to their faith.

“This is the bottom line. It doesn’t matter how the Government dresses this up, it is indoctrination and it is a violation of many of our deepest convictions regarding marriage, sexuality, gender etc. This is the problem many of them live in this progressive bubble where they feel that everybody has bought into this but that is far from the case,” he added.

In the past six months, Finland witnessed the lowest number of births in its entire recorded history since 1900, with 21,180 live births, a decrease of 1,082 compared to the same period last year.

Over the past 12 months, the total fertility rate dropped to 1.28, down from 1.87 in 2010 and 1.35 in 2019, the number-crunching agency said in a press release on Thursday. Replacement level is 2.1.

The total fertility rate indicates the average number of children a person would give birth to in their lifetime if the birth rate remained at the same level as during the calculation period.

Finland’s fertility rate was on a long, steady decline until the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, when there was a slight increase in births, but then the decline resumed last year.

The Court of Appeals for San Miguel in Chile unanimously affirmed the right of parents to educational freedom, ruling that the choice to pursue foreign-based homeschooling programs must be accepted in the country as valid for all purposes.

The case involved a youth whose high school degree obtained remotely from a Texas-based school working in partnership with homeschool curriculum providers and assessors, was not recognised by the Chilean Ministry of Education. Because of this denial, he had been unable to apply to university.

“This is a victory for rights of parents in Chile in line with the guarantees of international human rights law,” said Tomás Henríquez, ADF International’s Director of Advocacy for Latin America.

The ability to discern good and evil is in dire need of being cultivated or we risk losing our way as a people, warned Archbishop Eamon Martin.

In a stark appeal at the summit of Croagh Patrick on Reek Sunday, the Archbishop of Armagh said being able to distinguish good and evil is more important than ever “when the primacy of individual choice – including absolute choice over our bodies and over creation – is sometimes held up as the gold standard of a ‘modern’ society freed from the so-called ‘shackles of the past’.”

“But to present choice as unlimited, unencumbered by talk of ‘good and bad’ choice, of ‘right and wrong’ choice, is a recipe for disappointment, for a sense of personal failure and even despair”.

He added: “To worship unlimited choice is to worship a false god.  Far from nourishing a happier life and a more free and rounded society, uninhibited choice is overwhelming, and can impact negatively on spiritual, physical and mental health and well-being, especially that of our young people.  At its worst the concept of unlimited choice without consequence becomes a tyranny which threatens the dignity of the human person as a unity of body and soul; it can destroy life, create confusion and contribute to a culture of death where the destruction of innocent and vulnerable human life – at its very beginning or near its end – is presented as a matter of legitimate individual choice”.

It would be difficult to conduct a proper information campaign in advance of major referendums on marriage, family and the support for mothers in the home, if the Government schedules votes for November, according to the chief executive of the Electoral Commission, Art O’Leary.

The Irish Times asked Mr O’Leary if, in the absence of the wording being finalised before the return of the Dáil in September, the November referendum date is unlikely.

He replied: “It is difficult to see how we could do a proper information campaign if we had less than the 14 to 16 weeks required.”

He said he understands how complex the issues to be put to the people are, adding that some of the choices to be made “require some deep thought because when you go to the people of Ireland and say we’d like to change our basic law, to do such a thing you need to be on firm ground”.

Mr O’Leary also said the Government and Houses of the Oireachtas will do as they desire and “we’ll deal with whatever comes.”

His remarks indicate that, ideally, the wording would be ready in August, for the commission to have between 14 and 16 weeks for the information campaign in advance of a November referendum.

Only half of Generation Z and Millennials plan to start a family while the number one reason putting them off children is a desire to concentrate on themselves, a UK survey has found.

Research by OnePoll among 1,000 people aged 18 to 34 who had not begun a family found that one in four had ruled out having a baby completely.

Just 55 per cent said they planned to have children, with another 20 per cent unsure what they would do.

The most common reason, at 49 per cent, was wanting “more time to focus on myself”, followed by financial pressures for 47 per cent and fears about the state of the world for 38 per cent, while 35 per cent were concerned about the impact children would have on the environment. Others had made the choice due to career aspirations or poor health.

The study also found that less than half of all those polled believed it was important for a person to have children to feel fulfilled in their lives.

A breakdown in a relationship or a change in family circumstances was the most common reason families presented as homeless between April and June this year, says the Department of Housing.

As of Q2 2023, local authorities begun reporting the reasons for presentation cited by households who newly entered emergency accommodation in the most recent quarter.

Contrary to expectations, evictions did not account for the greatest number of family cases.

282 instances were due to “Relationship breakdown/Family Circumstance” while 181 were due to a “notice of termination”.

There were 972 cases of families entering homelessness in total.

As a result of the new data now being reported, the Department said that the total number of families presenting has risen by 24.5% on the last quarter (from 669 to 833). The net number of new families entering emergency accommodation has increased by 32.5% on the last quarter (from 363 to 481). The number of families prevented from entering emergency accommodation by means of a social housing support has increased by 15% on the last quarter (from 306 to 352).

A referendum to remove the reference to the family being founded on marriage might be misunderstood as an attempt to banish marriage and family from the constitution, the Taoiseach has warned.

Leo Varadkar said only the link between the two needs to be severed.

“I have a fear that people will misinterpret us as trying to delete the family or to delete marriage when actually the Constitution protects marriage and the family, but it’s the linking of the two that is something that we think should change,” he said.

Mr Varadkar said he was conscious that referendums can “go wrong” and the Government must ensure the wording of any question posed in a referendum was right.

“We have had some difficulty agreeing on the wording,” Mr Varadkar said, adding the referendum would focus on two areas — the reference to women in the home and the linking of marriage and the family in the Constitution.

“There’s the wording in the Constitution that says the family is founded on marriage and marriage alone. I think we all agree that in the modern world, there are lots of families that are not married families: families led by grandparents; families led by couples that aren’t married; one-parent families.

“But we need to make sure that we get that wording right and people don’t misinterpret it.”