A new poll from the prestigious Pew Research Centre issued to coincide with Father’s Day, shows that 70 percent of Americans believe women having children without a dad to help raise them is bad for society.

President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron would agree. To coincide with Father’s Day both men wrote articles praising the role of fathers and calling on fathers to become more involved with their children.

President Obama, who was raised by a single mother, is honest enough to point out that children without a father are “more likely to struggle in school, try drugs, get into trouble and even wind up in jail.” How many Irish politicians would dare to say such a thing?

The Pew survey points out that in 1960 ‘only’ 11 percent of American kids were being raised without their fathers and today the figure is 27 percent.

In Ireland the number of children being raised in lone parent families (according to the 2006 Census) is 21 percent and another five percent are being raised by cohabiting figures. (It’s not clear from the figures how many of those couples were also the biological parents of the children).

In Ireland, it is also the case that 10 percent of birth certs don’t record the name of the father and thousands of children don’t know who their father is, let alone are being raised by him.

Very interestingly, the Pew survey also reveals how much contact American children who don’t live with their fathers have with them.

Twenty-seven percent receive no visits from their fathers at all. Twenty-two percent see them at least once a week and the rest are in between.

The survey also shows that almost half of American fathers aged 15-44 report having had a child outside marriage with this rising to 76 percent among fathers aged 20-24 and 62 percent among fathers aged 25-29. (What are the Irish figures, one wonders?)

There is a similar discrepancy by level of education. Forty percent of fathers who didn’t finish High School live apart from their children, dropping to seven percent of fathers who have a third level degree.

Sixty-nine percent of the American public believe children need a father to grow up happily and 74 percent believe they need a mother to grow up happily.

A question rises at this point, namely, how do we reconcile this belief that having a mother and a father is so important to a child’s happiness with the rival and rising notion that children don’t need a mother and a father as such, but simply loving parents of whatever sex?

The answer is, we can’t. Obviously some people believe in both things without realising how they conflict. On the one hand common sense and experience (and the evidence) tell us that children do indeed need a mother and a father.

But on the other hand, our desire not to judge or to ‘discriminate’ is leading a growing number of us to support the notion that the sex of the parents doesn’t really matter.

Sooner or later the public is going to have to decide what it really believes. Is it desirable to have a loving mother and father, or is all you need loving parents?

It would be an amazing thing, and testimony to the power of ideology, if we end up ditching the idea that having a loving mother and father is best.